Dr. Kari Sheward, Ed.D, MS, BCBA, LBA, is the founder of Own Your Path and the designer of its coaching framework — grounded in more than a decade leading autism clinical programs and in original academic scholarship on neurodivergent transition. Own Your Path coaches teens and young adults across the full range of that transition: not only college readiness, but living independently, finding and holding a job, managing money and daily life, and building the self-advocacy skills that hold all of it together.

Kari's doctoral dissertation at the University of Dayton examined how to prepare autistic students for that leap through self-advocacy, goal-setting, and support-system alignment, and she is a co-author of peer-reviewed and conference-presented research on how neurodiversity is represented in adult education and on the challenges neurodivergent students face moving into college and adult life. She has presented to families on how to navigate the systems that shape this transition and has publicly advocated for evidence-based autism services policy.