Chelsea Jackomis, Spotlighted By Influential Women, Champions Ethical Person-Centered Care For Adults With Disabilities

TAMPA, FL, UNITED STATES, October 16, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- As CEO of Southshore ABA and Quality Crisis Management, the Board Certified Behavior Analyst Leads Compassionate, Dignity-Focused Support for Complex and Forensic Populations Across Florida’s Suncoast

Tampa, Florida – Chelsea Jackomis, a Board Certified Behavior Analyst and executive leader, has built her career around the conviction that every person deserves care rooted in dignity, ethics, and respect. She serves as CEO of Southshore ABA and CEO of Quality Crisis Management in the Greater Tampa Bay Area, where she works to expand access to behavioral health services for individuals with developmental disabilities. Holding a Master of Science in Applied Behavior Analysis and a Master of Education, she is known for advancing ethical, person-centered care. Through her leadership, she continues to build innovative, community-based supports that strengthen outcomes for individuals and families across the lifespan.

Chelsea’s path to becoming a behavior analyst and business owner has been anything but traditional. She began her early career in film and television before moving into education, driven by a desire to make a more meaningful impact. She went on to teach kindergarten and fourth grade in a high-need area outside of Atlanta, where she encountered significant behavioral challenges in the classroom. Those experiences revealed critical gaps in the support systems available to children with complex needs and ultimately led her toward applied behavior analysis. Encouraged by her mother, a licensed clinical social worker, she returned to graduate-level training in the field. Her education includes an Associate of Science in Early Childhood Education and Teaching and a Bachelor of Science in Education from the University of Phoenix, a Master of Education in Literacy and Mathematics from Walden University, and a Master of Science in Applied Behavior Analysis from the University of West Florida. She also holds the Board Certified Behavior Analyst credential and a teaching license.

After completing her training, Chelsea worked in pediatric settings before shifting into adult services following systemic changes in Medicaid funding and service delivery. Though she was initially hesitant about the move, adult behavioral health became her most meaningful and sustainable professional calling. As a behavior analyst, she has specialized in serving individuals identified within the Intensive Behavior population throughout the Suncoast region. Her clinical experience has focused primarily on adults and individuals with developmental disabilities across residential, community-based, and day training settings. She collaborates closely with providers, direct care staff, guardians, support coordinators, and multidisciplinary teams. Together, they work to create environments that are safe, ethical, compassionate, and centered on meaningful quality of life outcomes.

Chelsea’s professional history spans a wide range of complex diagnoses and support needs. She has supported individuals living with Prader-Willi Syndrome, intellectual and developmental disabilities, cerebral palsy, autism spectrum disorder, and chromosomal conditions such as Down syndrome and DDX3X syndrome, along with other medically and behaviorally complex presentations. She also brings extensive experience supporting the forensically disabled population, including individuals involved in high-stakes judicial systems and those with histories of serious behavioral and legal concerns. In these settings, her work centers on ethical treatment, risk mitigation, behavioral stabilization, skill acquisition, and environmental systems support. Throughout, she strives to preserve dignity while ensuring safety for everyone involved. She works diligently to ensure that every individual, regardless of diagnosis, behavioral presentation, communication barriers, history, or level of support needs, receives compassionate, ethical, and individualized care that honors their humanity.

Under Chelsea’s leadership, Southshore ABA operates as a boutique behavior analytic company. For her team, that means maintaining a smaller, highly hands-on approach in which every individual matters deeply, and leadership remains directly involved in the day-to-day clinical process. The company believes meaningful services grow from strong relationships, accessibility, collaboration, and consistency. Its team values responsiveness and individualized support, and it works to ensure that the people it serves never feel like just another number within a larger system. Her specialties include adult applied behavior analysis, forensic cases, intensive behavioral support, social reintegration, residential behavioral services, and analyst mentorship.

Beyond her clinical work, Chelsea serves as a member of one of the Local Review Committees within the Suncoast region. In this role, she supports analysts and providers throughout the region in developing ethical, person-centered, and clinically sound behavior plans that prioritize dignity, safety, and long-term success. She values ethical practice immensely and holds that effective services must always remain compassionate, individualized, and rooted in respect for the people being supported. She is also an approved ACE Continuing Education provider. In addition, she hosts an educational podcast, Behavior Across History, available on Spotify and YouTube, which explores behavioral histories, systems analysis, and behavior analytic perspectives on historically significant events and forensic populations. Through the podcast, she offers continuing education to fellow behavior analysts seeking insight into ethical practice, systems variables, and effective support strategies for forensically disabled individuals and other underserved groups.

Supporting the next generation of clinicians is a responsibility Chelsea cares about deeply. Southshore ABA partners with the University of South Florida as an approved graduate field placement site for students pursuing advanced training in behavior analysis. This partnership allows her team to help shape future professionals who value ethical treatment, collaboration, and high-quality care within the developmental disabilities field. She also welcomes opportunities to collaborate with behavior analysts from other agencies and companies who serve individuals living in the homes her team supports. Continuity of care, collaborative communication, and consistency across environments are priorities she holds closely. She sees working alongside fellow professionals as one of the most effective ways to serve the people receiving services.

Chelsea attributes her success first and foremost to her Christian faith. She speaks openly about the hardships she has faced, including becoming a mother to her daughter at 19 and enduring the parental abduction of her son by his biological father on two occasions, followed by difficult proceedings in the court system. She credits leaning on God with carrying her through those seasons and believes she would not be doing the work she does today without that faith. Her husband, her high school sweetheart, reconnected with her after roughly 15 years apart, and together they have persevered through their own share of challenges. For Chelsea, success comes from continuing forward, trusting God, and moving her feet where they need to go.

A recent experience illustrates that outlook. Chelsea lost a contract with one of her forensic group homes after advocating for a higher level of services for its residents, a recommendation that would have required increased staffing. The news came on a Thursday, and she simply wondered what would fill the space. By Monday morning, three group homes had reached out to her after their contract with another analyst fell through. She views moments like this as reminders that when one door closes, others are already waiting to open. Sometimes, she believes, the right path is present all along, and the task is simply to get out of the way.

When Chelsea offers advice to young women entering her industry, she encourages them to simply begin. She shares that she is on the autism spectrum and was once so shy that she rarely spoke in school, to the point that a teacher wondered whether she could hear. She carried that quietness through high school and completed her college education online. Her experience taught her that once a person finds what she is truly good at, she should not be afraid to go all in. She urges young women to avoid feeling locked into a single career track and to remember that the journey itself is the experience. In her view, lessons learned in one field branch out like a vine, weaving through different paths until a person finds her niche and excels because of everything she gathered along the way.

Chelsea’s commitment to service extends well beyond her caseload. She provides pro bono ABA services for individuals who lack insurance coverage, helping to close gaps that might otherwise leave people without support. She also makes monthly charitable donations to women’s shelters. Looking ahead, she remains focused on building collaborative relationships with fellow analysts, mentoring emerging clinicians, and strengthening ethical, community-based care across the Suncoast region. Her advocacy for appropriate levels of service, even when it carries professional risk, reflects a steady willingness to place the needs of the people she serves first.

From a classroom outside Atlanta to the leadership of two organizations in the Greater Tampa Bay Area, Chelsea has turned an unconventional journey into a practice built on ethics, dignity, and genuine care. Her work with complex and forensic populations, her teaching through continuing education and her podcast, and her investment in future clinicians all point to the same purpose. She believes every person, whatever their history or needs, deserves to be supported with respect and compassion. Grounded in faith and shaped by perseverance, Chelsea Jackomis continues to expand what thoughtful, person-centered behavioral care can mean for individuals, families, and communities.

Learn More about Chelsea Jackomis:

Through her Influential Women profile: https://influentialwomen.com/connect/chelsea-jackomis

Influential Women

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