We’ve been on
your side
of the desk.

Dr. Kelly Lopez has spent more than twenty years in behavioral health, and her career began where the work matters most: sitting beside a child and family as an applied behavior analysis (ABA) therapist. Those early years shaped everything that came after. They taught her that real progress is built one small, meaningful step at a time, and that families are partners, not bystanders.

That conviction carried her from therapist to behavior analyst, and then into the specialized world of intensive feeding therapy. In feeding therapy, a single meal can be a family’s greatest daily struggle, and patience and precision make all the difference. Her work has taken her far beyond one community or one country. She has provided ABA and feeding therapy to families in the United States, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, Italy, and Spain. Bilingual in English and Spanish and conversational in Portuguese, French, and Italian, she has learned to meet families in their own language and culture, and to see behavior through more than one lens.

As her clinical expertise deepened, so did her desire to shape the systems that surround care. At Equanimity Behavioral Services, she grew from Clinical Director to Executive Compliance and Quality Officer, and ultimately to Chief Executive Officer. As CEO, she led 165 employees across two locations. She never lost sight of the children and families at the center of the organization.

Today, Dr. Lopez brings that same commitment to SalusCare, Inc. in Fort Myers, Florida, where she serves as Director of Continuous Quality Improvement and Corporate Compliance Officer. She has built the organization’s quality and compliance foundation from the ground up. That work includes governance structures, incident reporting, risk analysis, and the data that helps leaders see clearly and act wisely, all in service of care that is safer and more consistent for every person who walks through the door.

Her influence extends across the field as well. Dr. Lopez is a CARF International surveyor and has served on the advisory board of the International Behavior Analysis Organization (IBAO) for four years. As a consultant for Cue, she helped shape the platform from both the clinical and operational side, so that it supports the people doing the work. She is also a contributing author to Dr. Lena Hall’s A Psychology of American Culture (Edwin Mellen Press, 2015).

Dr. Lopez holds a Doctorate in Health Sciences, a Master of Science in Applied Behavior Analysis, a Master of Science in Mental Health Counseling, and a Bachelor of Science in Psychology. She is an International Behavior Analyst (IBA) certified through IBAO, holds the QABA credential, and is a Licensed Clinical Behavior Analyst in Texas.

Across every role, from a single child’s progress to an entire organization’s quality, her purpose has stayed the same: care that is effective, ethical, and deeply human.