CentralReach’s Chris Sullens Transforms ABA Software and Sells for $1.65 Billion

From WorkWave to CentralReach: A Vertical Software CEO’s Playbook

FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA — before he became the most important technology executive in the ABA industry, Chris Sullens spent a decade transforming a company that had nothing to do with healthcare. From 2008 to 2018, Sullens served as President and CEO of WorkWave, a provider of cloud-based software solutions for the field service and last-mile logistics industries. When he joined, WorkWave had 38 employees and a single on-premise product. Over ten years, Sullens grew the company to nearly 300 employees, increased revenue by 800 percent, completed 11 strategic acquisitions, and transformed WorkWave from a single-product operation into a multi-product, multi-market SaaS platform that became the market leader in its vertical.

The WorkWave playbook — identify a niche vertical software market with fragmented competitors, acquire the leading product, professionalize operations, build a multi-product platform through strategic acquisitions, and establish an award-winning culture that attracts and retains talent — is precisely the playbook that Sullens brought to CentralReach. The ABA software market in 2018 bore striking similarities to the field service software market that Sullens had mastered: a niche vertical with a dominant but underdeveloped platform, a fragmented competitive landscape, and enormous growth potential driven by industry tailwinds.

Sullens holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Virginia Tech and an M.B.A. with Honors in Finance, Strategy, and Entrepreneurship from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. His recognition during the WorkWave era included the 2016 EY Entrepreneur of the Year award in New Jersey for Software Services and a Stevie award for People-Focused CEO of the Year in 2017. Those accolades reflected a leadership style that emphasized culture-building alongside operational execution — a combination that proved equally effective at CentralReach.

Sullens’ career arc is a case study in vertical software platform building: take a niche-dominant product, professionalize its operations, expand through strategic acquisition, and create a multi-product ecosystem that becomes the mission-critical operating system for an entire industry.

14 Acquisitions in 6 Years: Building the ABA Technology Platform

The defining strategic achievement of Sullens’ CentralReach tenure is the acquisition-driven platform expansion. From 2018 through 2025, CentralReach completed 14 strategic acquisitions, each adding specific capabilities to the platform. The acquisitions spanned clinical data collection (Chartlytics, acquired in 2018, the same year Sullens joined), learning management systems, curriculum development tools, K-12 special education solutions, and AI-powered analytics. The 2024 acquisitions included Science Technology Inc. in September and SILAS in March. The 2025 acquisitions of SpectrumAI and AI Measures were the first under Roper Technologies ownership.

Each acquisition followed a consistent strategic logic: identify a technology that ABA providers already use or need, acquire the market leader or a strong competitor in that category, and integrate it into the CentralReach platform. The result is a comprehensive end-to-end ecosystem that handles practice management, electronic medical records, clinical data collection, staff credentialing, learning management, billing and claims processing, scheduling, and AI-powered clinical analytics. No competitor offers a comparable breadth of functionality in a single integrated platform.

The acquisition pace also served a competitive moat-building function. Each acquisition added switching costs for CentralReach’s installed base. A provider that uses CentralReach for practice management and adds the platform’s learning management, clinical data collection, and billing modules is progressively more locked into the ecosystem. The cost — in time, money, data migration risk, and workflow disruption — of switching to a competitor increases with every additional module a provider adopts. Sullens understood this dynamic from his WorkWave experience and applied it deliberately at CentralReach.

From 20,000 to 200,000 Users: The Growth Metrics

When Sullens joined CentralReach in July 2018, the platform served approximately 20,000 users. By 2025, that number had grown to over 200,000 daily professionals — a tenfold increase that reflects both organic growth and the user bases acquired through the 14 strategic acquisitions. CentralReach has appeared on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies five times under Sullens’ leadership, and the company has earned over 75 awards including Deloitte Technology Fast 500, NJBIZ Fast 50, NJBIZ Best Places to Work, a Stevie for Most Innovative Company of the Year, and Best in Biz Company of the Year.

The revenue trajectory matched the user growth. CentralReach is expected to contribute approximately $175 million of revenue and $75 million of EBITDA for the twelve months ending June 30, 2026, according to Roper Technologies’ acquisition announcement. These figures represent the company’s performance at the time of the Roper deal and reflect the cumulative effect of six years of organic growth and acquisition-driven expansion under Sullens’ leadership.

On Roper’s Q2 2025 earnings call, CFO Jason Conley described CentralReach as having exceptional momentum, record expansion activity, and a 70 percent enterprise new client win rate in the quarter. The win rate metric is particularly telling: it indicates that when CentralReach competes for enterprise-level ABA provider accounts, it wins seven out of ten competitive engagements. That level of competitive dominance reflects both the platform’s breadth and the brand equity that Sullens has built through consistent investment in product development and customer success.

The Roper Exit: Navigating from PE to Public Company Ownership

The $1.65 billion sale to Roper Technologies in March 2025 was the culmination of CentralReach’s journey from PE-backed growth company to public-company-owned platform. The sale generated a substantial return for Insight Partners, which had invested when CentralReach was valued below $200 million. For Sullens, the transition from PE ownership to public company ownership represents a different set of challenges and opportunities.

Under Insight Partners, CentralReach operated with the autonomy and growth-first orientation typical of PE-backed software companies. Under Roper, the company retains operational independence — Roper’s model allows portfolio companies to run their own operations — but now reports into a publicly traded entity with Wall Street earnings expectations. The acquisition announcement confirmed that CentralReach will remain independent, preserving its team, brands, products, and mission. Sullens continues as CEO, overseeing what he has described as the next phase of the company’s evolution.

In a January 2026 interview, Sullens reflected on the company’s trajectory, noting that what began as a single ABA-focused solution in 2012 has grown into an end-to-end care platform providing technology for therapists, clinicians, educators, job coaches, and others focused on improving outcomes and increasing independence for individuals from infancy through adulthood. He highlighted recent product launches including CR NoteDraftAI, an agentic note-drafting solution that improves session note quality in 80 percent less time, and CR CareCompanion, a caregiver app that enables families to reinforce care plans at home.

Sullens also oversees a leadership team that has expanded significantly under his tenure. The SpectrumAI and AI Measures acquisitions brought Dr. Thomas Frazier as Chief Clinical Officer and Ling Shao as SVP of Outcomes-Based Care. CentralReach now employs more than 400 professionals and maintains offices in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Holmdel, New Jersey. The company’s leadership bench reflects the dual nature of its mission: a technology company with deep clinical expertise, led by a CEO whose background is in enterprise software platform building rather than behavioral health clinical practice.

Under Sullens, CentralReach has evolved from a single-product ABA tool serving 20,000 users to a $175 million platform serving 200,000 daily professionals — and then sold for $1.65 billion to a Nasdaq-100 company. The question now is whether Sullens can deliver the same transformative growth inside a public company framework that he delivered under PE ownership.

AT A GLANCE

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