Jing Zhou and David Boon Newberry Bring ABA Operating Experience to Business Advisory

VALUE FUSION — Jing Zhou kept asking the ABA business owners she coached for the same thing: their numbers. If they brought her their financial information, she could help them understand what it meant and decide what to do next.

But the information rarely arrived in a usable form. Some owners had profit-and-loss statements from their accountants, Zhou said, yet still lacked a clear picture of the decisions shaping their businesses each day. The advice she could offer depended on information they were struggling to assemble.

Zhou recognized the distance between knowing how to care for children and knowing how to sustain the business providing that care. She had spent years crossing it herself, learning to hire, manage employees, and run payroll as her own practice grew. Each new responsibility reached beyond her clinical training. Each carried consequences for someone who depended on her.

That experience now informs Value Fusion, the advisory firm she co-founded with David Boon Newberry. Their work brings clinical operations, business operating systems, strategic planning, accounting and fractional CFO services, value acceleration, exit planning, and mergers and acquisitions (M&A) advisory into the same conversation, with the goal of helping ABA owners understand their businesses well before a cash shortage or planned sale makes that understanding urgent.

Finding a field and a reason to stay

Zhou did not arrive in the United States planning to become a behavior analyst. She had studied English in China and wanted to pursue graduate school in a country where she could use the language. At Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, she initially enrolled in anthropology.

After one semester, she reconsidered. The program wasn't what she expected, and she wanted to work more directly with people. She also needed a way to pay for school. A friend suggested the behavior analysis and therapy program as a possible path to a graduate assistantship.

Zhou knew little about behavior analysis when she approached the program's adviser. What she learned reminded her of the psychology courses she had enjoyed in college. She switched programs, received an assistantship, and found herself increasingly drawn to the work. What began as a practical financial decision became her career.

Her later work in public schools showed her both the need for behavioral support and the limits of what she could provide on her own. Zhou recalled being the only behavior analyst in a district with more than 100 schools, often becoming involved after disagreements over a child's services had escalated into legal disputes.

Along with that work, she served children in their homes. There, she could teach parents how to create learning opportunities throughout the day and see the effects more directly. She wanted more of that connection with families and more control over how services were delivered.

Zhou founded Interventions Unlimited in 2000. In 2007, she opened Alpine Academy, a private school for children with behavioral or learning needs. The company's subsequent investment announcement documents the founding dates, and Alpine Academy continues to identify Zhou as its founder.

The responsibilities that came with growth

The demand for services quickly exceeded what Zhou could provide herself. More referrals meant hiring. Hiring meant managing people. Having employees meant learning payroll and making sure there was money to pay them.

She had no window of time to prepare for ownership. She was already responsible for the business while learning how to run it. Books, advisers, and coaches became part of that education. Over time, she said, learning the business required an investment of attention comparable to her clinical work.

Her focus on financial management came from the people behind the expenses. Children relied on the company for services. Employees relied on their paychecks for car payments and mortgages. Zhou said she took that responsibility seriously enough that she never reached a point where she worried about making payroll or needed the expensive loans she later saw other owners struggle with.

A turning point came after she put a strong business operating system in place and developed her leadership team. Zhou recalled a two-week vacation in Italy in 2018 when she realized, almost in disbelief, that she had not brought work with her or spent the trip worrying about the business. After years of long hours, the moment showed her what a business could do with the right people, systems, and accountability, she said. It became a major reason she wanted to help other owners reach the same point.

In her coaching work, she has heard versions of the same founding story. Clinicians start practices because they believe they can serve families better. Some have moved between employers, dissatisfied with what they encountered, before deciding to create the organization they wanted to work in. Business ownership follows from that clinical ambition.

As those practices grow, however, the owner can become responsible for nearly every function. Zhou described clinicians exhausted by daily demands and unsure how to build an organization that can operate without their constant involvement. Their commitment has helped the practice grow, but their capacity to manage everything personally has limits.

For Zhou, learning financial management meant accepting responsibility for the families receiving services and the employees relying on a paycheck.

The buyer who became a partner

Before Newberry became Zhou's business partner, he approached her as a prospective buyer's representative. He was working with private investors interested in buying ABA companies and called about her business. She declined. Looking back, Newberry said that the buyers he represented were not the right fit for what she had built..

Zhou eventually completed a different transaction. A September 24, 2019, announcement documented an investment in Interventions Unlimited and Alpine Academy through a private equity firm's behavioral health platform. The announcement said Zhou would remain CEO and become a shareholder in the platform. Terms were not disclosed.

She said she stayed for two years, overseeing operations, clinical quality, and business development. She also helped evaluate potential acquisition targets and supported due diligence, gaining a buyer-side view of businesses.

When she left, retirement did not feel like the best use of what she had learned. Other owners were facing challenges she had already worked through. She began helping them and pursued further training as a business coach.

Zhou and Newberry reconnected through the Pinnacle Business Guides coaching network. For a couple of years before founding Value Fusion, they worked together on M&A advisory and coaching engagements, often with owners considering a sale. Zhou described the firm as a natural evolution of that collaboration.

Newberry's career spans investment banking, entrepreneurship, and business intelligence. According to Value Fusion's published biography, his background includes investment advisory work at Goldman Sachs and M&A work at Moelis & Company. The firm says he has advised on more than $2 billion in M&A transactions, and he built and sold an educational services business of his own. At Value Fusion, he leads much of the financial analysis and works with clients facing cash-flow problems. The partners describe their combination as ABA operating experience paired with financial and transaction advisory expertise.

They encountered owners who had understandable reasons to leave and wanted their employees and the families they served to be in good hands. But some businesses were not strong enough to support the valuation their owners needed, Newberry said. Addressing those weaknesses required financial information the owners did not have readily available.

Newberry described the decision to bring accounting into their work as a response to that recurring problem. They had struggled to find a provider who could produce the reporting and financial guidance their clients needed. Building that capability into the firm would let them start with the underlying records.

Understanding what a cash shortage means

Zhou said Value Fusion begins by understanding an owner's goals and immediate pressures. A practice struggling to cover payroll needs that problem addressed before a discussion about where the owner hopes to be in several years.

The financial work starts with access to the records: QuickBooks, practice management software, and payroll information. The team cleans up the books where needed and brings the information together to examine what is happening inside the business.

Zhou described three different explanations for a cash shortage. A practice may have underlying problems with profitability, staffing efficiency, or productivity. It may be providing services but collecting payment too slowly or failing to collect enough of its claims. Or it may be growing faster than its available cash can support.

That last problem can emerge as a practice brings in more clients. New employees need to be hired and trained. Payroll begins before those employees deliver services and before payment arrives. Growth can therefore increase the amount of cash an owner needs before it increases the money available to spend, Zhou explained.

The distinction matters to the response. Problems with collections call for attention to the revenue cycle. Problems with staffing and profitability require a closer look at operations. Rapid expansion requires understanding the interval between spending money and receiving it. Zhou said the data are what allow her team to distinguish among those causes.

Newberry sees the same need to connect clinical and business decisions. He cautioned against treating clinical quality as separate from financial performance, or pursuing financial targets without considering the care behind them. The firm's approach centers on examining those responsibilities together.

Giving people a clear job to do

Zhou describes Value Fusion's broader approach through its FUSION framework, covering financial health, shared purpose, organizational structure, integrated processes, outcomes, and measurement. The work extends from financial reporting to clarifying employee responsibilities and how the organization will know whether it is succeeding.

She offered the example of an owner who had recently hired a clinical director. When Zhou asked about the role, the owner described someone spending much of the day putting out fires. Zhou redirected the conversation toward the results the director was expected to achieve.

In Zhou's view, the role should include improving clinical operations so that fewer recurring problems need an emergency response. Giving someone a leadership title does not, on its own, establish what results that person should own or what progress should look like.

She applies similar questions to the owner's plans. A practice's values and long-term goals may be clear in the founder's mind without ever having been written down or communicated to employees. Zhou said her work includes making those priorities explicit and translating them into quarterly actions.

Measurement follows. She described tracking clinical progress, client satisfaction, compliance, claims collections, and authorization utilization, among other measures. For behavior analysts accustomed to gathering detailed information about their clients, she sees an opportunity to bring that same discipline to the organizations they lead.

Building support before the next crisis

Value Fusion serves owners at different stages, from those developing their practices to those preparing for a possible exit, according to Zhou. The Council of Autism Service Providers lists the firm as a business affiliate offering consulting, accounting, fractional CFO services, and transaction advisory work.

The founders point to three differences in how the firm works: they have built and run businesses themselves, they bring several disciplines under one roof, and they aim to turn financial data into specific decisions. A single engagement can cover BCBA supervision structure, clinical capacity, scheduling, and staffing alongside financial reporting, strategic planning, and exit readiness, with the team examining how each affects the organization's performance and long-term value.

Value Fusion reports that 91% of its advisory clients have increased revenue, with a 57% annualized revenue growth rate. Among clients who began their engagements operating at a loss, the firm says, 75% have reached break-even or profitability. Those figures are the firm's own and were not independently verified.

Zhou and Newberry connect the results to what happens beyond the financial statements. A financially stable provider is better positioned to retain employees, maintain continuity of care, and keep serving the children and families who depend on it, they said. When a provider struggles financially, those same employees, children, and families can feel the consequences.

What Zhou brings to that work is a history of having to make the decisions herself. She learned financial management while employees depended on her for payroll. She learned to build an organization while families depended on its services. Later, she saw how much of an owner's future could depend on the condition of the business when it was time to leave.

The missing numbers that once stalled her coaching now shape the firm's approach. Rather than waiting for an overwhelmed owner to assemble a usable financial picture, Zhou said, her team works from the underlying records to build it with them. The aim is to give owners the information and support to make decisions before those decisions become emergencies.

AT A GLANCE

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