Award-winning Behavior Analyst and Global Entrepreneur /or The ‘guiding light’ that dissipates disability
Every experience that you have and will have upon the Earth encourages the alignment of your personality with your soul’. – Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav.
Jawahar Alvi’s favourite quote stands testimony to her journey of ‘serving exceptional lives’. A young and charismatic Jawahar moved across the world from Pakistan to the US and emerged as an award-winning Behavior Analyst and Global Entrepreneur. Today, she’s a clinical director for OURS Clinical Setting in Chicago IL, BASES Behavior and Special Education Services (Pakistan), RIFE USA (Dubai UAE), and Franchise Owner – ACT (Autism Care Therapy).
“My experiential learning has taught me a lot about life, treatment of others, treatment by others, and the journey of serving exceptional lives,” begins Jawahar.
Born and raised in Pakistan, Jawahar moved to the US in 2001 and started working at a montessori as an assistant teacher. Seeing toddlers with developmental delays had a huge influence on her tender heart. She soon found her way back to school and obtained a Master’s in Special Education, Board Certification in Behavior Analysis, and Doctorate in Clinical Psychology.
Simultaneously, she started researching and realised that there is a scarcity of services for Autism and other related disorders all around the globe. Committed to enhancing the lives of people with developmental, physical, and neurodevelopmental disabilities, she decided to pursue a global chain of clinical settings across UAE, Bahrain, Pakistan, etc., all of which met with great success.
During this period, she leveraged her extensive experience to empower communities through clinical and educational initiatives. In addition to ABA (autism) consultations across Middle East and South East Asia, she taught two graduate classes in Special Education at Dominican University in River Forest Illinois, and graduate-level BCBA/BCaBA classes with BMI India. She also started the lecture-based RBT series in Dubai in 2015, training almost 2000 people to date including therapists, parents, and caregivers.
Nevertheless, Jawahar’s inspirational work in the social sector was not always easy. There were many challenges she faced along the way – the challenge of being a woman of color, of coming from Pakistan right after 9/11, and others.
“People would not trust me easily. Going to Dubai and starting a whole new business was hard in a world of male dominance and Monarchy. Being nominated as the ‘Disability Friendly Clinic’ in UAE and awarded by Shaikh Muhammad was thus a big deal in 2017. In Pakistan, the challenges were different – no awareness of Autism, stigmatization, no governmental support, were some of them.”
Having been raised by a strong woman, Jawahar eventually conquered the world. “My inspiration has always been my mother who is the strongest woman in the world alive that I know of. After that, I have been inspired by Princess Diana, her life, courage, and work.”
With her trademark grit and passion to serve, Jawahar herself became an inspiration to women around the world. Her path-breaking work was globally acknowledged when she was bestowed with the International Honorary Outstanding Leadership Award recently.
Her engagements and honours comprise a long list – She is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst, a Learning Behavioral Specialist with the state of Illinois, and an International Behavior Analyst. She is a Doctoral Student, an Early Intervention specialist, and an international behavior analyst Professional Advisory Board Member. She’s also a Behavior Consultant at Clearbrook as well as BIOS.
What makes Jawahar such a great leader? Sharing her thoughts on leadership, she says, “As a leader, we need to model by example. We need to create leaders and not followers, which means we need to make people think, analyze situations, and apply what they have learned into practice without the fear of failing. I also believe in the power of educating my employees, I train our teams to be the best version of themselves.”
Jawahar is truly one of a kind – she has a rare passion to serve what she calls ‘exceptional lives’, spread evidence based practices globally, and train practitioners to serve people with special needs with passion, ethics, dignity, and competence.
An embodiment of a woman with substance, she leaves a lasting message for all the womenfolk out there: “I feel like women have the power of an entire ocean in them. Women, especially women of color coming from marginalized populations, are underrated, oppressed, and do not get enough chances that match their potential. Nevertheless, we should keep on trying, growing together, and uplifting each other.”
