Chris Sullens joined CentralReach at a time when the autism care industry was already straining under its own weight. In 2018, diagnoses were rising, clinicians were burning out, and small to mid-sized providers were spending as much time on paperwork as they were with patients. The constraint was infrastructure; commitment and compassion were already abundant.
Sullens had seen this pattern before. Over the previous decade, as president and CEO of WorkWave, he took a modest logistics software company and scaled it into a market leader, growing revenue eightfold before its eventual acquisition by Swedish enterprise software firm IFS. CentralReach was different, combining a scaling challenge with a systems problem that directly affected care quality and human outcomes.
So instead of charging in with a roadmap, Sullens spent his first year listening. He sat with employees, visited clinics, and spoke directly with therapists navigating outdated systems and compliance headaches. Those conversations changed CentralReach’s direction. Under his leadership, the platform has grown to support more than 200,000 users and 400,000 patients, processing over 62 million service appointments annually. And in the process, clinicians got time back for patient care.
Sullens leads with empathy. He credits his companies’ success to cultures built around humility, collaboration, and his “doing the right thing” philosophy that extends beyond customers to employees and local communities. During his tenure, both CentralReach and WorkWave created hundreds of jobs in New Jersey and earned repeated Best Place to Work honors.
Sullens’ commitment shows up outside the office, too. Through personal and company-led initiatives, he has supported organizations ranging from Autism Speaks to Fulfill, earning recognition as Fulfill’s Humanitarian of the Year. “It’s rare that something bad happens when you employ empathy in a situation,” he’s said. CentralReach has carried this philosophy into its growth, including its recent expansion into outcomes-based care through AI-driven acquisitions.
For Sullens, software is only useful if it lightens the load. The rest, he believes, follows naturally.