About Habit Coach
Why we started HabitCoach
According to studies, approximately 11% of kids have ADHD. That means over 7 million children in the US and over 200 million kids worldwide are struggling with a condition that is hard to see but challenging, nonetheless. Another large group of kids have executive function challenges but not quite enough to get an ADHD diagnosis.
Left untreated, ADHD causes problems; according to Dr. Russell Barkley, adults with ADHD are more likely to get divorced, lose their jobs, and even end up in jail. Research has advanced to the point where treatments are well-known: medication, accommodations, and behavioral work such as coaching. However, until now, ADHD coaching has been priced so high as to only be available to wealthy and upper-middle class kids. We are bringing this service to a more economically diverse set of children.
Based on the latest research, we have built a curriculum to help children and teens in all areas of their life: At home, at school, executive function, social, and emotional situations. Our coaches are all professionals in the field with master’s degrees and in-depth knowledge of ADHD and executive function challenges. We have also built a deep set of video and print resources to help children and families with their challenges.
We look forward to a day when all children with ADHD and executive challenges can manage their lives, play to their strengths, and thrive to their full potential.
Watch the story behind HabitCoach.
Don't let ADHD or weak executive function skills hold your child back.
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The Co-Founders
Jon Zeitlin
Jon Zeitlin is the co-founder of Hallowell Todaro ADHD Center - California, CoachJon, and HabitCoach. He is a member of Dr. Alan Gilbert’s ADHD coach mentoring group and on the path to be PAAC certified as an ADHD Coach. In his private practice, he sees teens and adults with ADHD.
Jon is also a three-time Chief Executive and a senior corporate executive with his own executive function challenges that he has overcome (for the most part).
Jon graduated from Yale and received two master’s degrees from Stanford, but has always struggled with organization, losing things, and attention to detail.
In his 30s, after a psychologist told him that he had strong ADHD symptoms, he went on a self-imposed course of building “compensating mechanisms” and “workarounds” for his weaknesses. He used alarms and notifications for his deadlines, rigorously updated his prioritized To Do List and built a reputation for being early to meetings. He also made sure that he took on roles that played to his strengths.
From that point, his career took off: he rose to Senior Vice-President at one of the world’s largest education companies and then served as chief executive at two subsidiaries. On the side, he coached and tutored high school students. He also started a family and is very happily married with three wonderful teenage kids, including one with ADHD who is learning to play to his strengths and work around his challenges.
Jon has brought his vision, passion, and intellect to HabitCoach, working with a very experienced and talented team to build out a complete and effective product and service for kids and teens with ADHD. He wishes he had access to an ADHD coach when he was figuring things out but is now thrilled to share his learning with others.
Karen Quinn
Karen Quinn first became interested in ADHD when her daughter was diagnosed with it in 5th grade. At the time, the only suggestion experts made was to put her daughter on medication. The term “executive function skills” was never mentioned even though ADHD is considered a disorder of executive function skills. Karen did what she could to help her daughter – got her academic tutors, arranged for accommodations, put her into special schools – but nothing seemed to help. At the time, schools weren’t knowledgeable or supportive of kids with ADHD. Getting Schuyler through school was painful for both mother and daughter. It wasn’t until Schuyler was in an acting program she was passionate about that she took it upon herself to work on adopting new habits to work around her executive disfunctions.
In 2010, Karen co-founded TestingMom to help families get the information they needed to prepare their children for private school and gifted program testing. She started this program after her son scored in the 37th percentile on an admissions test. Karen worked with him to turn his performance around and the next year he scored in the 94th percentile, getting into the school they wanted for him.
Karen started TestingMom to help parents work with their own children to prepare them for early childhood tests. She then reached out to Jon Zeitlin, an expert in executive function and ADHD, to join her in starting HabitCoach so that other children wouldn’t have the suffer getting through school the way Schuyler had. While building the HabitCoach business, Karen learned much more about executive function skills, realized she had her own deficits with many of these abilities, and was diagnosed with ADHD herself.
Karen has had a varied career. She is a lawyer and was VP of Advertising at American Express for 15 years. She is also an author of 5 books, and is an entrepreneur, having started 3 businesses. Her husband always joked that she couldn’t keep a job, but now Karen looks at her various career forays as a gift from her ADHD. Like many people with ADHD, she thrives on new challenges and her passions drew her to various fields where she uses her hyper-focusing abilities to throw herself into each new career adventure!