The Power of Connections

Steve Muller ’85 built Balance Autism with a community of people committed to helping others. The program now serves nearly 450 individuals with autism.

Steve Muller ’85 will be the first to tell you he didn’t get where he is on his own. As CEO of Balance Autism, an organization serving more than 450 children and adults diagnosed with autism across Iowa, Muller has spent four decades building something remarkable.

“It’s a false narrative to think we individually achieved our place in life,” Muller says. “We all benefited from the interactions with others that led us to this point. Family, teachers, coaches and friends contributed to our journey.”

That insight — that no one succeeds alone — isn’t just personal philosophy. It’s the operating principle behind Balance Autism and the lens through which Muller views everything from early childhood intervention to adult employment support. And it started with a phone call he made as a junior psychology major at Central College who wasn’t quite sure what came next.

A BEAT-UP CAR AND AN OPEN DOOR

As a student, Muller found himself staring at the same question many students face: What exactly do you do with this degree without an advanced degree?

Central’s career support helped him start making calls about an internship during his senior year. What he found changed the trajectory of his life. (And included a master’s degree from Drake University while on his way to Balance Autism.)

“I had a beat-up old car that could barely make it around town, let alone to another community,” he recalls with a laugh. “After phoning a few places, I contacted a program that served people with developmental disabilities and was very fortunate to land an internship that led to 10 years of work with some really great people.”

That internship didn’t just give Muller a career path — it introduced him to people who would eventually

help him find his way to Balance Autism. A friend connected him to the fledgling organization, whose founding board was looking for someone who could see where the organization might go. Muller applied for the CEO position and never looked back.

He credits Central’s faculty with cultivating the curiosity that made him ready for those opportunities. Ed Willis and Jim Schulze, professors in the psychology department — each with distinctly different views on the discipline — pushed students to think in multiple directions at once.

“Central fosters curiosity, and that remains a core value at Balance Autism,” Muller says. “When we looked at identifying our core values, we put our top performers on a board and said, ‘describe who these people are.’ One after another, we kept coming back to: ‘They’re curious. They didn’t have all the answers, yet.’”

Balance Autism Services works with adults with autism to personalize support that integrates them into the community, focusing on individual strengths and skill-building to help create successful, interconnected lives.

A Growing Need, Unique to Autism

Balance Autism was founded on a simple but powerful observation: While services existed for people with general developmental disabilities, no one was specifically addressing the unique needs of individuals with autism.

“Autism is like a different operating system,” Muller explains. “How you gather, organize and retrieve informa­tion as a person might be totally different — but we’re all still working in and navigating the same world.”

The scale of need has grown dramatically. When Balance Autism opened its doors, autism affected roughly one in 500 people. Today, the diagnosis rate is approximately one in 31. The organization now serves individuals across eight clinic locations in Burlington, Davenport, Iowa City, Cedar Rapids, Waterloo, Altoona, Clive and Metro West.

The approach at Balance Autism focuses on building skills, unlocking strengths and creating conditions where individuals can thrive on their own terms. Children receive up to 300 learning opportunities per hour in structured clinic settings, with data tracked carefully to assess progress and adjust strategies.

“We no longer think of a cure for autism any more than we should cure anyone from their cultural experiences,”

Muller says. “Instead, we look for ways to tap into an individual’s strengths and build skills to help them create a successful and interconnected life.”

One of the most visible measures of success: Children who arrive at the clinic without using any words and leave not only speaking, but invited to a friend’s birthday party.

A PARENT’S PERSPECTIVE

Brent Carlson knows firsthand what it means to navigate an autism diagnosis without a roadmap. As a parent of a child with autism and a member of Balance Autism’s Board of Directors, he has seen the organization’s work from every angle.

“I found Balance Autism when my daughter was diagnosed at 22 months,” Carlson says. “It’s an organization that came alongside her to help us as a family and help her along her journey of life.”

Carlson joined the board not just out of gratitude, but out of conviction that the work being done at Balance Autism is too important not to invest in.

His involvement reflects a pattern Muller has seen throughout his ca­reer: When families become partners in the process — not just recipients of services — the outcomes improve for everyone. Balance Autism requires family members to participate actively in their child’s programming, ensuring skills built in the clinic can continue at home and school.

“There are different programs and services offered not just for a specific time in life,” Carlson says. “We have different services available for all ages and people. Autism doesn’t have a one-size-fits-all solution to most things. The team works with the family one-on-one.”

Balance Autism is intentional in making the child’s development collab­orative between their clinic, the parents and the school.

Teenagers with autism participate in activities at Balance Autism, where the approach focuses on building skills, unlocking strengths and creating conditions that help individuals thrive on their own terms.

CONNECTIONS THAT KEEP GIVING

The Central connection at Balance Autism doesn’t end with Muller. Susan Porterfield Nielsen ’89 is the accounting director — part of the complex web of staff who ensure the organization can navigate its interlock­ing funding streams from private insur­ance, public Medicaid dollars, school district contracts and private-pay arrangements.

Nielsen sees her role in doing a world of good as supporting the operations.

“If I’m doing my job well and reporting the financial condition of the company to leadership in a timely manner, then the team is able to make informed decisions and move forward with helping those in the autistic com­munity,” she says.

“Through our provider owned homes for adults, we are helping people with autism integrate into their communities, become an active participant in social environments and be actively employed if that is a desire of the person served. Through our clinics around Iowa, staff are helping children improve skills and attain their goals through creative and innovative solutions,” Nielsen says.

For Muller, having a Central alum in that role carries a particular meaning. Central, he says, has a way of producing people who are both competent and curious — the combination he’s found most essential in every corner of his organization, from the front-line staff working one-on-one with children to the leadership team navigating the organization’s future.

“If they’re curious, we’d love to see them come,” he says of Central grad­uates. The organization’s diverse staff — including a number of employees from Kenya, Nigeria and other parts of Africa — reflects another value Muller took from his college years: Exposure to people from different backgrounds and worldviews.

“Learning about their background, their journey to come here, why and how they present respect and value to the people we support — all those things are ties back to my Central expe­riences,” Muller says.

Nielsen agrees, “During my junior year at Central, I participated in the Mérida, Yucatán program for the winter term. At the time, I had not traveled very far outside of Iowa. Being able to see what life was like and encounter people within another culture was a great educational experience for me — one that I have always valued, and I am thankful I had that opportunity.”

BEING OF THE COMMUNITY, NOT JUST IN IT

For adults with autism, Balance Autism’s philosophy of connection takes a different but equally intentional form. The organization supports more than 52 individuals in paid employment and operates residential homes designed around small groups — typically four people — in traditional neighborhoods across the Des Moines metro.

“We don’t want to just be in the community. We want to be of the community,” Muller says. “We want to see people network with social oppor­tunities. We want to see people out and going to karaoke and bowling nights and participating in everything that other folks in the neighborhood might do.”

That means designing experiences around individuals rather than moving large groups through programmatic activities together. It means teaching skills in a person’s actual home kitchen, not a practice facility. It means, increasingly, using technology to support independence — iPads that connect residents to remote staff who can answer questions and provide reassurance without constant physical supervision.

And it means serving people others won’t. Balance Autism takes pride in accepting individuals whose behaviors have gotten them turned away else­where.

“These might be the folks that need the most help,” Muller says simply. “The more we can change the trajectory for their life early on, the better it is for that child and for the community.”

Balance Autism offers preschool programs where students begin developing communication skills.

A WORLD BUILT TOGETHER

After four decades in the field, Muller is beginning to think about how to pass the baton — embedding core princi­ples deeply enough in the organization that they outlast his tenure. He’s also watching the landscape shift, with changes to Iowa’s Medicaid program carrying both promise and uncertainty for the people Balance Autism serves.

What keeps him going, he says, is the same thing that drew him in: The people.

“I persist in this industry because I get to work with really great peo­ple — the folks on the front lines, the board-certified behavior analysts, the leadership team, the board,” Muller says. “There’s a passion for trying to figure out how to access the potential of somebody else. It’s just contagious.”

That passion — for unlocking potential, for building connections, for asking what’s around the next corner — is the thread that runs from a psych professor’s classroom in Pella to eight clinic locations across Iowa. It’s the thing a beat-up car and a phone call started decades ago, and the thing that keeps drawing people in.

“We balance science with imagi­nation, evidence with creativity and research with compassion,” Muller says. “That’s how we got to the name Balance Autism. All those pieces con­tradict each other in some ways but complement each other in other ways. That’s what we do.”

And they don’t do it alone.