Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Lisa Kuntz: Transforming Autism Support – From University Role to Global Advocacy and Awareness Efforts
Wed, 19 Feb 2025
Send us a textWhat if your curiosity led you to an unexpected career path that changes lives every day? Lisa Kuntz, the inspiring director of the Pierce Autism Center at Touro University, shares her remarkable journey into autism support and education with us. Starting with a chance role at the university, Lisa's commitment to understanding the unique challenges faced by autistic individuals has helped pave the way for improved insurance coverage and advocacy efforts. Yet, despite these strides, she unveils the persistent barriers families encounter in securing timely assistance and highlights the critical gaps for those who age out of existing support systems.Join us as we navigate through essential conversations on enhancing autism awareness across various sectors. We stress the importance of equipping first responders with the knowledge to handle high-pressure situations involving autistic individuals and share real-life examples of potential misunderstandings. The discussion also covers community initiatives, tackling sensitive topics like bullying and mental health, including suicide and the role of compassionate therapy in providing support. Finally, we expand our focus globally, examining shared experiences and unique challenges faced by families worldwide, and encourage listeners to participate in this ongoing dialogue to support the global autistic community.https://tonymantor.comhttps://Facebook.com/tonymantorhttps://instagram.com/tonymantorhttps://twitter.com/tonymantorhttps://youtube.com/tonymantormusicintro/outro music bed written by T. WildWhy Not Me the World music published by Mantor Music (BMI)
Chapter 1: Who is Lisa Kuntz and what is her journey into autism advocacy?
Hopefully you gain more awareness, acceptance, and a better understanding for autism around the world. Hi, I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Why Not Me? The World. Today, we have the pleasure of hosting Lisa Kuntz, Director of the Pierce Autism Center at Toro University in Henderson, Nevada.
She will recount her personal journey from her early days at the university with limited knowledge of autism to her growth and development of significant relationships. We are delighted to have her on the show. Thanks for coming on.
Thank you very much.
Oh, it's my pleasure. How did your journey start into the autistic world working at the college?
Chapter 2: How did Lisa Kuntz start working in autism support at Touro University?
Totally by chance. I started here at Toro University about 11 years ago, and I was going to be the director of their health center. But the health center wasn't opened yet. So they still had a couple of things to do and the build outs. So I said, I'll just help out over here in the autism center. I, like you, knew nothing about it. And I was just fascinated by the children.
And, you know, why were they walking on their tippy toes? Why do they hold their ears? Why? Just a bunch of whys. I learned all those kids are unique and different and special all at the same time. But they're just like everybody else in the community. They just need a little bit more help. So I've been doing that ever since that.
And I've seen so many great success stories, seeing some of the kids even graduate from our program and, you know, move on to high school. One of our children actually loves animation. She finished high school and she had a scholarship to move on to college so that she can pursue that dream of animation.
Well, that's great. Once you got into this and started learning yourself, what path did you take? You're now working for a college that is all about teaching and learning about all the autistic traits. How did you interact and how did you expand that so that you could get to where you are today?
Wow, it was really learning from the BCBAs, learning from the RBTs, taking classes on my own, going out there and listening to the parents. I think that I learned a lot from the parents' journeys. I learned quickly that there was not a lot of, in that time, the Pierce Autism Center was one of the first centers in the Las Vegas area. So I learned that the resources, there weren't a lot.
I learned that, you know, their journey was full of paperwork and, you know, a lot of no's.
Yes, unfortunately, so true.
So we started helping them, started learning about things. And then at the time, autism diagnosis wasn't covered by insurance. So we were one of the first places that got Sierra Health and Life to help us pay for the claims for these kids. That was a big plus. Then Medicaid started coming along. They paid.
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Chapter 3: How has insurance coverage for autism evolved over the years?
But now as the years have gone on, a lot more of the insurance companies are recognizing it from a diagnosis standpoint. As long as you have that ASD diagnosis, more than likely they're going to pay something.
Yeah, that's great strides. One of the big things I continually hear is how long it takes to get diagnosed and get into the pipeline for any type of help that they can get. You are so right in the fact that the paperwork takes what seems like a lifetime for them. But meanwhile, the parents have to deal with this because it's a daily thing for them.
What do you see as the best pathway for them to expedite things and get some much needed help?
Right, right. In Nevada or in the Las Vegas, Henderson area, the pediatrician must assign them that diagnosis of ASD. From that point, the insurance company kind of comes in and says, well, all right, you've been diagnosed, but we need some more information. So you need to go out to that neuropsychologist and get a formal, more formal diagnosis of
And that's what you're talking about where it's taking years to do that. In that respect here in our area, we have centers that are popping up. So it's becoming more, I guess, where the community has more neuropsychs in it. So we're able to send our patients out. It's taking about probably six to eight months for them to be diagnosed.
And then once they're diagnosed, we can go ahead and start our procedures of getting them into the clinic.
That makes total sense. Your clinic can do a variety of different things. Do you focus on any one thing or do you spread it out to try and help so many different people on different levels? What's your plan there?
So we practice focused ABA, and ABA is the only thing that we do here. So our clients are here for two hours. Our youngest is about 18 months. Our oldest at this time is about 15, but we will go up to the age of 18 or until you graduated from high school.
Now, different states have age-out limits of 18 or 21. If it's 18 or 21, what's the process there for you? Because as everyone, well, if they don't know, autism is not something that's cured at any certain age. It's a lifelong thing. For the listeners that don't know, in certain states, at 18 or 21, they'll age out and can't get help.
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Chapter 4: What challenges do families face in autism diagnosis and support?
What do you do for those that are aging out, yet they still need help?
Right, and that's a great question, and it's a difficult question. They do age out. There are a few places around here that go a little bit higher, but unfortunately, they're pretty much left on their own. You know, they're going to face life doing their own thing right now. That's sad.
And I think also what's sad is that right now, a lot more people, like older folks, are figuring out that they probably have autism. But because of the timing or in our generation or whatever generation they were in, it wasn't acceptable to be tested or, you know, that was just that person in class that acted out.
I've heard that analogy so many times.
Absolutely. Nowadays, that person that's acting out gets help. They get tested. They get maybe assigned a diagnosis of ASD or whatever, and then they're able to get the help where we weren't. And nowadays, I don't think that they can even be diagnosed. The older folks can be diagnosed to find out what they have and to get the help that they need.
Yes, it certainly has been tough for a lot of people, especially the older ones. I spoke with a lady. She was just about to turn 60. She had been diagnosed in her 40s, late 40s. Then she said that by the time she figured things out, she was always the weird one during high school.
But when she figured it out, her 50s, she thrived and everything just turned around and her life was just so much better. I think because now we've got more information and we're starting to see this, it's hopefully going to help those kids that are in the high school and all that now have a better life because they can be diagnosed and they can get the help that they need.
It's a total different life now in a span of less than 30 years.
Absolutely. When I started 11 years ago, it was one in 78, I think. And so now we're down to one in 36. So yes. And I think, you know, it's also a career choice, right? People are able to go out and practice that, be able to give more help to the child or whomever. So I think that, yeah, it's a career choice now.
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Chapter 5: How does the Pierce Autism Center support autistic individuals?
It's like, oh yeah, you guys can go into to be at RBT or you could be a BCBA where those types of jobs were never available maybe back in the 80s.
Right, right. I remember speaking with a lady. She was a speech therapist for autistic children. She said that when she went to college for autism and what she was doing, she had one class, one semester that was on autism. And that was it.
Now you fast forward 30, 40 years later, you've got classes upon classes upon classes about autism and the needs that they have that they didn't have and didn't talk about 30 or 40 years ago in college.
Absolutely. We are a university and we can tap in or they can tap into us as a resource for teaching their OT students, PT students. They can actually have them come down here and observe classes and observe a session and ask questions. And that's really great because you are going to encounter those folks.
Absolutely correct. They're all over the country, all over the world. We just need to learn how to understand what happens when they have different problems. For example, most people don't recognize the difference between a tantrum and a meltdown. How do you teach that? Because that is something that's very hard for anybody to tell. So how do you address that?
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Chapter 6: What initiatives are in place to support autistic individuals aging out of systems?
Really what we do is kind of teach the difference. There's not really a lot of difference if you don't know, except for maybe they're a little harder to settle down and to calm down. And I just think that they have to remember to look at the person as a whole and then maybe try to figure out what's going on with them as a tantrum or as anything that they're doing.
I don't think that technically they would know the difference until they talk to their parents.
Right, I can't disagree there because people are very quick to judge now. They don't realize that it's not bad parenting, that the parents are actually doing what's right for the child.
Yeah. For Autism Awareness Month, we actually have a celebration and are able to have like a very large party, but the party is geared just to the family. There's no outside folks coming into that party. So it's just for everybody that is at the center. It's great because everybody there, if the kid is having a meltdown, if they're screaming at the top of their lungs, no one's judging them.
It's like such a peaceful night for them because they're with folks that understand them. I think that's probably one of the best gifts we can give our parents.
Absolutely. I think that's just great. Parents need a parent's day out for sure. What is the situation that you had that when you looked at it, you thought it was going to be a complete disaster? Then all of a sudden, after a little bit of time, things just worked out and it was a complete success.
That's a current situation we have. We have several children that are nonverbal, and they have been working with the child. He now has a device, like a PEC system, that allows him to type in words, like a picture equals a word, and ask for things now. And it's great. He loves popcorn. And so he would just run into a room and try to grab the popcorn.
Well, no, they were like, no, no, back up, use your words. And his words are, you know, on a system and he would use them. But then there was one day he wanted that popcorn so badly that, and he couldn't get it down on his device fast enough that he said popcorn. And we're all like, oh my gosh, what did you just say? And he's like, popcorn. And that was phenomenal. What a day.
That just goosebumps right now, actually. So, yeah.
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Chapter 7: How is the Pierce Autism Center working with first responders?
And then hopefully, after a period of time, things will just get better for everyone.
I totally agree with you. I think that we do need to get that out to them from an educational standpoint. And I wish there was some sort of identifier that we could say, but you know, you can't make them always wear a t-shirt that says, I have autism. Don't you know? Yeah, we have one kid that would probably go up and hug them. To me, that just, you know, because he's not going to stop.
They're going to tell you, stop, stop, stop. And he's probably just going to be like, oh my gosh, you're a policeman. I want to hug you. Thank you. And I would be so worried for him. So worried.
I can understand that. I had a parent that I was talking with. He had a very fun-loving autistic child. Just loved everybody. He was so happy. The police saw him walking down the street. They thought he was high. So they handcuffed him and took him to the precinct. They then called his dad, who came down, explained the situation out to them. Luckily, it turned out good. They released him.
Everything was okay. For everyone that's like that, there's others that don't turn out that good. That's why we need the education and the understanding.
Yeah, that's probably the least of the policeman's thoughts at that time.
Yeah, and it's not the policeman's fault. They deal with, unfortunately, the seediest side of life. Not all the time. So they have to look at things that some things could turn dangerous in a blink of an eye. So they have to be on their guard at all times.
Then when you have someone that's autistic or has mental health, you don't know how they're going to react because everyone reacts completely different. It's a tough situation for them.
Right. I agree with you.
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