When Christina Nulk was in elementary school there was a student who was deaf in her class. She wanted to be able to communicate with him so she learned sign language. While in middle school Christina became a peer facilitator, volunteering with children with disabilities. In 1996 Christina started in the ABA field, as an implementer. After high school Christina completed her undergraduate degree in Communication Disorders and Emotional Disturbances/Learning Disabilities. She went on to earn her Master of Science in Early Childhood Special Education specializing in Autism.

After graduation Christina started her career as an Elementary Special Needs Educator. While teaching Christina achieved her certification as a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) in 2007. She was the fourth BCBA in Colorado Springs. Christina dis­cov­ered a huge gap between the ser­vices avail­able and the num­ber of chil­dren need­ing ser­vices. All of the BCBAs in the Col­orado Springs area had long wait­ing lists and many fam­i­lies lacked the fund­ing to pay for the basic ser­vices their chil­dren needed, let alone the kind of high-quality, research-based pro­grams BCBAs typ­i­cally offer.

Initially, Christina addressed this gap by providing a social skills groups for children on Saturdays, while continuing teaching on weekdays. These social skills groups provided opportunities for par­tic­i­pants to engage in guided inter­ac­tion under the super­vi­sion of a trained therapist who helped the chil­dren nego­ti­ate rela­tion­ships and build social con­nec­tions. The group for­mat allowed fam­i­lies on wait­ing lists to access some ser­vices at a rel­a­tively low tuition rate.

The first group was offered in April 2007 with 4 stu­dents enrolled. In Decem­ber 2007, PlayDate Inc. became a non­profit orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cated to pro­vid­ing ser­vices to fam­i­lies at an afford­able cost.

In 2008, Christina con­sol­i­dated her pri­vate prac­tice with PlayDate Inc. creating Play­Date Behavioral Interventions, and now offers a full range of ser­vices for chil­dren with autism and other disabilities.

Since then, the pro­gram has seen enor­mous growth. PlayDate Behavioral Interventions currently provides high-quality interventions to about 60 children. Christina consciously limits the caseload to maximize the quality of service provided to each individual child.