10 BRAND STORY PRODUCED BY THE OREGON BUSINESS MARKETING DEPARTMENT Caption 1 BY JON BELL About 10 years ago, Doug Ownby was looking for somewhere for his then12-year-old daughter, Lindsey, to try out martial arts. She was a bit timid, and Ownby thought it might be helpful to find her a place where she could feel more comfortable and confident. They checked out Aim High, a martial arts studio in Beaverton, and Lindsey took to it right away. “She came into the organization and just fell in love,” Ownby says. But something else happened around then as well: Just two weeks after that introduction, the team at Aim High got Ownby out on the floor doing Taekwondo with his daughter. The two would later test for their black belts together. “I really had no intention. It was the charisma, the energy, the involvement the staff had that encouraged me to participate,” says Ownby, who first began studying martial arts in 2000. “They convinced me to get on the floor. It was life changing.” Fast-forward a few years, and Ownby started volunteering for Aim High as a way to give back. Not long after that, he started working for the nonprofit, and in 2019, he became executive director. Along the way, Aim High had evolved as well. Today, Aim High PDX is the nonprofit umbrella organization not only for the Aim High Academy of Martial Arts, but also for Aim High Impact, an Applied Behavior Analysis clinic serving teens and young adults diagnosed with autism, and Aim High Ascent, an ABA clinic that specializes The (Martial) Art of Making a Difference Aim High PDX taps its core values to help all kinds of kids get ready for life. in early intervention for kids ages 2-7 who have been diagnosed with autism. “The goal has always been to be a resource center for youth and families,” Ownby says. Learning life skills Though it started in 2005 as a martial arts studio, Aim High began to transform in 2016. For a while, the studio had been working with some youths with disabilities and had realized how good martial arts were for their physical and mental health. Around the same time, Dana Donaldson, who worked in an autism clinic in Beaverton, was seeing an increasing need for ABA services for older kids with autism. In many
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