About me
Tanja Brown, M.S., BCBA, LSP, was born and raised in Germany in a large family of eight children. At nearly twenty-one, she immigrated to the United States with conversational English, an accent, and a determination to build a life she could be proud of. She enlisted in the U.S. Army, serving four years, including deployments in Honduras and Germany on large-scale field training operations.
After completing her military service, Tanja pursued higher education while raising her children. She earned a Master of Science in Psychology and became a Licensed School Psychologist through Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas.
A move to Colorado for her son’s medical needs changed the course of her professional life. In 2009, after removing her daughter from a public-school setting where she was not thriving and where signs of abuse emerged, Tanja founded an autism center in Colorado Springs. What began as a personal necessity grew into a clinical and community resource serving hundreds of children and families across the state.
Her work in behavior analysis, family systems, trauma, and neurodiversity has shaped her understanding of resilience, identity, love, and the emotional realities women face in midlife. Flipping the Script is her debut memoir.
Tanja brings a unique combination of clinical expertise and lived experience to her memoir. As a behavioral clinician and mother to a daughter with profound autism, she has spent decades navigating complex emotional landscapes, from advocacy and crisis management to love, heartbreak, and self-reinvention.
Her personal history as an immigrant, a veteran, a single mother, and a midlife woman confronting societal expectations gives her storytelling a layered, multidimensional perspective.
This memoir is not only about an age-gap relationship, but it is also about identity, autonomy, trauma, healing, and the courage required to rebuild a life when the world believes your best years are behind you. Tanja’s professional understanding of behavior, family dynamics, trauma, and resilience adds depth and insight rarely seen in commercial memoirs.
What do you do and why do you do it?
I own 3 autism centers, one in Las Vegas, NV, and one in Colorado Springs, CO. I am a Board Certified Behavior Analyst and a licensed school psychologist, doing my best to establish myself as a writer. We provide one-on-one autism ABA services to kids and teens with autism. My current role is more organizational, keeping the 3 centers running. I became a school psychologist because I loved working with teens and quickly specialized in autism due to my daughter’s diagnosis. I realized that, as a school psychologist, I was limited in how I could help her and went back to school for a second credential as a Board Certified Behavior Analyst to run my own company and, with that, allow her to receive the services she desperately needed.
What changed for you after age 50?
Once I decided to live a bit for myself and allow myself to be happy in a non-traditional relationship, I started to become more alive and curate my experience more toward what I wanted to see and do, rather than my kids and family.
What would you tell the 20 or 30-year-old YOU?
I would tell her to stop playing it safe, stop over-giving to everyone, and not wait until you’re 50 to reclaim or reinvent your life. And to read more stories about women and from women over 50 who have really lived. Because one day you will wish someone had told you things in your 20s and 30s.
What do you think you’ll tell yourself in retrospect at the end of your life?
I’d probably laugh and say. You had no idea what was coming, but look at you, you handled it anyway. I would finally give myself the credit that I didn’t always take along the way,
What impact do you think increased visibility can have on your business?
Increased visibility has the power to transform your work platform, create meaningful connections, and challenge assumptions. As a woman over 50, it pushes back on the idea that our stories, desires, dating down, and reinventions have an expiration date and shows that our lives are still evolving. At the same time, as a parent of an adult with autism, sharing my story brings awareness to the long-term realities many families quietly navigate, especially those with more severe needs that are often overlooked and not fully understood. If my work helps people feel seen, understood, or a little less alone, then it’s doing more than building a brand it’s creating impact that truly matters.
Who or what inspires you and why?
Hard question, but I’m inspired by people in general, especially women who live their lives unapologetically and keep pushing forward no matter what life throws at them, while still finding ways to enjoy their lives along the way.
