Behavioral Strategy
for Civic Change

You don't need a bigger budget. You need to understand why people move.

For The Right Reasons brings two decades of behavioral science to the institutions, governments, and organizations that need people to care — and to act.

The Problem

Governments spend fortunes asking people what they think. Almost nobody asks why they do what they do.

Polling. Focus groups. Agency retainers. Campaign consultants. The traditional playbook for civic engagement costs a fortune and often misses the point entirely.

The question isn't what do people think. It's what will make them move. What will get them to show up to a meeting, donate a meal, cast a vote, hold a leader accountable. That's not a communications problem. It's a behavioral one.

For The Right Reasons replaces the bloated research-and-agency model with something sharper: a board-certified behavioral analyst with twenty years of experience reading people — and knowing exactly what it takes to shift them.

Skip the polling firm. Skip the PR agency. Bring in someone who's spent two decades understanding what makes people move.

— The FTRR Model

What We Do

Behavioral strategy.
From the firehouse to the federal.

  • Getting people to care is a science. Understanding what drives attendance, attention, and action in your community — and building the conditions for it to happen.

  • From meal drives to municipal reform. Identifying the behavioral levers that turn passive residents into active participants — and making the snowball effect inevitable.

  • Waste. Fraud. Abuse of power. The same voices recycling the same ideas. We analyze institutional behavior and deliver strategies for meaningful, lasting change.

  • Understanding who needs to move, why they're not moving, and what will change that. Concrete, actionable recommendations grounded in behavioral science.

  • This isn't about party. It's about picking people who are best for everybody — and building the engagement infrastructure that makes better choices possible.

  • Strategic storytelling that taps into what people actually respond to — appreciation, safety, belonging, pride. Not messaging for messaging's sake.

How it Works

One analyst. Twenty years. Your situation.

1.

OBSERVE

Understand the landscape. The stakeholders. The dynamics. The behaviors that are happening - and the ones that aren’t.

2.

ANALYZE

Apply behavioral science to identify what’s driving inaction, disengagement, or dysfunction. Find the real levers.

3.

STRATEGIZE

Deliver actionable recommendations on how to shift behavior - specific, practical, and grounded in what acti

4.

ACTIVATE

Support implementation. Measure impact. Adjust. The snowball starts rolling.

From teaching one child to speak — to changing how systems listen.

Levia Spingarn-Gabel was a quiet kid who found her people among misfits. Girl Scouts. The kids who didn't fit in anywhere else. That instinct — finding people who feel unseen and helping them find their place — never left her.

She became a behavioral therapist, spending two decades working with children with autism. Teaching nonverbal children to communicate. Seeing the gift in every person and helping the world see it too. "Everybody is gifted in some way," she says. "There's something special about somebody. Finding it and helping that person change their behavior to make whatever's special about them shine."

Having kids of her own expanded the lens. From individual behavioral change to something bigger: the systems and institutions that shape all of our lives. She saw the same patterns playing out on a larger scale — people who feel unheard, voices that go ignored, systems that don't work for the people inside them.

So she started using the voice she'd spent years helping others find. She turned her expertise toward local government, community engagement, and institutional reform. The skill set was the same — understanding what drives human behavior and knowing how to change it. The canvas was bigger.

For The Right Reasons is what happens when a behavioral scientist looks at the systems we all live in and asks: how do we get people to care?

Education

M.Ed., Curriculum Development &
Special Education

Certification

Board Certified Behavior
Analyst (BCBA)

Alma Mater

Lesley University, Cambridge MA
University of Massachusetts

Experience

20+ Years in Behavioral
Analysis & Strategy

Get in Touch

No job too small.
No job too big

Whether it's a firehouse that needs community support or a municipality that needs its residents to show up — let's talk about what it takes to move people.