Our Team

For three decades, autism has been the center of Angela Levin's life. It began the way it does for so many families — in a doctor's office, with a diagnosis and a future painted in the darkest possible terms. “They basically sat me down and gave me the dark story,” she remembers.

She let herself grieve. And then she went to work.

“I was going to cry — and then I was going to get to work. I accepted it. But I was never going to just succumb to it.”

— Angela “Angie” Levin, Founder & President

In their rural corner of Arizona, the Levins searched for a school that could serve their son and found nothing. So they built one. What pushed them further, Angie says, was the very thing that made their road harder: “Having a harder kid made us push further. We could never be complacent — his needs always made us go further, do more.” One need at a time, that determination became ASCEND: a school, an adult day program, and a permanent home.

She is quick to say they didn't do it alone. The Levins were carried by a village — family, lifelong friends, and a community that stood beside them through decades. It's a support most families never have, and it's exactly why Angie is so fierce that no parent should walk this road alone.

That's why she gives out her cell number freely. “Half the world has my phone number,” she says. “I tell parents: call me. Anytime, anywhere. I want them to know there's someone who will pick up the phone.” Even when there's nothing to fix, she believes the listening itself matters — “just hearing them, encouraging them. It's something. And it's meaningful.”

It's the same conviction woven through everything ASCEND does: name the challenge honestly, but never stop there. “We recognize the problem, and we're working to fix it,” Angie says. “We're the step past just talking about it.” Today she also serves on the advisory board of the National Council for Severe Autism, carrying that belief to families far beyond Prescott.