Meet the Visionary Behind The ASD Company

OLIVER THORNTON

When Oliver was two years old, he was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome (a mild version of autism), shortly after his older brother was diagnosed with autism. Later on in Oliver’s life, his younger brother was also diagnosed with autism.

Growing up, Oliver and his older brother had challenges with going through the public school education system both academically and socially. Although Oliver and his brother were struggling in school, they were both exceptional and highly nationally ranked tennis players. Oliver and his brother hyper-focused on their passion Tennis, in which Oliver played #1 varsity at Palisades Charter High School all 4 years, won many tournaments, and played college tennis.

During college, Oliver also struggled academically in his early years at the University of Arizona, in which he ended up taking a semester off and moving back home to Los Angeles during his junior year. Through major support from his family, friends, and community, Oliver recalibrated his focus on thriving academically and working on discovering his career and personal vocations off the tennis court.

Oliver ended up transferring to California Lutheran University (CLU), where through the support of his friends and family, support from his professors, counselors, and classmates at CLU, and his personal determination to succeed was able to start to make transformative progress in his social, academic, and professional life. At CLU Oliver founded and led Delta Sigma Pi, a professional business fraternity with 3 other classmates that ended up growing to nearly 80 members and creating a massive community within the business community at both CLU and in Thousand Oaks/Westlake Village. Oliver also became a licensed real estate agent and started to learn about the residential real estate agency and development space. However, it was near the end of his senior year at CLU where Oliver discovered his true vocation, helping other individuals with autism figure out their life purpose and helping navigate them to meaningful careers, opportunities, and lives.

Through this vocational discovery, Oliver had founded Coding Autism, in which he operated for 3 years. Coding Autism had various successes such as raising just over $100,000, winning various start-up competitions, launching a coding academy that trained 15 adults on the autism spectrum in coding, and helped secure a few of the graduates (one of them being homeless and living out of their car) full time employment in the technology industry as coding professionals. Despite these successes, various business complications ultimately led to Coding Autism having to shut down their doors in 2019. However, Oliver learned many valuable lessons from this experience and made the decision to pursue starting up another autism-related business down the road.

During that time as well as presently to this day, Oliver has practiced real estate where he worked at Compass alongside his father until 2021, when they then launched a boutique real estate brokerage called Hollywood Estates. Both Oliver and his father also run a residential real estate development company called Thornton Development Group. Oliver and RC have grown these businesses into multi-million dollar enterprises.

Although Oliver has seen extreme success at a young age in real estate, it has always been in his heart to help other individuals on the autism spectrum find their true vocations and help navigate them to meaningful lives, opportunities, and careers so that they can enjoy life just as much as he does. Henceforth, Oliver’s new initiative The ASD Company was born.

Oliver is looking forward to creating transformational change in the autism community through The ASD Company