A better mental health system takes many kinds of work: thoughtful care, useful research, and communities that support people. These leaders are helping build that system.
2026 Mental Health Impact Leaders recognizes people advancing mental health through care, research, education, and community. Read their work. Follow their ideas. Share someone worth knowing.
Behavioral Health Tech’s 2026 conference convenes the care community in Nashville. As its founder and CEO, Tibebu leads the organization behind this meeting of providers, payors, government leaders, and innovators. The event runs September 22–24; this edition was reviewed while it was underway.
Solome Tibebu brings providers, payors, government leaders, and innovators together through Behavioral Health Tech. Before founding the organization, she served as founding fund director of the Upswing Fund for Adolescent Mental Health.
Her Upswing team awarded grants to more than 100 community organizations, according to her official biography. Across both roles, her work connects industry collaboration with the needs of community mental health programs.
Eleanor Health’s August recap highlights Harrison’s interview about addiction, biology, and her book Un-Addiction. Her public education addresses stigma, compassionate boundaries, and how families can respond when someone needs help.
A physician trained in adult psychiatry and addiction medicine, Nzinga Harrison co-founded Eleanor Health and leads its medical work. Her approach brings addiction treatment into a broader understanding of a person’s health and life.
Eleanor combines medication, counseling, and peer support. Harrison’s clinical leadership and public education about stigma reinforce that whole-person approach to care.
Hazelden Betty Ford announced two new trustees, Ronan Harty and Gregg Eskenazi. Lee welcomed their expertise and service as part of the foundation’s work to improve its services and support recovery. This is a governance contribution, not a newly measured treatment outcome.
Joseph Lee leads Hazelden Betty Ford with a clinical background spanning adult psychiatry, child and adolescent psychiatry, and addiction medicine. His work extends from treatment leadership to the questions families face when someone they love needs help.
In Recovering My Kid and his professional education work, Lee helps families understand addiction and treatment. That educational work sits alongside his responsibility for leading a major care organization.
Taking addiction research into overlooked settings
Boulder Care announced a $1.8 million NIH grant to study telehealth addiction care in underserved settings, including reentry, pregnancy and postpartum care, and Tribal healthcare. The announcement describes funded research and planned evaluation, with Strong speaking as founder and CEO.
Stephanie Strong founded Boulder Care in 2017 after working in healthcare investing, strategy, and operations. The digital clinic brings substance use treatment and peer recovery support into a model designed for ongoing care.
Continuity is central to Boulder’s published approach. Strong also writes about telehealth and treatment delivery, connecting the practical work of running a clinic with broader questions about how care reaches people.
Letting patients describe what recovery gives back
For Recovery Month, Ophelia shared patient reflections on what treatment had returned to their lives. Its downloadable postcards invite people to write to their future selves. This team-led contribution makes room for the everyday experiences behind recovery.
Zack Gray co-founded Ophelia to provide opioid addiction treatment through telehealth. His background includes business growth and an MBA from the Wharton School.
Ophelia connects patients with clinicians for medication-based treatment outside a residential setting. Gray’s contribution centers on building the organization and the route through which people reach that care.
Headspace named Charlie Health as a new specialty-care partner, opening a referral pathway to its virtual intensive outpatient programs. The contribution is a connection between services for people who need more support than weekly therapy. Partner care may require additional payment.
Carter Barnhart co-founded and leads Charlie Health, which provides virtual intensive outpatient behavioral health treatment. The organization brings structured treatment into patients’ homes.
Its model combines group, individual, and family treatment. Barnhart’s work focuses on building a care organization around that coordinated approach and a virtual setting.
Connecting more families with eating disorder care
Headspace announced Equip as a specialty-care partner for virtual eating disorder treatment. The referral pathway connects members with multidisciplinary support when clinically appropriate. This is a team and organization contribution; partner services may require additional payment.
Kristina Saffran’s work spans two approaches to eating disorder care: Equip, the treatment company she co-founded, and Project HEAL, the nonprofit she previously co-founded to address barriers to treatment.
Equip brings therapists, dietitians, medical providers, and mentors into a virtual program. Patients and families are central to a model that combines clinical treatment with practical support.
Behavioral Health Tech lists Smith, NOCD’s cofounder and CEO, among its 2026 conference speakers. The listing documents planned participation in the September gathering. It does not establish that a particular talk was delivered or that new clinical results were reported.
Stephen Smith co-founded NOCD after experiencing barriers to specialist OCD treatment. The company developed from tools for therapy exercises into a treatment and community platform.
NOCD provides exposure and response prevention therapy and support between sessions. Alongside treatment, its educational work helps people understand OCD and the specialist care available.
Spring Health announced its inaugural Pioneer Awards, recognizing six organizations for their work in workplace mental health. The Q3 contribution is the recognition initiative and the examples it highlights, rather than a claim that a decade of reported activity occurred this quarter.
April Koh co-founded Spring Health, which connects people with mental health services through employers and other partners. Her work brings care delivery and measurement into the same service model.
Spring Health has published research and sought external validation of its mental health benefit model. Those records give readers a way to examine the organization’s approach beyond its service descriptions.
Headspace expanded its specialty-care referral network with Charlie Health, Cortica, Prosper, and Equip. Its announcement describes referral coordination and warm handoffs for complex needs. This recognizes the organization’s work, not Singh’s sole authorship; partner treatment can carry additional costs.
As Headspace’s chief operating officer, Karan Singh helps lead an organization that combines self-guided resources with human-delivered mental health services.
Headspace offers coaching and therapy, alongside additional services through organizational programs. Singh’s operating role connects these different forms of support within one care experience.
Therapy for Black Girls published Bradford’s podcast episode “The Lessons We Weren’t Taught About Love.” This dated addition to her public education work creates another entry point for conversations about relationships and emotional life.
Psychologist Joy Harden Bradford founded Therapy for Black Girls and the Holding Space Foundation. Her work pairs routes to professional care with spaces for learning and connection.
Therapy for Black Girls combines a therapist directory with public mental health education. The foundation extends that work through group spaces, professional training, and community education.
Tawwab’s official calendar listed a conversation at Charlotte’s Black Girl Book Fair about The Balancing Act, boundaries, and well-being. The source documents the scheduled community event, rather than confirming its delivery or attendance.
Nedra Glover Tawwab is a therapist, founder of Kaleidoscope Counseling, and author of Set Boundaries, Find Peace. Relationships and boundaries are recurring subjects across her clinical and educational work.
Through a group practice, books, newsletters, and public education, Tawwab translates ideas from therapy into language people can use in everyday relationships.
Taking mental health conversations beyond the clinic
Behavioral Health Network reported Breland-Noble’s return to Audacy’s I’m Listening initiative, scheduled across radio and digital platforms for September 8–13. Her named role brings a psychologist’s perspective to a public mental health awareness campaign.
Alfiee Breland-Noble founded The AAKOMA Project after an academic career that included Duke and Georgetown psychiatry. The nonprofit connects research with outreach on youth mental health.
AAKOMA examines young people’s mental health needs and barriers to care, then develops resources for young people, caregivers, and service providers. That connection between inquiry and practical use defines the organization’s work.
Ongoing work · Q3 item unverified · Reviewed September 23, 2026
A broader contribution worth recognizing
The sources below document this leader’s broader work. We have not verified a specific contribution dated July 1–September 23, 2026, so we are not presenting earlier work as a new Q3 achievement.
Pooja Lakshmin is a psychiatrist, private-practice founder, and author of Real Self-Care. Her work considers mental health alongside the conditions and expectations that shape everyday life.
Direct patient care informs her education about burnout, boundaries, and self-care. Her writing brings those clinical questions into a wider discussion about personal choices and the systems surrounding them.
Ongoing work · Q3 item unverified · Reviewed September 23, 2026
A broader contribution worth recognizing
The sources below document this leader’s broader work. We have not verified a specific contribution dated July 1–September 23, 2026, so we are not presenting earlier work as a new Q3 achievement.
Thomas Insel is a psychiatrist and former director of the National Institute of Mental Health. His later work includes co-founding Vanna Health and MindSite News, and writing Healing.
Vanna focuses on psychosocial support for people with serious mental illness. Through care delivery, journalism, and writing, Insel draws attention to the practical gaps between mental health research and everyday care.
Care delivery · Access · Research · Education · Community
A colleague. A clinician. A founder. Someone whose work is advancing mental health.
Send a name, the work, and a public source. Submissions are reviewed for the next edition. Recognition is free.
Submit someone for Q4
Reading the pulse
Different work. Different signals.
Each filled dot marks one contribution area documented in this edition: care delivery, access, research, education, or community. The count runs from one to five; a focused contribution can be as valuable as a broad one.
An editorial reading of the linked records, not a ranking of leaders or a measure of clinical outcomes. Agent credits are creative associations with Rehab.ai’s fictional personas, not personal relationships or endorsements.
The selection standard
Recognized for the work.
Care delivered. Access expanded. Knowledge shared. The work comes first.
01
Build care
Create services. Lead teams. Help people get treatment.
02
Expand access
Reduce the barriers between someone who needs care and someone who can provide it.
03
Share knowledge
Publish research. Teach others. Give people information they can use.
What does not determine inclusion
Race, sex, gender, age, appearance, and other personal characteristics are not selection criteria. Follower counts, personal popularity, company valuations, and payment do not determine inclusion.
This is an unranked editorial selection. Organizations of different sizes and business models are assessed on the work documented, not against demographic targets. Public communication is relevant when it provides useful education, not as a popularity score.
The editorial record
About this edition
Q3 2026 · Reviewed September 23
Scope & timing
U.S.-focused editorial selection. Q3 updates cover July 1–September 23, 2026; broader career work is labeled separately. The quarter is still in progress. Dated updates distinguish personal contributions, organization announcements, and scheduled participation. Two profiles retain broader recognition without a verified Q3 item. Records reviewed September 23, 2026.
Evidence & limitations
Biographies and service descriptions are primarily organizational or professional sources, which may be self-reported. They establish the documented work, not an independent audit of every claim. We do not infer that a leader personally caused a clinical outcome, that service availability equals patients treated, or that educational reach proves improved health.
Independent recognition
Recognition is Rehab.ai’s editorial judgment, not a clinical recommendation, certification, partnership, or endorsement by the people featured. Inclusion is free and is not offered for sale.
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