Schroeder Stribling
President and CEO, Mental Health America
None of us has to look very far in our network of people that we love to know someone who's struggled with a mental health challenge, or a social challenge, a job loss, a financial crisis, a death, a grief, an addiction, a mental illness. We are all in the human condition together.
Summary
This week on “Leadership Matters,” Alan was joined by visionary nonprofit leader and mental health advocate, Schroeder Stribling. Schroeder is the current President and CEO of Mental Health America, the country’s leading community-based advocacy and educational group focused on mental health. With over 25 years of experience working to improve mental health care and outcomes across America, Schroeder has redefined the standard at every organization she has led.
In this profound discussion, Schroeder and Alan explored the current state of mental health in our world, her extensive career as a social worker and what leaders all around the world can be doing to improve the overall health and wellness of employees and other key stakeholders. Schroeder detailed how her time working at Johns Hopkins Bayview Hospital as a social worker and implementing mental health programming for inner-city schools in Baltimore, Maryland impacted her career trajectory and leadership style.
In a world overwhelmed by constant crisis and uncertainty, Schroeder is an impressive example of a leader working to improve the systemic failures that have contributed to our current mental health crisis.
Mentions & Resources in this Episode
Guest Bio
Schroeder Stribling is the President and CEO of Mental Health America, the nation’s leading community-based nonprofit dedicated to addressing the needs of those living with mental illness and promoting the overall mental health of all. She is a lifelong social justice advocate with over 20 years of experience managing organizations focused on mental health, homelessness, poverty, and racial justice.
Prior to joining Mental Health America, Stribling was the CEO at N Street Village, a nonprofit providing housing support services for women and families in Washington, D.C. Under her leadership, N Street Village expanded from one to eight locations. She helped diversify revenue streams, create partnerships with government entities, lead city-wide policy initiatives on homelessness, and acquire a smaller nonprofit organization. Prior to her time at N Street Village, Stribling was a Senior Social Worker at Johns Hopkins Bayview Hospital, where she was responsible for the implementation of new mental health programs in the inner-city Head Start school system. Earlier in her career, she worked as a Clinical Social Worker and served as a Coordinator for the Dual Diagnosis Program on the Inpatient Psychiatry Unit at Suburban Hospital, which is now a part of Johns Hopkins.
Stribling received a bachelor’s degree in political science from Wellesley College, a master’s in social work from Smith College School for Social Work, and a certificate in nonprofit management from Georgetown University. She speaks and writes frequently on topics related to mental health and racial and economic equity and is an ever-passionate spokesperson for mental health and social justice in our times.
Episode Transcript
Alan Fleischmann
I'm joined today by a visionary nonprofit leader and national advocate of mental health, Schroeder Stribling, the president and CEO of Mental Health America, the country's leading community-based advocacy and educational group focused on mental health. Since taking the helm of the century-old organization in 2021, Schroeder has expanded her nonprofit’s programming and reach at a time when people need [assistance with] mental health issues more than ever. It is more important than ever, and she has guided the organization through the aftermath of a global pandemic, political and social unrest and a mental health crisis among youth. As leaders in the public, private and civil society sectors face a greater focus on mental health in the workplace, and at home, CEOs are turning to Schroeder for her expertise.
Before joining Mental Health America, Schroder served as the CEO of N Street Village, a nonprofit providing housing support services for women and families in Washington DC. Early in her career, she worked as a clinical social worker. Over the course of her multifaceted career, Schroeder's leadership has been an inspiration to many. It's a pleasure to have her on the show today to discuss her important work and the lessons in leadership she's learned along the way. There are very few leaders that I admire more than Schroeder Stribling.
Schroeder, welcome to leadership matters.
Schroeder Stribling
Alan, it's so nice to be here. Thank you so much for the invitation.
Alan Fleischmann
I've been looking forward to this for a long time. Let's get started with your early life. I understand your parents moved from the Midwest to New York. I think of you as a native New Yorker. Where did you grow up?
Schroeder Stribling
Well, thank you. Well, I actually grew up in a part of the Bronx, the very, very like south part of the Bronx, South Riverdale, near Spartan Duyvil. And so, I am a native New Yorker.
Alan Fleischmann
So the Midwest was not part of the journey in the past or that was your parents?
Schroeder Stribling
So that was my parents' journey. My parents married young, right after college. They were from Missouri and Iowa. And they'd gone to college in Missouri. And my father knew that he was going into ministry. And so they moved to New York, where he went to Union Seminary. Now my mother is from Iowa. I was born in Iowa, but they lived in New York.
Alan Fleischmann
You've shared that in the 1960s, your father, who was a Christian minister, as you mentioned, came out as gay, subsequently ending the marriage between your mom and dad. How did this experience shape you and guide your journey to assisting those facing personal and, frankly, major crises and challenges? The 60s, I would imagine, was not nearly as… that was a big challenge for your dad in particular, I’ve got to imagine.
Schroeder Stribling
Well, I'm so glad you asked about that. Because you know, especially as I get older, I reflect a lot on this experience and how it has shaped me and, as a second-generation queer person in this particular moment, I feel I have a kind of unique journey. And I bet there are many of us out there, we should probably have a convention or something. Because, you know, it'd be interesting to find each other because many of our parents either never came out or came sort of out but were somewhat isolated or whatnot.
My father's life was so different from mine. There's just a generation that separates us and that's a large part of what makes it so different, is this was a pivotal generation for gay rights. And for my father, his internal struggle around being gay really robbed him of so much. He had a promising career as a young minister. But he had a lifelong secret. And he decided, you know, he was living in New York, he was a young man, Stonewall was happening down the street, he decided to divorce my mother and come out and he lived in Greenwich Village. But he was really, I think, very haunted. And I think shame is perhaps the best way to describe the overhanging feeling that he lived with. And it really, he went on to experience a lot of struggle around with mental health and substance use, which took him to some very dark and dangerous places. And then he died of AIDS when he was very young. And I was only a 21 year old.
Alan Fleischmann
And your mom? How did she kind of continue building life after that?
Schroeder Stribling
My mother is the hero of my life in so many ways and just an extraordinary person. I mean, she went on to be a single mom, a young woman who had only mostly experience of the Midwest, here she was in New York, making her own way, making her own career. And being a single mom, she just to this day, at 83, she's an extraordinary mother to me, and she always has been. So I give her a lot of credit for figuring out how to make a difficult situation good for a kid.
Alan Fleischmann
Any brothers and sisters?
Schroeder Stribling
I got two when my mother got remarried, when I was about, almost 14. So my stepbrothers, one is just my age and one is a couple of years older than we are, and they are very, very dear to me.
Alan Fleischmann
Oh, that's so wonderful. So, I looked at your past and your history with N Street and all the extraordinary work you did there. I gotta think that even dealing with your dad played some kind of a role in affecting that trajectory a little bit. You said that you took care of your father a lot. And a lot of his history, kind of you could relate to later on in life when you started building N Street, I imagine as well.
Schroeder Stribling
I am positive that, you know, the experience around my dad, because I did spend a great deal of time with him. When he was dying toward the end, we both knew that our time was limited. And our relationship had been sort of fractured and off and on. And so I spent a great deal of time with him. And I did take care of him sometimes, and it was enormously difficult, but it was a chosen experience. I really look at it that way. And I wouldn't change it. But it was also an activation. I mean, I've always been a sort of, I think, people-oriented and justice-oriented person. But certainly, I got very activated by the cause at the time. And was getting involved in AIDS activism after he died. I've worked a lot with AIDS Action in Boston, where I was living. And then I got involved in some really interesting creative community theater activism, projects around AIDS and Boston. And that was so healing for me. And it was really my first experience of advocacy in many ways.
Alan Fleischmann
So it made some good that came out of what was pretty tragic, as you were able to turn that into leadership moments for yourself and got engaged yourself. Did you find yourself becoming active?
Or were you active in high school? Were you active in college? You went to Spence. Am I right or not? Where did you go to school?
Schroeder Stribling
I went to Madeira. So when my mother got married, we moved from New York to the D.C. area. And I went to Madeira here, which is a little bit of culture shock. It is a bit of a southern place. But I had a good experience there. And what I would say about that, I was always active with leadership. I loved people and doing things with groups of people and leading people and fun experiences, mostly, were just what we mostly got to do, although there were a few serious moments in student government, which I did a lot of. But I was just a very social kid.
Alan Fleischmann
That's cool. I can imagine that big personality and trying to push the envelope a little bit. You know, do things a little differently. I imagine that must have been also fun. And then you went to Wellesley. What made you go to Wellesley when Madeira was all girls as well, right?
Schroeder Stribling
Yes. So that's another interesting thing about me and I do think it probably affects my leadership and how I approach things. I'm the product of girls' education since the time I was 11. I went to a girl's school in New York and then I went to Wellesley. And then I went to social work school, which was for a master's program, which was co-ed but as you know, the great majority of social workers are women. And I loved being in college, which, in case my mother and stepfather are listening, was entirely about the coursework, Alan, 100%. But, I liked the, you know, it was the right place for me. And it was kind of an extension of that social experience that I wanted to have, but I did love the learning there. And I could have been happy in any range of humanities subjects. But I got really interested in political science, actually, after a global conflict class I actually took. That grabbed me because I think I'm just interested in the dynamics of large human organisms like nation-states or other groups. So anyway, I majored in political science. And I do have to say, however, that I took the notion of liberal arts to a certain extent, because I did also minor in creative writing.
Alan Fleischmann
Nice. So you did go to Wellesley?
Schroeder Stribling
I did. I did. I had a wonderful experience there.
Alan Fleischmann
And had you kind of figured out then, I know it was later that I think you went in the direction you went in, but did you find yourself looking back now do you find yourself establishing certain skills and coming up with certain themes and purpose during that period? Did you find yourself getting into leadership roles as well while you were at Wellesley like you did in high school?
Schroeder Stribling
You know, actually, I think the thing that was other than the academics, what was most important to me, was the deepening of a more core group of relationships. That was the time when I was really starting to go through the darkest period with my dad. So he was having a suicide attempt, jail, hospital, homelessness — he went through a lot when I was in college. And so I was going through a lot then too, and what I had was, I just had friends who loved me through it. And that was, you know, so that was the foundation of my social experience, really while I was there.
Alan Fleischmann
I guess also the power of love, that the moments are there.
Schroeder Stribling
The power of love and the power of community. So there, you've hit on two things that absolutely came with me. I know, both for my family, my mother, my stepfather certainly, and beyond in my family, my friends, the healing, that love is healing and so necessary, but also as is community,
Alan Fleischmann
And the importance to build community as well. And being from a community that, when you fall back, there are multiple hands ready to catch you. Yeah, that's right. That's very powerful.
And then social work, was that something? Because I would never have thought social work coming from political science. But when I think about people who have been some of the most effective people I know, in the world of politics and advocacy, do have a social worker background. Barb Mikulski, she's a really famous U.S. Senator who was a social worker, you know, got involved in the community and then fought for causes in Baltimore and then, eventually, became a Congresswoman and then Senator. You know, there are many examples of people who became very active, but they started with the idea of the individual branched out to the collective community, and then built a community for the politics that we need in order to actually do right by that community.
Schroeder Stribling
Amen. Well, you've just said, as the creative social, you’re a social worker, Alan! That's really it. That's the notion that it's about, you know, the well-being of the individual, and then looking at the environment in which the individual is living, and how those two things are interacting. And, how then you build a just world in which individuals and communities, even larger, can live.
Alan Fleischmann
Their legislation and public policy don't look at the world that way. They don't look at the individual. And they often look at community but they look at community by blanketing it. So the idea of how do you create resources for a family or for, you know, a group of loved ones who care about an individual and make sure they have access to the right, you know, support, but doing it in a way that's individualized so that it's not just all things serve all people, but actually can create the community based on one individual at a time. That's hard.
Schroeder Stribling
It is really hard. It is really hard, and you're so right about policy not taking that lens. I have found that so much was transferable from a political science lens to a social work lens. And I think there's something else to it. I think you hit on one really important thing which is about that, how do you frame the conversation from the outside in or inside out from an individual versus large-scale perspective. The other thing is, I think social work, the therapeutic skills that you learn, are useful to pull in if you're going to go into politics. They're useful. And if you're going to go into advocacy and be successful, because in advocacy, very often, you want to make sure that you can use your voice in reaching everyone, and that you're also hearing everyone, especially those with whom you don't yet agree or you aren't yet aligned or are adequately aligned. And that's really a lot of the skills that some of the clinical skills that you learn.
And I think those are transferable to advocacy and policy as well. It was, I started, you know, I have to say that my jump into social work was a little bit random at the time I was young, and not entirely sure what I was doing. But I was just following the path that life laid out for me. I had a few friends who were social workers, I had been through this experience of my job and my dad, so I knew I cared about people and was just going after the right thing in the world. And I actually had a job at the counseling center at Wellesley where I'd gone to college. I got hired there for a nighttime job and was making a little extra money at night. And it was a great job. I was like the graduate peer getting the groups of students together to do some mental health-focused programming for students. So I met some social workers that way. And that sort of led to my thinking like, well, I guess that's what I want to do. I applied to social work school and to the end to the NYU MFA program, Alan, it was going to be poetry or justice.
Alan Fleischmann
Maybe a little bit of both.
Schroeder Stribling
Or maybe a little bit, I actually didn't get into NYU, but my best friend who became a comedy writer in LA, it was my college roommate, she did. So we used to just call it NYU, not me. But anyway, it was good for me. I went to Smith school for social work. And I was really trained clinically. I was very fortunate because for me, just by happenstance, my first assignment was in the acute unit of the public psychiatric hospital. And I say fortunate because I would eventually, I fell in love with that work and that job. And I would eventually go back to work there after graduating from social work school. It was its own workout of justice, because these were people who were at the end of the line in every possible way, who were in the public system, who were there in crisis and under duress, etc.
But I found I had a knack for making a connection with people in crisis. And I also learned a lot from enormously caring professionals for whom I had a great deal of respect. And while there was a lot still wrong with the system no doubt, which also fascinated me by the system's issues. And it was still closing, this was the end of deinstitutionalization. And that hospital closed for good finally in 1990. But that was where I started out my career. And, interestingly enough, my career mirrors a little bit the founders of Mental Health America. He was a young man who had been institutionalized. He was in an institution and then he was an advocate for community based care and getting people out of institutions, and founded Mental Health America. So I feel kind of glad to have had that range of experience.
Alan Fleischmann
And had you felt, you know, I mean, obviously the power of politics is in your vein, should you be living your life understanding that, you know, community building and the advocacy is very much about politics, but you took it from that personal individual framework. Have you felt it missing when you don't have both? It sounds like you really manage to create a journey where you're balancing both the individual community, the political and policy And the advocacy really wraps around all of it. As if you don't have one, that wouldn't work for you I imagine.
Schroeder Stribling
I think that's right. I think those of us on the frontier of social justice have to be looking, you know, from both of those perspectives and have to be advocates as well as providing for the most urgent needs, especially for the people who are most at risk. Different parts of my career have had different, you know, a different focus. And certainly, when I was at N Street, the focus was really on being mostly in and with the community. I did a lot of advocacy. And, I learned a lot about local advocacy, which is interesting, Alan I, the national advocacy and local advocacy, it's been interesting to see the difference. I'm learning a lot, I'm still in a great, a great and fascinating and fun learning time at Mental Health America. But at N Street, the focus of every day really was in and with the community. And that that was a great privilege, and, and a great gift. I mean, there's kind of nothing like being right there with people who are coming, who come to receive services and wind up leading the community in their own way. There's just sort of nothing like being in touch with those people in that reality every day. And I have to, if I'm honest, I'll tell you, I definitely miss it. And I took the Mental Health America staff to visit N Street Village the other day, and it was great to be there.
Alan Fleischmann
Oh, nice. Yeah. Was that the first time? Was that the first time that they were there?
Schroeder Stribling
Yeah.
Alan Fleischmann
Yeah, that's very cool.
Schroeder Stribling
Yeah, Mental Health America has 143 affiliate sites around the country. So these are locations, many of which, some of which look a lot like and some of some others look sort of like N Street Village. So we do have a network of direct service providers throughout the country. And that is also a really terrific part of my role is that I get to go visit them and see what people are dealing with in different settings. It's really so interesting, our affiliates highly customize their work to what's happening in their local communities, just as N Street did for what was needed in D.C.
Alan Fleischmann
Did you have role models that you had, I mean N Street is really truly one of the greatest examples, it's one of the greatest models for what needs to be done in a community of any model in the country. And you built that with a great team, I know. I'm just curious, were there role models for you as you started to embark on your career, are there people that still you look up to and say they're who I aspire to be? And they're, you know, kind of the legacy of their work.
Schroeder Stribling
Yeah. You know, this is always — I don't know how you find that question. But I always have a hard time with that question, because I admire so many people and I have learned from so many people, and it's hard for me to be selective, but it's also true that the people that I've learned most from and admired the most and watched the most are not people you would necessarily have heard of. They've been, you know, my mentors. Although, being with you this morning, it's hard not to mention our friend Arne, who is someone — Arne Sorenson —who passed away a few years ago, who, in what I learned, who was a friend of both of ours. What I will take forever forward from Arne is not just about leadership, it's about being human. And, it's about being humble in every moment of your life and wanting the best for the person in front of you, no matter who they are, and knowing who they are, and just carrying a very deep level and not getting carried away with any power in any way. He was just such such an ordinary person.
But as you know, I learned a lot from the women who were the women leaders at N Street Village. When I first got there, they were the most important people. I learned from them that N Street was in a rocky moment, the founders had left. And it was unclear if we were going to be able to financially sustain what was there. And what was there, however, were the women who had come to the program five, 10, 15 years earlier, just when it was done. They had just bought the houses and were just beginning to transform the space, who had found their healing there. And they knew what was needed. And they knew what was important. And they knew how to engage the community. And they really are the architects of what we were able to build.
Alan Fleischmann
And how did N Street come into your life?
Schroeder Stribling
You know, I was working in Baltimore for a part of when I moved to D.C. in the 90s. And I was working, and I had stayed in inpatient, psychiatric inpatient psychiatric settings for a while. And then I made a change to work for a part of Johns Hopkins, Bayview. And, this was this day at a new contract to work with the city to serve at Head Start Communities by establishing mental health support for children and families and teachers. Head Start City had started schools and I was working in some of the most impoverished areas of Baltimore. And this was the early, this was when The Wire was on television. And I was working in Eutaw-Marshburn, one of the neighborhoods where The Wire was being shot. And it was I spent two years doing that work, and it was an extraordinarily difficult job, and difficult and hard on the heart. I really came to think that this, you know, the community was understandably suspicious of this young white social worker in their midst, trying to do good things. And what I came away really thinking there were only three things I could do was stay humble and earn their trust, convey respect, and dignity and advocate for change. And that's really where I thought like, this is what this really needs is advocacy, you know. And just that it was just such a workout in what racism and poverty have conspired to do over our history. So I was, it was very — I was worn down from that job. And I was also looking to work closer to DC and I had some friends in the Lutheran community, actually, who knew of this opportunity because they knew that the Lutheran pastor of the church that N Street, one of the church’s N Street was most closely affiliated with, was just leaving. And so they told me about the opportunity. And I left Baltimore, and there I was.
Alan Fleischmann
I remember, I volunteered as I remember when I was in college, well before N Street became N Street. I strolled through there when the church was just having a shelter there. So it was such an incredible experience for me. You mentioned Arne Sorenson, who was the CEO of Marriott, and the way you described him, he led his life with humility and with a great deal of confidence, but no arrogance, and his humility was built on a sense of gratitude and empathy for others. And as a CEO, which we have a lot of CEOs who listen to this show, you know, how he put his time, effort, energy is treasured. His personality and his leadership, towards that, that empathy and that humility. And I remember learning so much about people, by going to what became N Street, the church’s homeless shelter, and realizing that every single solitary person there had a story.
And, out of that, how do you actually demonstrate respect for the dignity of human life and each individual story and know it and respect people for who they are? And in some cases, you know, circumstances well out of their control, it contributed to their destiny yet cannot be their ultimate destiny. Is there a way to actually redirect life in a way that actually makes that be one chapter in a longer journey versus the final chapter? And I think I learned that and then obviously, reinforced by where you go.
Schroeder Stribling
Yeah, that's true. That is absolutely true. I mean, these are accidents of fate that we weren't born in the lives of growing up in Eutaw-Marshburn, Baltimore, as opposed to the opportunities that I had. And, what I learned most at N Street Village was about the extraordinary resilience of the human spirit and the power again of community to heal. And I know that in the time that I was there, I received as much as I gave, if not more. But it was, you know, I think the community of peers, as I was saying that people with lived experience, knew what needed to be done, and they knew what needed to be built. And I think that it was in their leadership, but also, as you're saying, it was in the journey of learning about the commonalities of our human hearts, right? And that we are at the end of the day, more alike than we are different, that our struggles may look different and our challenges, and they vary in extremity.
And let's be clear about that. And let's be clear about privilege and extraordinary protections of privilege. But none of us has to look very far, right, in our network of people that we love to know someone who's struggled with a mental health challenge, or a social challenge, a job loss, a financial crisis, a death, a grief, an addiction, a mental illness. You know, we are all in the human condition together. And that I think was the gift of the N Street Community was that it drew in the rest of the community into that kind of solidarity.
Alan Fleischmann
That it's, it's our community, not just someone else's community, but the collective “our” community. And that's, I think that's what you did, you built that consciousness. And, you know, there's the challenge of mental health and the challenge of issues regarding homelessness is that, you know, it puts a mirror close to yourself and your greatest fears become vulnerable, you become more vulnerable, your greatest fears become very present. And rather than embrace other people's challenges and figure out a way that we can actually raise up opportunity and and be there for others, often people want to turn their head because it's just too much for them to process for their own life, you know, that their vulnerability, fearful, and they become afraid themselves. And I think what you've managed to do is humanize that in a way that allows people to be respectful.
I remember, when my children were really, really young, I would point to every homeless person who I engaged with, and I would tell them, that too could be you. And I ended up creating a crisis at home, because I ended up realizing that my daughters all of a sudden started getting very fearful, because they felt very vulnerable. And I know that wasn't the message. So I remember when my girls were little, I pulled them together and said, it's okay to be joyful. It's okay to be happy. But it's not okay to be happy, absent from helping others. And then my attempt was like a high-level conversation with my little people. But in my attempt, it made sure they weren't arrogant complaints, or something different. I created fear rather than love. So when I said, let's show our gratitude, only the Arne Sorenson way. And I would argue the Schroeder Stribling way, you know, embrace the others who are having great challenges. The privilege of being born in the right zip code and privilege of having certain things happen to you, what are we doing for others? And that turned what became a fearful experience for these little people into a feeling of we have to be involved, and we have to be on, we’ve got to be advocates for ourselves, and we have to be partners, right? It's all about respect. It's all about gratitude. And it's all extending yourself out of your comfort zone.
Schroeder Stribling
And it's all about, ultimately, at the end of the day, I think, in its ultimate solution, it's all about dissolving the illusion of the other, that there is any other at all. That you know that we are not bound together in a common humanity that in our, as we know, as we were talking about before, our divisions are killing us.
Alan Fleischmann
Yeah. That’s right.
Schroeder Stribling
This is where we need to understand how interdependent we are, and will be in any way.
Alan Fleischmann
But let's talk a little bit about the transition from N Street But what are the real transitions, ironically, is that you were confronted with so many more new challenges that you really led through during the pandemic than you did at N Street. Then all of a sudden, you know, things that you knew about, but things all of a sudden became part of the conversation beyond the community that you were leading into a greater kind of population. So when you made that transition from industry, to take up the helm of the mental health of America, it wasn't as it was. It was, obviously, a sigh of relief for those of us who admire your career that you were taking this on, because the conversation started changing during the pandemic, into the issues that you and the organization that you're now at the helm of has been advocating for for a long time. So just curious about that transition.
Schroeder Stribling
Oh, I love that you asked that question. Yeah, no, I love that you asked that question. I mean, there were, as always, a number of things that go into a decision. But I did, we did adjust the timeline a little, I did adjust my own thinking a little bit at the beginning of the pandemic, because we had to figure out how we were going to get through that. The pivot there, but I don't, I'm not sure how I feel about — there are many leaders of nonprofits who stayed. I had already been there for almost 18 years by the time I left. And I would say around, you know, year 14 or so, I knew that I really had to start thinking seriously as I didn't think I wanted to be that for me, it wasn’t going to be right to be a very, very long term leader. And that if I was going to make one more pivot, I wanted to start thinking about that. But probably most importantly, really was, you know, I had come down to N Street Village in 2003. But this was a very different time. And as we got into, you know, more recent years, and we're having very serious conversations and trying to do our part to be advocates around racial justice., and that which is so clearly central to the issue, to the issues that we were facing and that we were addressing, you know, if you're gonna go upstream and ever have a real solution to this, we had to be advocates, strong advocates around poverty and racial justice.
And I really took seriously the cultural conversation we were having and that we were having inside N Street Village at the board level, in the larger wider conversation in the local nonprofit community, etc., About race and justice and power and I just had a feeling in my mind, I knew in my gut it was really time to move on and move over. And that I knew I had a very strong succession candidate in the deputy to the committee inside the organization who is really terrific, Kenyatta Brunson, who is now leading N Street Village. But that was definitely a significant element of my decision.
Alan Fleischmann
And once I have an easy one, because 18 years of doing one thing, doing it, and really getting a lot of national attention for what model you had been building, and that people you were so invested in could not have been an easy transition to move away from them. But I'm so glad you did take it on. Tell us a little bit about Mental Health America, because for those who don’t know about your organization, tell us a little bit about that.
Schroeder Stribling
Yeah, well, I am so excited to be leading this organization, which for most of its life, it was founded, as you mentioned in 1909, as a social reform movement by Clifford Beers. He was young man, he was 34 at the time, who had experienced a suicide attempt and a psychotic episode and had been institutionalized and wrote an autobiography about his experience, which was, as one can imagine, the experience of being institutionalized in an asylum at the time he was subjected to abuse and maltreatment in all kinds of ways. And he made an extraordinary recovery, and dedicated his life's work there on out to the improvement of life for people with mental health conditions, though at the time we spoke about it and our terminology for all this was very different from his terminology. This was a social reform movement for Mental Hygiene. One of the things that we're the proudest of that tells I think the critical importance of this origin story and of our DNA as reform advocates and activists and Mental Health America is the story of our bell. So in the 1950s, Mental Health America put out the call to its affiliates in two states to collect the metal shackles that were left in the now-closed state asylums.
Asylums around the country collected them, took them to Baltimore and had them smelt into a 300-pound bell of hope, which sits in our front office and which comes to our conference once a year. And if you ever come to our conference, you'll get to hear it at the bell ringing ceremony. It is profoundly, profoundly moving.
So this is an organization with a long history, we now are known for several signature programs. One of them is the conference that we put on annually, which this year is going to be in September, though, customarily, it's in June. We produce the annual State of Mental Health and America report that many states and policymakers rely on which ranks the states in terms of the prevalence of mental health conditions in the availability of access to mental health support. We started May as Mental Health Month in 1949. In 2014, they started a very pressured program around prevention and early intervention, it was an early online screening program, which still remains the largest online prevention and screening program for individuals who are seeking to screen themselves for any mental health conditions. At our peak this summer, we were having 20,000 people a day come to visit this site. So in the many years that we've had it, millions of people have used it. And we now have data visualization capacity from all of that, so that we can see where the hotspots of need are, where the mental health deserts are, etc. So those are some of the signature programs of the national office per se.
And, as I mentioned, we have these 143 affiliates who are delivering direct services in their communities every day. The direct services that they're delivering like N Street Village are really what I would call downstream services. So they're really working at the intersection with people who are low income, where the social drivers are negatively affecting them. So they're in the community and working with people at the margins.
Our national office has public education, these are the public education department, public policy department, research and state and local advocacy. So we work at the state and local level and we work with the council, state legislators, National Governors Association and other legislative groups. We also work really closely with the CDC. And that, for us, is a particularly important partnership, because our orientation has always been health promotion, and illness and crisis prevention. So exactly as you were talking about before this issue of both delivering direct help to people who are in need, and also reforming policy and being an advocate that both are needed, right. So we have both pieces of this, we've got our affiliate branch working on the ground in community direct services. And then what we're really doing is, advocates from the national office are also saying, “and the long-term solutions look like this,” let's look at the root causes. Let's look at what's going on, let's look at what would promote wellbeing. How can we protect people, improve protective factors and diminish risk factors, and get upstream? So that's really where things like where the innovation in our screening program comes in, our support for school-based mental health programs. And we're big fans of integrated care so that there's treatment for that for the whole person, because we really understand that mental health is health.
Alan Fleischmann
That's the word that I was really trying at when I was trying to describe. It's really hard. And policies and programs and initiatives to look at the whole integrated health care, the idea that you're looking at the whole person, and then their community is looking at it the other way around. How much of it? I know a lot of the efforts obviously are also on young people and youth leadership. How are young people changing the conversation around mental health and the work that you're doing at Mental Health America as well?
Schroeder Stribling
Oh, I'm so fascinated to watch the way that young people are changing and will change the conversation and I say that both as someone who has young colleagues at Mental Health America. We have a relatively young staff. I have to say there aren't that many of us in the Gen-Whatever I am crowd. But I'm so interested to watch the way they're changing the conversation around trauma and a lived experience and peer support. And the capacity of what I love in their conversation is that I really hear something that's quite disruptive, which is getting away from medical model thinking in mental health and toward what I would consider public health, a public health perspective, but from an individual, you know, really starting from a community individual baselines. We work with one of the things we have.
Kelly Davis, who runs our youth and youth leadership programs, one of the things that she has is a couple of youth institutes, a policy institute and a leadership council, and the leadership council are usually there. Every year, we select several youth, about 10 of them, and they speak at our conference. They’re really doing extraordinary things in their communities, they're very often forming peer support groups of some form or another. Sometimes there are particular issues that youth are very sensitized to the particular needs of youth of color, and LGBTQ youth in particular. So we see — or any marginalized group — we had one young woman doing, you know, a fascinating AAPI leadership program in her school, as well. So I see them changing the conversation in an empowering way, sort of taking things into their hands, which seems to be a theme. And you know, it'll be interesting, you know, to see where mental health goes next, but clearly, they're at the forefront of the conversation.
Youth are also very interesting, interested in an area that I'm interested in, which is the intersection of this domain for which we have not great language yet, but something beyond mental health into the spiritual health realm. And that's not quite the right word, because even that word is not inclusive enough. But youth are really interested in this, an expanded notion of what it means to attend to our minds and behaviors and well-being. And I really love that, I'm excited for where they'll take it. And they're also, I think, tired of systems that don't work. Systems, whether it's school-based systems, medical care systems, etc, where they can't access help, and I appreciate the stridency, if that's the word, of their advocacy.
Alan Fleischmann
I love that. And I also love the fact that we're creating new vocabulary. I don't have anything right now. We're in a time where people are afraid to speak up. And I always say that there's, you know, there are those who are hateful. And you don't need to try to change them. Although we need to try, I guess no matter what, there are those who are complacent and indifferent. There are those who are ignorant. And that's not necessarily bad ignorance if they haven't been exposed. But there's a whole bunch of people that I've written about, or about what I call the “uncomfortables,” the people who are not equipped with the right experience and the right vocabulary. And they're uncomfortable to be an advocate, because they just don't know what to say and how to say it without feeling like they may actually do it wrong. And we've kind of figured out a way, and maybe young people with a way to do it, you know, where we can empower people that we’re a lot more forgiving as long as your heart and your intention is in the right place to let people kind of fumble a little bit, you know. I mean, but they're trying to come toward the right things in life that help build community.
Schroeder Stribling
Yes. Oh, I love the way you put that. And I think you're so right about that. And our ability to be in conversation with one another is so essential. And you're so right.
Alan Fleischmann
Now, nothing's gonna get a sense of like — it's because so many people who are listening to us are leaders, as we said earlier, but aspiring there to be even more of a leader that they want to be more engaged. Some of them are CEOs, some are aspiring CEOs. You know, we know this from the experiences of our daughters that they're, your daughters are a little older than mine, but the idea that they have experiences to show their leadership. I remember listening to one of your daughters who was being interviewed about her experience in her job. And I was so struck by her sense of humility, but also by her own self-awareness that she was a role model, even a role model for other colleagues behind her.
So if there are any listeners listening to us right now, who knows that the issues that you're talking about they feel connected to, and they know that they can play a role, what would you ask them? You know, knowing that we're talking about a big swath of people from young people to the active CEO, they could partner with you from a Fortune 100 company. You know, what is it? What is it that we could do that we could actually say here on this show? That would let people say, okay, I'm going to reach out to, you know, to Schroeder Stribling and her colleagues at Mental Health American. If we can forge a partnership with you to help you further your work, what would it be? How to get involved, I guess is my big question here.
Schroeder Stribling
Oh, how do people get involved? Okay, I thought at the beginning, I thought you were going for a more generalized topic. And I was going to talk about leading from our hearts, which is where I really think that you know, as they lead, I think we all have to lead from our hearts at this moment. And it kind of goes to the point that you just made about inclusivity and the uncomfortables, and how are we making space for everyone in a society that is, as the Surgeon General says, our social fabric is so frayed, how do we play a role as mentors of that? And, there is a role for everyone. I mean, I think that's the, it starts at Starbucks with how you greet the person who's serving you coffee and wearing a burqa, you know, it starts with our, what we used to say it at N Street Village, was hallway justice, like how do we treat each other, you know, with justice? And for leaders, I think the question right now is like, can we, you know, really this is a time when there are very few guidebooks, right. There are many, so I think we have to be true to what our heart says is the right way to go.
Now, that said, let me pull back to a more practical perspective. One of the things that I did want to emphasize, Alan, to your point about business leaders, I did want to give kind of a full-throated support to all the business leaders that we see stepping forward on mental health. This is very, very helpful. So you know, we have a workplace mental health program and a Bell Seal which is like, you can apply for the Bell Seal program, which has several different levels that people can achieve, corporations, companies and employers can achieve, as they are meeting certain goals of being responsive and responsible to and for the mental well being of their workforce. And I am really excited that we see.
Well, there are a couple of great examples of health adjacent corporations like CVS or Walgreens. Both are partners of ours who are really making mental health and whole personal well-being kind of a core commitment of workforce efforts and of corporate commitment of their corporate responsibility. There is a lot that employers can do to improve well-being in the place and openness about mental health support for mental health needs. In this, I would encourage people, you know, our Bell Seal program and our workplace support program, which can consult employers, sees a lot which has all different sizes, industries, etc., who are getting involved with us. And I would encourage employers to take a look at our resources, including our annual Mind the Workplace report, but there's a lot that leaders can do. And if workplaces are interested in getting involved for that reason, I mean, there are lots of reasons why a partnership might make sense depending on what other business leaders are doing. But, I'm thinking in the corporate space for leaders who are interested either usually for you know, to focus on their own workforce. I will only say a few basics, but is it really what you know, and I know intuitively is that leadership starts the signal and leaders go first in ensuring that there's psychological safety inside the workplace and that it's a safe place to be just to talk about mental health just as we might talk about health. So ensuring psychological safety and in your workplace and signaling openness, even including visual cues, openness and leave and benefits. In culture, manager relationships are crucial. That's always one of the findings in our workplace research. So training managers is really important. But anyway, those are some of the things to think about and start with, and we would love to be engaged in helping because we think it's a great way to reach lots of people.
Alan Fleischmann
Now, it's wonderful to bring leaders from public life, private sector and civil society together to partner with you, in order to, you know, as you just said, to actually create larger engagement, broader communities, and an even greater impact by reaching people at different aspects of their lives, you may find other ways which are reaching them. But wouldn't it be great if they're getting also that same kind of, you know, just conversation, discussion, advocacy, at the work level as well, if possible, and that there are solutions? At the end of the day, it's, as we said earlier, not to sound like we're singing a song, but so much of this has to do with respect and love and hope.
One of the people I admire in the world is Jane Goodall. And I always say to her, she helps make hope a verb. You know, I think that's what you do to Schroeder, you help make hope a verb meaning, it's not just an aspiration, it's an action, and that you're helping people. And you're building community within your own community to get people to be advocates themselves, and then getting out there and saying, I'm going to be actively engaging in the world of hope by giving them solutions, by giving people a pass, by giving people partnership. And that feeling of loneliness, you know, kind of disappears when people will know that I, too, am not alone. And I have a purpose, it was my own. My purpose is that I need to not only survive, but thrive, but so do I need to make sure that others thrive and not just survive. And I don't know, I think that's what you do, literally, every day.
Schroeder Stribling
Well, that is very, very kind, I take that to heart, I thank you very much. And I entirely agree that hope is an action and it's a choice and it's something that we must, we must do, especially at this time. And, always make the choice to give each other that dignity and to create community and I'm very grateful to be community with you. So thank you.
Alan Fleischmann
And for anyone who's listening in any aspect of their career, who want to be involved, I'm sure we can figure out with you the best way to engage for those of you who are leading organizations from private industry, you know, all kinds of philanthropic sides to your work, but also the work you do in communities. I'm sure there are ways to be in partnership with Mental Health America and with Schroeder and her team, so do reach out for that as well.
You've been listening to leadership matters on SiriusXM, and at leadershipmattersshow.com. I'm your host Alan Fleischmann. We have had such a great hour with a leader, a truly great leader, a humble leader, a thoughtful leader, a person who builds communities and builds partnerships, Schroeder Stribling, who is the President and CEO of Mental Health America. And I am just so grateful that you spent the last hour with us. It was very enlightening and overcoming adversity in order for us to actually do right by each other is the goal we all should have, and to break down barriers and build that humanity that you talked about so often. So thank you.
Schroeder Stribling
Well, thank you, Alan. Thank you so much. This meant a lot to do this with you, so, thank you.