What the Mission Means to Lindsay
I come to my focus on infant and early childhood mental health with a background in public health and neuroscience. Early in my career my experiences and education coalesced, convincing me that the roots of community health and wellbeing lie in ensuring that young children have what they need to thrive, even when scary or unexpected things happen. That’s what our mission at ZTT is all about – many ways of working toward a collective vision of safe, nurtured, thriving babies and families.
Professional Background
Lindsay has more than ten years of experience working to ensure that young children have access to high quality, developmentally appropriate mental health supports and services across the promotion to treatment continuum, woven into every child and family serving system. While serving as Director of Special Projects for Tulane University School of Medicine’s Institute of Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health, she worked at the state level to influence policy in Louisiana. After coming to ZTT in 2016, she expanded her focus to include federal policy, pursuing ZTT’s policy priorities on Capitol Hill.
Now, as Director of Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Strategy, Lindsay leads ZTT’s mental and relational health policy work and helps steer ZTT’s organizational impact in the IECMH space. Her work focuses on following all of the policy and systems threads that flow from the central aim of ensuring that little ones have what they need to thrive, physically and mentally. What do caregivers need in order to be well and form nurturing relationships? What do families need in order to be safe, emotionally connected, and thriving? What do babies and families need when they experience trauma or mental health conditions? Which policy changes can reduce the prevalence of mental health conditions by supporting young children from the start?
Lindsay received her BS in Neuroscience from the College of William and Mary and her Master of Public Health from Tulane University. She has previously worked with the U.S. Government Secretariat for Children in Adversity at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) as well as The World Bank.
Future Vision
Lindsay will continue to work with policymakers, systems leaders, professionals, and families to pursue policy and systems change to reduce the prevalence of mental health needs and ensure that families experience mental health conditions have access to the care they want and need. She looks forward to a future where all young children and their families have access to high quality, culturally resonant, developmentally appropriate mental health supports and services and where caregivers have everything they need to foster nurturing relationships with their babies.
