In this episode, Dr. Matt Biel speaks with Jay Chaudhary, former Director of Mental Health and Addiction for Indiana, about transforming an entire state's behavioral health system. Jay describes the mental health financing system he inherited as "a house of cards built on top of a shell game," where providers were locked into rigid financial formulas that made any deviation potentially catastrophic.

Jay's journey began as a civil rights lawyer launching medical-legal partnerships that placed attorneys directly in healthcare settings to address the social drivers that keep people sick. That experience taught him that clinicians' understanding of their work transforms when they see how much their clients' lives outside the clinic affect them, and more importantly, that "we can do something about it through collaboration."

As state director, Jay discovered that incremental changes were impossible in such a fragile system. His solution was comprehensive: implementing Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics (CCBHCs) that use cost-based reimbursement, giving providers flexibility to actually respond to community needs. The transformation required not just policy change but alignment across stakeholders, from legislators to law enforcement to providers, all using the same language: "someone to call, someone to respond, somewhere to go."

In this episode, Dr. Matt Biel has a conversation with Shawn Hardness, Founder and CEO of Statesmen College Preparatory Academy for Boys in Washington, DC.

Shawn built a school that challenges everything we think we know about supporting students from high-need communities. At Statesman, 90% of students come from families engaged with public support systems, and the school serves three times the typical rate of students needing special education services. Yet these boys are thriving.

At the heart of Statesman's approach is a radical reframing: love and compassion aren't soft additions to "real" interventions. They are the intervention. This isn't about adding more services at the edges while leaving the daily lived experience of children unchanged. It's about building love and trust and relationships into the architecture of every day, protecting it in budgets and schedules with the same fierce commitment schools typically reserve for academic outcomes.

In this episode, Dr. Matt Biel speaks with Secretary Elizabeth Groginsky, who leads New Mexico's Early Childhood Education and Care Department, the first cabinet-level department of its kind in the country. When she arrived in New Mexico in 2019, the state ranked 50th in many national measures of child wellbeing. Now they're building what many see as a national model for early childhood systems change.Secretary Groginsky shares her journey from program evaluator to systems change leader, exploring how she launched a new department during the pandemic and how New Mexico uses population-level data to drive community action. At the heart of their approach is a fundamental insight: you can't expect different results when the people delivering care can barely support their own families.The conversation reveals how New Mexico has transformed its approach to early childhood through bold investments in workforce compensation, creating wage parity for pre-K teachers, establishing comprehensive wage scales across all early childhood programs, and providing free college for early childhood professionals. These aren't incremental improvements but represent a fundamental shift in how a state values its early childhood workforce.

In this episode, Dr. Matt Biel speaks with Dr. Susan Swick, Executive Director of the Ohana Center for Child and Adolescent Behavioral Health on California's Monterey Peninsula. Dr. Swick is building a comprehensive mental health ecosystem for her region.

Rather than simply expanding services that are reactive to crises facing young people, she's creating a model that integrates promotion of emotional wellbeing, prevention of mental health challenges, treatment for those who are struggling, and engagement with the community. Her approach challenges fundamental assumptions about how we deliver mental healthcare to children, adolescents, and families.

The conversation includes insights about creating spaces that spark curiosity rather than stigma, and outlines a powerful intervention model that brings entire family systems together in moments of crisis.

In this episode, Dr. Matt Biel speaks with Dr. Maya Coleman, Director of Hand in Hand Parenting and faculty member at the Thrive Center. Hand in Hand is an international organization that has been supporting families for 35 years across nearly 40 countries.Dr. Coleman brings a unique perspective shaped by her experiences as both a clinical child psychologist and as a parent who discovered firsthand that professional expertise doesn't automatically make the work of caregiving any easier. The conversation explores what it really means for communities to support thriving in young children, why working with children is inherently emotional work, and how we can help the adults in children's lives navigate that emotional complexity.Through Hand in Hand's approach, Dr. Coleman teaches adults how to listen to children and to each other in ways that build warm, attuned, and responsive relationships. The organization's five concrete listening tools help families and educators create conditions where emotions can be expressed and processed within caring relationships.

In the first episode of season 2 we’re talking about video games. More specifically we’re speaking with Dr. Lynn Fiellin Play2Prevent Lab about how their video games are used as tools for substance use prevention in adolescents and health education.

Through five games developed with young people as co-designers, Dr. Fiellin's team creates virtual environments where teens can experience the consequences of their choices safely and develop an understanding of risk, build refusal skills while maintaining social standing, and recognize that one mistake doesn't define their path forward.

This episode explores how gaming combined with research and youth partnership, can transform prevention science—meeting young people where they are and speaking their language to promote not just survival, but thriving.

Thriving isn’t a solo act. In this closing conversation, host Matt Biel looks back on 11 episodes that help shape how Thrive Center pursues its mission.

Anchored in Dr. Jack Shonkoff’s insight that thriving is “the match (or mismatch) between what’s unique about each child and the environment that child is living in,” Matt revisits the season’s most resonant lessons on collective transformation.

From Maria Vasquez on communities forging resilience before systems catch up, to Jen Drake Croft’s philosophy of walking alongside rather than leading from above, and Jason Lembeck’s call to “shrink that time to community,” the episode traces a clear through-line: relationships are our greatest asset when resources are tight and systems are strained.

Listen in as Thrive Center recommits to its role as a connective tissue that honors local expertise, resists scarcity thinking, and creates intentional spaces for collaboration and mutual support. The closing question for every listener: in times of disruption, how do we build something better together?

There’s no impact without funding. This week. Thrive Dispatches Podcast explores the family-centered approaches to mental health through the lens of impact investing.

Our guest is Louise Langheier, founder of Luminary Impact Fund, the first venture capital philanthropy fund dedicated exclusively to family mental health. Louise brings a unique perspective shaped by personal experiences and decades of social impact work, including co-founding Peer Health Exchange, which now serves over half a million young people annually.

When most of the industry prioritizes individual-focused models, Louise's work makes a strong case for family-centered approaches to mental health care.

This conversation reveals why family-centered approaches to mental health remain surprisingly scarce despite their obvious importance, examining the structural obstacles in payment systems, the cultural individualism that shapes American healthcare, and the innovative leaders who are breaking through these barriers with creative new models of care.