Lynda M. Zeller is the Regional Director serving Region 5: Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota. In this role, Ms. Zeller represents the Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use at the regional level, working to fulfill the agency’s mission of reducing the impact of mental illness and substance use disorder on America’s communities. Lynda has dedicated her career to the fields of behavioral health, developmental disabilities and healthcare access systems at the local, county and state level.
Immediately before coming to SAMHSA, Lynda served as Senior Fellow for the Michigan Health Endowment Fund (Health Fund). During these five years in philanthropy, she focused on projects to increase access to behavioral health through multi-sector, integrated, highly collaborative public-private partnerships at the local state and regional level. Very often, learning from evaluation of funded projects inspired removal of process and policy barriers in both public and private payment and service provision systems, as well as expansion of promising and evidenced based practices.
Immediately prior to the Health Fund, Lynda was employed by the State of Michigan for ten years. Her first three years spent as the Health Administrator for Michigan’s statewide network of prisons, where she implemented evidenced based mental health screening resulting in twice as many prisoners gaining access to treatment during incarceration. The remaining seven years Lynda was employed by Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) as the Senior Deputy Director for the Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities Administration. In this role she functioned as the single state authority for policy, services and supports for persons with mental illness, substance use disorders, and Intellectual and Developmental disabilities. During this time priority projects included implementation of the first electronic health record in the state psychiatric hospital system, development of a shared records system accessible between physical and behavioral health care managers, synthesis of substance use disorder and mental health managed care systems and increased coordination across public and private funding streams for greater impact.
Prior to state service, Lynda spent more than 20 years working at the local level. During this foundational time of learning, Lynda worked for both county government and non profits providing direct service, care management, quality, technology and strategic system developments. Lynda has lived and worked in three Region 5 states (Wisconsin, Illinois and Michigan). She received her master’s in public administration (M.P.A) from Western Michigan University.