Laura H. Tyler, Ph.D., LPC

Laura H. Tyler, Ph.D., LPC, serves as the President and Chief Executive Officer for Ozark Guidance. When the Board of Directors chose her to lead the nonprofit community mental health center in 2017, it was a bit of a homecoming. Dr. Tyler was raised in Northwest Arkansas and attended the University of Arkansas for undergraduate and graduate studies. She started her professional career with Ozark Guidance in 1983 and worked with the organization for over 15 years. She completed her doctoral work in Health Services Organization and Research at the Virginia Commonwealth University. Prior to working exclusively in health care administration, she provided direct care services as a Licensed Professional Counselor. She has worked in a variety of behavioral health settings across her career and also has experience in service delivery to individuals with developmental disorders. For approximately ten years before she became the Ozark Guidance Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Tyler worked for the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). Her most recent role at UAMS was that of Chief Integration Officer and Associate Vice Chancellor. While there, she had the privilege of working with the leadership team that launched the Psychiatric Research Institute, which offers traditional outpatient services, community-based services and brought general and specialized inpatient psychiatric care back to UAMS after a hiatus of approximately 30 years. Prior to her time at UAMS, Dr. Tyler worked at Avita Community Partners in a 13-county service area at northeast Georgia. There she served as the behavioral health director, then chief executive officer. Dr. Tyler has consistently advocated for individuals with mental illness and addictive disorders to be best understood as experiencing symptoms of health conditions that deserve an integrated treatment approach rather than segregation and stigmatization. While she has seen remarkable progress in treatment alternatives, she firmly believes there is substantially more advancement that needs to be accomplished to ensure compassionate quality care is accessible and delivered in a cost effective manner. Her philosophy is that this can best be accomplished by hard work, collaboration and an inter-professional team approach. A native of Eureka Springs, Laura and her husband Mark, who teaches mathematics, have two adult sons.