Kristen Daugherty brings over 23 years of experience in the behavioral health industry to the OPEN MINDS team, with expertise in community mental health, crisis management, and relationship cultivation. Ms. Daugherty has served in the health care fields of adult and child mental health, clinical services and outpatient services. She currently serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Emergence Health Network in El Paso, Texas.

In her current role at Emergence Health Network, Ms. Daugherty is responsible for development and implementation of agency strategic planning, budgetary planning, maintaining satisfactory compliance, and developing and maintain relationships with stakeholders. Ms. Daugherty and her team seek to ensure superior recovery-based services for mental health, substance abuse, and intellectual and developmental disabilities. Emergence Health Network is the largest mental health provider in El Paso County with 19 service locations.

Prior to her role at Emergence Health Network, Ms. Daugherty served as the Chief Clinical Officer of El Paso MHMR. In this role, Ms. Daugherty developed and implemented clinical operations to ensure the highest quality of mental health and intellectual developmental disability services for the people of El Paso County.

Prior to joining El Paso MHMR, Ms. Daugherty served as the Director of Sun City Behavioral Health Care. In this role, Ms. Daugherty was responsible for developing budgets, oversight of clinical staff and business development planning. Her work helped to implement programs for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder for combat and non-combat trauma for veterans and active-duty service members. During her time at Sun City Behavioral Health Care, Ms. Daugherty also helped to develop and implement rental assistance programs for members of the El Paso community who have been diagnosed with HIV or AIDS.

Prior to her time at Sun City Behavioral Health Care, Ms. Daugherty served as the Director of Clinical Services for University Behavioral Health of El Paso. In this role, she oversaw clinical staff, implementation of a business development program and management of the operational budget.

Ms. Daugherty holds a Master of Business Administration from the University of Texas El Paso and a Master of Social Work from New Mexico State University. Ms. Daugherty received her bachelor’s degree in Social Work from New Mexico State University.