Kristi Taylor, Executive Director

Kristi Taylor is the Executive Director of the Texas Judicial Commission on Mental Health (JCMH). She has over 25 years of experience as an attorney and policymaker. After receiving a BBA with Honors in Finance from the McCombs School of Business and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Texas School of Law, Taylor represented children and parents in the child welfare system for seven years.

In 2006, Taylor was selected by the Supreme Court of Texas to create the Permanent Judicial Commission for Children, Youth, and Families. She later served as a Staff Attorney and Assistant Director of the Children’s Commission, focusing her efforts on issues related to the well-being of children in foster care such as mental health, psychotropic medication, trauma-informed care, implicit bias, and state/tribal collaboration.

In 2017, Ms. Taylor spearheaded the planning for a new judicial commission on mental health and was named the Executive Director in 2018. Taylor has been nationally recognized for her groundbreaking work with the JCMH, including the development of the Eliminate the Wait campaign and the Texas Mental Health and Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Law Bench Book. She is an Educator in Trust-Based Relational Intervention and a Facilitator for Policy Research Associates’ Sequential Intercept Model Mapping.