Speaker's Profile

Wendy Martinez Farmer, LPC, MBA from Elevance Health is Licensed Professional Counselor with over 25 years of crisis experience in the public and private sectors, Wendy holds a Master of Science in Clinical Psychology from Marquette University and a MBA from Georgia Southern University. Since 2020, she has served as a national crisis lead supporting Carelon Behavioral Health helping to develop crisis capabilities, which include building and overseeing statewide and community crisis systems. She is currently the CEO of the Georgia Collaborative ASO program, which includes administration of the statewide Georgia Crisis and Access Line and works to ensure Georgians have access to high quality, publicly funded behavioral health and developmental disability services. Prior to joining the Carelon Behavioral Health team, Wendy was the President and CEO of Behavioral Health Link in Atlanta, where she oversaw daily operations of the statewide line as well as 24/7 mobile crisis response services in 104 Georgia counties. A member of the 2015 Crisis Now work group, Wendy is passionate about ensuring individuals experiencing a behavioral health crisis receive the same predictable care individuals with medical emergencies receive. To that end, she has played a foundational role in building electronic capacity to coordinate crisis care in real time and continues that work today helping to launch Carelon's 988 services in New Hampshire and playing an instrumental role in Carelon's launch of a national backup center for 988 Text and Chat, a Spanish 988 Subnetwork Center and most recently an answer point for 988 Spanish Text and Chat. A suicide prevention leader, she sat on the Standards Training and Practice Committee for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline from 2016 to 2019. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for NAMI Georgia and was elected to the Board of Directors for the International Council for Helplines (ICH) in January of 2022.