Linda Rodriguez, EdD – MMHPI – Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute

Linda Rodriguez, EdD

Senior Director for School Behavioral Health, The Hackett Center for Mental Health

Linda M. Rodriguez, EdD is based in Houston, Texas, and has over 30 years of experience in education and expertise in effectively supporting at-risk children and youth. As Senior Director for School Behavioral Health, Linda leads and contributes to projects and initiatives to improve mental health systems for children and youth, and she provides leadership on The Meadows Institute’s state and local policy initiatives related to school behavioral health. Previously, Linda worked as District Coordinator of School Behavioral Health for Pasadena Independent School District (ISD) in Texas and is a former teacher, counselor, assistant principal, principal, educational director for a career and vocational training program, and district coordinator for Pasadena ISD’s McKinney-Vento Homeless Program. Linda has worked at all school levels—elementary, middle, and high school and in traditional, charter, and alternative school settings. She has also coordinated and co-authored several awarded grant proposals that total over 4 million dollars.

While at The Meadows Institute, Linda has been part of the American Red Cross Texas CARES grant initiative supporting the mental and behavioral health needs of teachers, students, and families along the Gulf Coast that were impacted by Hurricane Harvey. She led The Meadows Institute BridgeUp at Menninger project and provided technical assistance and coaching to the BridgeUp grantee core teams in Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS), schoolwide social and emotional learning (SEL) programming, and building more robust collaborative networks. Linda lent critical expertise to the development of a Mental Health Strategic Framework for the Education Service Centers in Regions 4 and 18. She co-led the Rebuild Texas Dickinson ISD Project and was central to the development and delivery of a social-emotional learning curriculum for early childhood teachers, local daycare center staff, and parents and spearheaded an additional effort to identify funding opportunities to ensure project sustainability. Linda also collaborated with the St. David’s Foundation to strengthen the Alberta Family Wellness Brain Story Certification process; this effort included co-facilitating the Brain Story training and guiding several Austin, Texas organizations through their certification and in the development of individualized plans to incorporate their new knowledge into everyday practice. She leads a project for Midland ISD which helps the district develop and implement a multi-year comprehensive school behavioral health action plan. This action plan is intended to help them meet legislative requirements and establish sustainable systems, programs, and interventions so that every school in Midland can better meet student and staff behavioral, social, emotional, and mental health needs.

Linda serves as a lead on the Texas Education Agency Mental Health Task Force. Also, in 2016, she helped to design and implement the BridgeUp Model that has impacted more than 25,000 students and focuses on meeting the behavioral health needs of vulnerable adolescents. Building on the outcomes and success of that work, Linda now serves on the BridgeUp 2.0 Task Force to plan for the next five years. Linda has been a keynote speaker and presenter for Alief ISD, Mental Health America of Southeast Texas, the Grant Halliburton Foundation of Dallas, and The Meadows Institute’s Okay to SayTM social media campaign.

Linda has a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Texas A&M University, a master’s degree in counseling from the University of Houston, a second master’s degree in Educational Leadership from the University of St. Thomas, and her doctoral degree in Administrative Leadership and Supervision from the University of Houston.

Linda Rodriguez Uncropped