I’m pleased to share that Krista Baker, LCPC, will join us May 27 as Senior Director, Department Administrator for Psychiatry & Behavioral Medicine, Banner – University Medical Center Tucson. In this role, she’ll have overall responsibility for the department’s financial and operational performance in its clinical practice, research, educational and training activities. Krista joins us from Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center where she worked in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences for 23 years. She is recognized nationally as a leader in the operational and administrative management of psychiatric outpatient programs and is lauded for her work in launching both innovative and program improvement initiatives. Krista brings expertise in obtaining and executing state and federal clinical service grants and has been a key administrative stakeholder in a number of first-episode psychosis research collaborations. Her clinical expertise is first-episode psychosis and schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. She created an outpatient schizophrenia service line at Johns Hopkins and has published several papers and book chapters on psychosis and schizophrenia.
Krista is driven to improve the lives of patients and colleagues and served as an advisor for Johns Hopkins Bayview’s Manager Support Initiative, spent several years teaching Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to residents and has chaired committees addressing employee engagement and hospital safety. She began her career in Addiction Treatment Services (ATS) before transferring to the Community Psychiatry Program’s Child and Adolescent Program and then Adult Programs. In addition to her work in outpatient psychiatry, she’s spent more than 17 years working in psychiatric emergency services.
Krista earned her bachelor’s in Sociology from East Carolina University and a master's in Applied Psychology from the University of Baltimore.
Please join me in welcoming Krista to Banner and our team!