Lissa Franklin

Lissa Franklin has a broad range of experience in a multitude of behavioral healthcare settings, specializing in professional and governmental relations, and operational consulting. Lissa is viewed as a pioneer in the behavioral health field for her efforts towards improvement of industry practices that support patient safety and sustained recovery, and provider accountability. She achieves this by leading state and national efforts to implement and improve compliance and accountability with industry best practices. Additionally, she comes highly regarded for implementing and managing behavioral health recovery resources on college campuses across the country. Her dedication to improving operations and quality of care outcomes by implementing and enforcing best practices into healthcare operations, comes from her passion of assisting families and individuals access long-term, evidence-based, quality treatment and support services. In her role, she is empowered to be creative through professional relations efforts, engaged with supporting individual client and family needs with hospitality advancements and compassion, and executing industry accountability with ongoing governmental relations for patient-first informed policies and procedures.

Outside of working in the behavioral health field, she is a fully committed industry advocate. Lissa has spent close to a decade dedicated to improving the quality of care in the behavioral healthcare industry, leading and holding board seats on several public and private task forces dedicated to protecting vulnerable populations from predatory practices, testifying before multiple state legislative bodies to request improvement to notoriously lax regulations, and volunteering her time to causes of social justice for the disenfranchised. Her focus remains on patient advocacy, provider accountability, creating safe recovery environments for patients reintegrating into colleges and universities, and protecting vulnerable populations from patient brokering.  She is currently the Executive Director of the Delray Beach Drug Task Force, the Vice President of Unite for Ethics Now (UFENow), and founder of URecovery at the University of Miami. She has been an active participant of the Miami Dade County Opioid Task Force, Palm Beach County Sober Homes Task Force, Southeast Florida Recovery Advocates, DEA360, and the National Alliance of Model State Drug Law. She is utilized by the Federal Trade Commission and multiple State Attorney General Offices as a trusted advisor for improvement of predatory and misleading marketing practices pertaining to behavioral healthcare. 

Lissa wholeheartedly believes that “teamwork makes the dream work”, and her authenticity to lead and support others is at the forefront of her work. Her personal ethics and values are unwavering, as are the professional ethics within and mission of Heather R. Hayes and Associates, which leaves Lissa honored and proud to be part of such an impactful team.