Emergency Mental Health Services
Thursday, November 12, 9:30-11:00 am
Sketchbook Brewing, 4901 Main St, Skokie, IL 60077
Taking the Leap and Trusting the Vision: Building SHFT Behavioral Health, the city’s first urgent care for mental health
Presenter: Holley Brandchaft-White, MBA, LCSW
What happens when you see a gap in mental health care and decide to trust yourself enough to build it? What is it like to go all-in on a pioneering concept in healthcare service delivery?
Holley Brandchaft-White, LCSW, MBA, founder and CEO of SHFT Behavioral Health, will share the story of building SHFT, from the experiences that led her to imagine a different model of care, to the daily realities of turning that vision into a functioning business.
Holley will talk candidly about what it’s like to build a new model of care without a clear blueprint — the good, bad, and ugly. The conversation will explore the realities of startup life in mental health: financial risk, operational challenges, hiring and growth, leadership, uncertainty, unexpected wins, mistakes, pivots, and the tension between building something you deeply believe in and building something that can actually sustain itself.
About our presenter
Holley Brandchaft-White, MBA, LCSW is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of SHFT Behavioral Health, Health, Chicago’s first urgent care for mental health.
A social worker with 12 years of experience across Emergency and Trauma Departments across Chicagoland, Holley specializes in crisis intervention and assessment. Her work in the ED, particularly during the pandemic, highlighted a significant gap between outpatient care and emergency services– and the growing use of emergency departments as a primary point of care for mental health needs that didn’t actually require an ED environment.
Holley founded and opened SHFT in November 2025 to create a more accessible, mainstream alternative: part clinical care, part community-oriented space, offering everything from single-session support (“Chats”) and crisis evaluations (“Urgent Assessments”) to short-term therapy and medication management.
SHFT offers walk in and same day availability, is in network with commercial insurance and is preparing to become credentialed with medicaid.
Host a Networking Event
If your practice has room to host a group of 15-25 owners for networking events, please reach out: Contact Cindy
You are invited! Bring your questions and business cards.
About the Facilitator: Cindy Trawinski, Psy.D.
I bring 25+ years of practice management, business development, marketing and strategy to practice owners. My aim is to provide relevant resources, guidance and structure to support you in building a predictable, profitable practice!
Have a question? I’m happy to discuss how my consulting services work and answer any questions you have.