Courtesy State of Tennessee

Janet "Marie" (Davis) Williams has spent her career in the public administration of mental health services. Today she serves as Director of the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, appointed in 2016 by Gov. Bill Haslam and reappointed in 2019 by Gov. Bill Lee.

Marie first was employed in Memphis in an effort to help the homeless and mentally ill. Then in 2000 she joined the Department as director of Housing Planning and Development. In this role, she brought into being the Creating Homes Initiative which provides tens of thousands of housing alternatives for individuals with mental illness, co-occurring disorders, substance abuse disorders and those re-entering society from incarceration.

Her biography on the Department website states that:

In all, [her] department serves approximately 750,000 Tennesseans annually who are struggling with mental health and substance abuse issues. Ms. Williams provides leadership and oversight to more than 1,850 full-time employees who assist individuals in securing prevention, treatment, and recovery services for serious mental illness, serious emotional disturbances, and substance abuse disorders. Her duties as commissioner also include system planning; monitoring, licensing, evaluating, and setting policy and quality standards; collaborating with other state and community agencies; and working to educate the community about mental health and substance abuse services. Ms. Williams’s oversight responsibilities include about 1,250 contracts with community mental health and substance abuse providers, the operation of four regional mental health institutes with about 6,400 annual admissions, and contracts with three additional private psychiatric hospitals which serve about 1,800 people annually.

Among the top issues that Marie and her team regularly face, said the website, are behavioral health workforce challenges, mental health struggles of youth and young adults, the opioid crisis, criminal justice reform, leveraging the abilities and resources of the faith-based community, and expanding peer-led services. As a woman of faith in God, she helped to establish her department's Faith-Based Initiative which leads the Certified Faith-Based Recovery Partner program, certifying some 1,100 centers of faith in creating and sharing resources. Her bevy of awards include the Excellence in Advocacy Individual Achievement Award from the National Council for Behavioral Health, the George Goodman and Ruth P. Brudney National Social Work Award from Mental Health America, the Alumni Professional Achievement Award from the University of Tennessee Knoxville, and the Senator Douglas Henry Award for Service to Children and Families at Risk from the University of Tennessee College of Social Work.

She is the daughter of John Albert "Johnny" and April Laverne (Mayle) Davis Sr. of the family of Isaiah and Hulda (Minerd) Mayle.

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