Virtual pediatric and young adult mental health provider Fort Health has a new CEO at the helm. James Quarles, former venture chair at Redesign Health, the investment builder that helped launch Fort Health in 2022, has taken the reins.

Founding CEO Natalie Schneider announced her departure in July on LinkedIn, stating she would step away to explore new opportunities.

After helping Fort Health launch while at Redesign Health, Quarles sat on the company’s board until 2023. Returning to work as its CEO, filling Schneider’s shoes, he told Behavioral Health Business, “it really feels like coming home.”

Fort Health has raised a total of $16 million to date and expanded its operations to five states: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas and Illinois. Much of the company’s $5.5 million seed round, completed in November 2024, was used to expand into the latter two territories.

Last spring, the company deployed AI patient avatars to help train therapists via role-playing and simulation exercises.

Set against the backdrop of newly outlined priorities for youth mental health by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), as the leader of a youth and young adult-focused company, Quarles’ immediate focus will be on concentrating and deepening areas where it already excels.

“I think startups usually suffer from indigestion, not starvation,” Quarles told BHB. “My focus is on doing fewer things really well across our business, because we’re a small company. We’re still in that early startup stage, which is really my priority.”

Those few things include: deepening business relationships, expanding its collaborative care model and ultimately becoming a “one-stop shop” for young people’s mental health.

While mergers and acquisitions are not on Fort Health’s agenda at this time, deepening its density in its existing five operational regions is.

“I think our density matters for parents and caregivers to know who we are, and grow our name recognition,” Quarles said. “For the office managers at these practices to think of us frequently, for our therapists and psychiatrists to have built enough of their own practice with Fort, that matters for density and certainly for our reimbursement rates…sustainability for us is just to continue to grow in these states and develop the density.”

Before the company enters into its next funding round, Quarles told BHB there are several milestones he and the company’s leadership team are “heads down” on achieving first.

“Those milestones are largely tied to driving referrals, the integration ideas we have in workflow and technology for the practice and then having more word of mouth,” he said. “Getting to a level of staffing, a level of demand and partnerships that really allow us to have a blueprint for the next fundraiser, to say, ‘Hey, look at over the last two years, how we’ve developed a deep, collaborative care set of relationships with this many practices, we have this many clinicians, here’s where our rates are. We want to now go replicate that in more states.’ That’s what would really trigger the next round.”

Funding aside, one of the primary ways Fort Health aims to grow is also through deconstructing parental stigma, which can sometimes be a barrier to care altogether.

“Parents are often the ones responsible for the emotional block, and they are also the ones who are the impediment to care,” Quarles explained. “I think the highest order thing for us is to have parents cross that divide. If we can get parents over that divide, they’ll bring others with them.”

Through its partnerships, Fort Health has not only simplified some of its internal workflows, but also managed higher acuity patient cases. As a result, Quarles said he hopes to see the company develop a more intricate integration with school counselors and other practices to expand the number of resources it can offer patients. Some of that starts simply with better screening practices.

“What we’re finding is that in annual wellness visits, behavioral health is not the focus,” he said. “One thing we’re doing right now is trying to be the screener in the waiting room for our partner practices…we think that there are ways with product, technology and education that we can really pull those forward. It’s as simple as our digital screen. It does end up both in the physician’s hands and it ends up in the EHR in a timely fashion. That’s what we’re trying to do both on the collaborative care side, as well as our direct referral fee-for-service.”