Nina Richtman
Founder and Principal Consultant
Nina Richtman is an innovation-driven leader who designs and scales data-informed solutions that bridge policy, practice, and lived experience to drive meaningful systems change. Her work centers on cross-sector partnerships, rapid-cycle learning, and human-centered design approaches that actively engage impacted individuals in shaping solutions.
Drawing on her background as a scientist, Nina brings a rigorous, research-oriented perspective to complex behavioral health challenges. Through Faultline Collaborative, she helps organizations and communities uncover why individuals with complex mental health needs continue to fall through the cracks by integrating lived expertise, public data, and collaborator insight to identify systemic barriers and opportunities for improvement. Nina believes that the people most impacted by systems often have the clearest understanding of where those systems succeed, where they fail, and what meaningful solutions look like. While data can illuminate important trends, it rarely tells the whole story. By combining quantitative analysis with community voice, she helps partners uncover root causes, challenge assumptions, and design practical, evidence-informed solutions that create more responsive systems of care.
Nina holds a B.S. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an M.S. from Iowa State University. Nina spent the first half of her career in biotechnology before making a transition to the mental health nonprofit field in 2019. This cross-sector experience informs her ability to connect research, data, policy, and lived expertise in service of better systems.
Nina also brings more than 15 years of lived experience as a parent of two children adopted from the foster care system, providing firsthand insight into the challenge of navigating healthcare, education, and juvenile courts for children with complex needs.
Connect with Nina on Substack
Impacted individuals are experts. People who have navigated a system possess knowledge that cannot be replicated by reading a policy manual.
Lived experience should be compensated. People should be paid for expertise, not simply thanked for sharing their trauma.
Evidence matters. Stories are powerful. Data makes patterns visible. Faultline uses both.
Systems should be examined from the inside out. The question is not simply whether a program operates as designed. The question is whether it works for the people who need it.
The hardest-to-serve individuals should be the test. If a system works only for people who are relatively easy to serve, it is not a fully functioning system.
The goal is repair, not blame. Faultline seeks to make systems better—not simply identify who is responsible for their failures.
Our Guiding Principles
Join our collaborative.
We need your help. Whether you have navigated systems or work in them, we need your insights if we are going to build something better for those with complex mental health needs.