Mary Shelton is the Executive Director of Tennessee’s Opioid Abatement Council. As Executive Director, Ms. Shelton provides day-to-day leadership, management, and oversight for the functions of the Council, directly supports Council members, and supervises Council staff. She was selected by a unanimous vote of the Council’s membership at their first meeting on July 8, 2022.

Ms. Shelton was previously the Director of Behavioral Health Services at the Division of TennCare where she provided end-to-end oversight of all mental health and substance use disorder Medicaid benefits for 1.4 million TennCare beneficiaries, including annual expense management of $500 million. She directed the design, implementation, and operations of TennCare’s statewide buprenorphine and methadone Medication Assisted Treatment programs which serves 12,000 TennCare beneficiaries annually. Ms. Shelton oversaw behavioral health and primary care integration efforts and the value-based payment programs for multiple provider-level programs.

Ms. Shelton has worked for the State of Tennessee for 28 years, serving Tennesseans at both the Division of TennCare and the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services. She is an alumnus of LEAD Tennessee and has received the 2009 President’s Award from Tennessee Association of Mental Health Organizations (TAMHO) and the 2022 Public Policy Advocacy Award from National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), Tennessee.

She has her undergraduate degree from Tennessee Technological University, graduate degree from Trevecca Nazarene University and is currently pursuing a Master of Public Health at East Tennessee State University.