Christie A Cline, MD, MBA

Christie Cline, MD, MBA is founder and President of ZiaPartners, Inc. in California. She is a Board-Certified Psychiatrist and also has a Masters in Business Administration from Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and graduated with distinction with a focus in organizational development and strategic planning.

Dr. Cline is the former Medical Director for the Behavioral Health Services Division of the New Mexico Department of Health and served as the medical/psychiatric lead for the indigent safety net system for seriously mentally people, the homeless, and victims of acute trauma, and for the public substance treatment system for the state between 1999 and 2003. One of her roles was to oversee the death reviews for “special populations”, which included individuals with mental health and substance use conditions, as well as traumatic brain injuries and other cognitive impairments, the majority of whom had experiences of trauma. She developed a systemic quality improvement framework with the outcome of reducing the death rate for individuals with these complex needs.

Education, professional licenses, certifications, and memberships

Institution Degree
Georgetown University MBA
Virginia Commonwealth University, School of Medicine MD, Psychiatry

Projects and accomplishments (select examples only)

  • System Transformation. As President and Senior Advisor for ZiaPartners, Dr. Cline has worked as a team with Dr. Minkoff in the process of system transformation for individuals and families with co-occurring issues and other complex needs in over 40 states and 7 Canadian provinces, and both nationally and locally in Australia. Dr. Cline and Dr. Minkoff are the leading experts on the implementation of the Comprehensive Continuous Integrated Systems of Care Model (CCISC) in adult and child and adolescent systems of care. These projects have involved working in all types of systems and service settings with extraordinarily diverse populations, ranging from rural areas with significant Native American populations (e.g., New Mexico, Alaska, and Montana), complex urban areas with severely impoverished inner city populations (e.g., District of Columbia, Miami, and San Francisco), as well as areas like Vancouver Island, British Columbia, that have North America’s most highly diverse foreign-born populations. The projects work with populations representing all types of complexity, including individuals (and families) struggling with both cognitive disabilities of all types along with mental health (including trauma) and substance use issues. Specific transformational projects related to behavioral health conditions and intellectual disabilities and were undertaken in the State of Iowa (implementation of “multi-occurring capability”), State of South Dakota, and regional projects in Michigan (Detroit-Wayne County, Grand Rapids-Kent County, and Oakland County.
  • Medical Director for the Single State Authority. Dr. Cline had responsibility for planning, management, and coordination of all activities (both within the Department of Health and collaboratively with other state agencies) regarding development and evaluation of behavioral health policy and strategic implementation of best practices for both hospital and community-based services statewide. She was responsible for establishing medical oversight of quality improvement, standards of care, best practice development, and inter-agency collaboration for complex populations throughout the entire integrated behavioral health system of New Mexico.

Cline Bio

Cline CV