Kyle Pedersen, MAR, a 21-year employee of the Connecticut Mental Health Center (CMHC) who has made significant contributions to the Yale Department of Psychiatry and Greater New Haven community, has been honored with the Linda K. Lorimer Award for Distinguished Service at Yale.
Pedersen is one of 24 staff members across Yale to receive the Lorimer award in 2023. The award recognizes staff who exemplify Yale’s spirit of leadership, innovation, collaboration, and excellence. It was presented November 13 by President Peter Salovey in a ceremony at the President’s House.
Pedersen was nominated by Allison N. Ponce, PhD, professor of psychiatry and director of education at CMHC; Steven A. Gentile, MBA, senior director of finance & administration for Integrated Business Operations; and Michael J. Sernyak, MD, professor of psychiatry and CEO of CMHC.
They wrote that Pedersen has made significant and lasting contributions not only to Yale, but to New Haven’s mental health care network and city. “His capacity to collaborate, unite, and include others … leads to a picture of outstanding service to the university but more importantly, to innumerable individuals, groups, and the community at large,” they wrote.
During his more than two decades at CMHC, Pedersen has worked as a community program developer at the Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health and a senior program director for the Community Services Network. He was appointed director of the CMHC Foundation in 2008.
“In each of these roles, Kyle’s commitment to mental health and wellness has been central,” the nominators wrote. “As the director of the CMHC Foundation, Kyle directs all aspects of this private nonprofit that secures resources to support the recovery of adults with serious mental illness in the Greater New Haven area. He does this through innovative collaborations and creative programming such as funding mental health staff micro-grants to support clinical care, establishing and expanding performing arts programming, hosting Public Allies AmeriCorps interns, and engaging with the Yale School of Management Social Impact Consulting Club for mutually beneficial positive impacts.”
Pedersen is founding co-leader of a Department of Psychiatry staff initiative known as Project Synapse. The program was conceived to address morale, stress, and teamwork for staff in the department in response to the findings of a 2019 workplace survey which highlighted areas in need of attention and improvement.
Pedersen also created the Leadership+Innovation Lab to enhance leadership skills, innovation capacity, and peer connections among clinical managers at CMHC. Participants executed individual or group projects to improve the care environment and co-created a peer consultation program. As a result, they reported increased connection with peers, innovation and leadership skills, and capacity to facilitate a better experience for their provider staff.
Pedersen is a founding organizer of Elm City-Undoing Racism Organizing Collective, a multi-racial collective of community leaders working in partnership with the Peoples Institute for Survival and Beyond to dismantle racism and build just and equitable communities. At CMHC he co-leads Dialogues on Difference, a monthly gathering to enhance workplace conversations about culture and racial differences and how these factors impact mental health.
He also co-chairs the Staff Subcommittee of the Department of Psychiatry’s Antiracism Task Force, which seeks to address diversity, equity, and inclusion in the department. Important recommendations from the subcommittee included honoring and recognizing staff contributions to the department and university and the numerous and notable achievements of staff.
In his role as the director of the CMHC Foundation, Pedersen has welcomed and supervised interns from the Yale President’s Public Service Fellowship and the Community Mental Health Fellowship partnership with Dwight Hall, providing field experience for Yale University undergraduates interested in urban community mental health issues. As an alum-turned-lecturer in the Yale Divinity School, he spent more than a decade teaching for the YDS supervised ministry program and assisting the director in overall program design, enhancement, and implementation. In this role, he co-created and taught courses related to social justice and neighborhood ethics and supervised interns assigned to social service and other non-church sites.
As a deacon in the Episcopal Church at Yale for seven years, Pedersen has supported student spiritual life at the university, which is but one example of his longstanding commitment to spiritual service with other examples being his longstanding engagement with Trinity Church on the Green, co-founding Chapel on the Green (the church’s outdoor ministry for housed and unhoused individuals), and serving as a deacon for the Episcopal Church in Connecticut through which he has connected with numerous congregations.