Cara Dixon: Building Bridges to Healing—A Leader’s Mission to Transform Mental Health Access
When a licensing barrier threatened to derail her clinical career, Cara Dixon discovered her true calling wasn't just treating individual patients—it was revolutionizing how entire communities access mental health care.
As CEO of Growth Minded LLC and founder of Root to Branch 501c3, Cara Dixon has built her career around a fundamental belief inherited from her father, renowned Penn researcher Dr. John Fantuzzo: that growth and healing can exist to restore areas that are maladaptive, and when aligned with the right supports, even the most challenging circumstances can lead to human flourishing. Today, while raising four children ranging from 6 to 18 years old, Dixon continues expanding access to quality mental health care throughout the Main Line and beyond—one system, one partnership, and one life at a time.
Cara Dixon is a 2025 Main Line Parent Women of Influence Award Winner
Main Line Parent’s Women of Influence Awards celebrate exceptional women making significant impacts in our community. Cara was nominated and selected based on her achievements and dedication to creating positive change in her community. Each Women of Influence Award Winner has committed to support Family Focus Media’s core values. Together, we are committed to foster a sense of belonging and empowerment for all for all families. All backgrounds, races, genders, and sexual orientations are welcome and safe with us.
Beyond the awards, our Women of Influence Luncheons and Speed Networking Night attendees come together as our Women of Influence Network, a community fostering connections, collaboration, and mutual support.
A Pause That Became a Purpose
Dixon’s journey toward transforming mental health care access began with what felt like a career-ending roadblock. When she relocated from Pennsylvania to New York with young children in tow, state licensing regulations prevented her from practicing clinically despite the enormous need for mental health services in her new community.
“I consistently received requests for support in tragic situations—suicide in a school, Sandy Hook shooting, cases of abuse—and I had to say no and send people to places that were often disorganized and inefficient,” Dixon recalls. Rather than viewing the mandatory pause as defeat, she embraced it as redirection.
During this period, Dixon wrote a children’s book, contributed articles to Huffington Post, and consulted for a San Francisco mental health company exploring new mental health coaching models. But it was a suicide at a local boarding school, of a student that her children were close too, that crystallized her new path. “Unfortunately, there was a suicide at the school we were supporting, and the ripple effect on the whole community was tremendous. The school asked for help and I knew I was equipped to support them systemically” she explains.
This crisis became Dixon’s entry point into program development—a field she never anticipated pursuing. She developed the school’s first comprehensive counseling program with a multitiered system of support. The following year, when several students presented with mental health needs, the systems Dixon had built were ready. “We lined up support immediately for all student’s needs, to intervene at onset, and were equipped with a plan. It’s actually amazing to see where the students we supported are now. They’re all doing well,” she reflects.
That program, now running for over a decade, serves students from 26 different countries and has become a model that extends far beyond one institution.
Root to Branch: Preventative Care at Its Core
Dixon’s most ambitious project, Root to Branch, emerged from her recognition that mental health care typically reaches people “way down the line when they’ve developed all kinds of maladaptive behaviors—ways to numb out the pain, ways to detach from the pain.” Her nonprofit takes a radically different approach.
“Root to Branch is really working to get at the beginning of treatment preventatively and support a person so they don’t have to go down those roads,” Dixon explains. The organization provides EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy at no cost to military personnel, first responders, cancer and medical trauma patients, and victims of interpersonal and community violence.
The timing matters crucially. “If we’re involved at the onset of trauma with EMDR, that memory or that experience doesn’t consolidate into the brain and prevents PTSD,” Dixon notes. Rather than treating people years later when they’ve developed substance abuse issues or suicidal ideation, Root to Branch intervenes immediately through partnerships with community organizations already serving these populations.
When a significant event recently struck locally, front-line responders contacted Root to Branch the same day. Within hours, trauma survivors who lacked resources were connected to quality EMDR providers for free treatment—the kind of expensive, specialized care that is difficult to access for many.
Building Excellence, Not Just Access
What sets Root to Branch apart isn’t just its mission, but its methodology. As an EMDR consultant—the highest certification level that allows her to certify other providers—Dixon insists on rigorous quality standards that slow initial growth but ensure lasting impact.
“The biggest challenge is I could take shortcut ways to go and quickly get things up and running, but it really matters to me that every provider delivers the best service and that vulnerable individuals get what they need,” she explains. “We focus on going to the deep infrastructures, making them optimal, and then we trust that’s going to create the most growth. We are starting at the roots and making them strong by developing customized models for the population we are serving.”
This September, Root to Branch plans to launch a comprehensive resource library created by EMDR consultants throughout the region. The online platform will provide free tools and resources to anyone who needs them, extending the organization’s reach to people who can’t access in-person sessions due to geographical or other barriers.
Professional Excellence Meets Community Care
Alongside her nonprofit work, Dixon leads Growth Minded LLC, which this year achieved Joint Commission Accreditation—a rigorous standard requiring compliance with over 1,000 behavioral health criteria. “Joint Commission is nationally one of the top accreditation companies. They are the gold standard and accredit some of the best hospital and higher-level care systems,” Dixon explains.
This accreditation reflects Dixon’s commitment to maintaining the highest quality care while expanding access. Growth Minded provides comprehensive mental health services, partners with schools and organizations for preventative programs, and offers crisis response throughout the Main Line community.
Dixon’s typical week reflects her multifaceted approach: she maintains an outpatient client load and devotes Fridays entirely to Root to Branch clients and programing, (providing services at no cost to ensure the nonprofit’s model works), and this fall will run the complex trauma intensive outpatient program requiring three hours of daily programming.
A Vision for Systemic Change
When asked what she’d change about mental health access if she could wave a magic wand, Dixon doesn’t hesitate: “I would want to see the managed care systems more effectively designed with a tiered approach in mental health care that reflects a provider’s experience and years of training, in addition to credentials. Currently someone with my experience is set to get reimbursed the same as a recent graduate, and oftentimes reimbursement comes late or providers and companies have to fight to get paid. Providers get overloaded with cases as a result, which is especially difficult when offering trauma support. This causes excellent providers to leave larger systems, and less experienced providers left treating our heaviest cases and the most vulnerable needs. Suicide rates continue to increase and individuals at this desperate point are sent into the larger systems with less experienced support. If providers get well taken care of, and the mental health care field is organized more effectively, clients get well taken care of with experienced, quality care. Though there is an immediate cost to create a system with this structure, I believe our suicide rates will go down, people will get better, and our society will be healthier.” When considering the why, Dixon explains, “We all may experience significant stressors, potential trauma or a mental health challenge in our lifetime. How we are resourced and supported in those moments matters. We have life saving treatments that can change the brain’s response and allow individuals and families to overcome or move through the challenge rather than get stuck. This is exciting. I want to see everyone have access to this kind of quality support.
She describes a broken system where these insurance pressures tend to lead providers to migrate to private practice with prohibitively expensive fees. The most seasoned providers that can offer the best trauma care become challenging for the average person to afford, however,they deserve to be paid well based on their training level and their abilities to work with changing the brain’s response. These therapies are proven to be more effective than medication.
One of Dixon’s solutions focuses on prevention and community. Soon, she plans to host free community gatherings where excellent mental health professionals provide accessible education to families. “I want to create a learning community that’s open to everybody to continue to cultivate excellent health and wellness education in our area so that quality strategies and care are within reach to anyone.”
The Power of Collaboration
Throughout our conversation, Dixon repeatedly emphasized teamwork over individual achievement. “I could work on my own, I could just be in my bubble, or I could work a little harder to figure out how to keep us working together. I’ve seen the power of the force of many people gathered together. It’s so much stronger.”
This philosophy extends to her advice for Main Line parents concerned about their children’s mental health: start with trusted networks. “Stay connected to communities that feel trusted, where people really care, and can provide support to walk alongside you. You do not have to be alone.”
For Dixon, community isn’t just a professional strategy—it’s personal conviction rooted in family values. Her father, Dr. John Fantuzzo, whose research and systems have been implemented in Philadelphia and nationally to fill major gaps in education, demonstrated from her early years that ” life is not about just serving ourselves. We are meant to use our skills and training to serve those in need, work to fill the gaps, build teams that care about others well, and provide the best support to vulnerable or marginalized populations.”
Looking Forward
Root to Branch’s October 25th Gala at Waynesborough Country Club will celebrate the organization’s first year while raising funds for expansion. Dixon envisions scaling the model throughout the Philadelphia region, always maintaining her insistence on quality over quantity.
“There are thousands of EMDR providers, so it’s not hard to imagine scaling this at some point, but I’m very particular about making sure there’s fidelity to the model,” she explains. “I want every session to be maximized for vulnerable people who, if this is their chance to get help, deserve the very best care.”
Dixon’s story demonstrates how obstacles can become opportunities when approached with patience, creativity, and unwavering commitment to serving others. By refusing to accept limitations and instead reimagining possibilities, she’s created sustainable systems of care that will continue healing communities for years to come.
“There is hope, and a lot of people don’t understand that there are actually options to get through very difficult, painful human experiences and still flourish,” Dixon reflects. Through her work, she’s not just providing that hope—she’s building the infrastructure to make it accessible to everyone who needs it.
