Dr. Sarah Adler | Source | founder and CEO at Wave

Dr. Sarah Adler is an accomplished clinical and business leader with an informed vision for remaking mental and behavioral health care in the U.S.

Sarah currently serves as founder/CEO at Wave, a mental healthcare company serving digital natives through employers and health plans. Sarah is also a Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine.

Prior to Wave, Sarah was Chief Clinical Officer at Octave Health, a national therapy practice. At Octave, Sarah built out the care delivery model, overseeing clinical operations as well as product and engineering. Sarah has been on the faculty of Stanford University School of Medicine since 2011, where she built out measurement-based care for the department, worked with patient populations struggling with eating disorders and obesity, and helped restructure the ambulatory care delivery model. Sarah is also the founder and operator of Peninsula Behavioral Health, a concierge group private practice in the SF Bay Area. Sarah was an inaugural fellow of the Stanford Clinical Excellence Research Center, where she built care delivery models that were designed to be highly efficient and effective by demonstrating ROI. Prior to moving into the practice of psychology, Sarah was a buy-side analyst at hedge fund Himalaya Capital Partners.

Sarah is also an accomplished author (The DBT® Solution for Emotional Eating: A Proven Program to Break the Cycle of Bingeing and Out-of-Control Eating) and an advisor to several digital health and mental health startups and investors.

Sarah is one the sharpest, smartest and thought-provoking mental health clinicians. Her unique, rigorous and wide-ranging career path has spanned:
**Earning a Doctorate in Psychology from Stanford
**Serving as Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford University Medical School
**Clinical Expert in evidence-based practice, working with and treating a diverse Gen-Z and digital native patient population across the diagnostic spectrum
**Co-authoring a book on Dialectical Behavioral Therapy to manage emotional eating
**Award-winning Professor at Stanford Doctoral Program
**Working for a decade in a bariatric clinic
**Serving as Oprah Magazine’s go-to clinical quote source for stories on blockbuster weight loss drugs, body neutrality and eating disorders
**Gaining extensive data analytics and systems thinking experience
**Serving as Chief Clinical Officer at a therapy startup (Octave)
**Building measurement-based care systems from the ground up
**Pioneering highly inclusive behavioral care models and reducing cultural AI bias
**Building and launching Wave as a solo founder
**Successful owner/operator of a 3M ARR Group Practice