Meet the Trailblazers I The Voices of Hansei

Why I’m Still in This Work:
Turning Trauma Into Tools That Help

Brittany | Director of Product & Customer Success

Seventeen years in behavioral health teach you a lot about systems, healing, and how much heart it really takes to keep showing up. I spent fourteen of those years working directly with patients and families in treatment centers. Today, I’m the Director of Product and Customer Success at Hansei, leading Benji, our EMR built specifically for behavioral health providers.

My “why” is personal. I grew up in a family shaped by addiction and mental health disorders. I’ve lost people I love. I also became the one who held things together — raising my siblings, my niece, and now parenting my three kids as a single mom. That experience taught me how to lead with empathy, stay calm in crisis, how to love without conditions (boundaries – but not conditions), and how to keep going even when it’s hard. 

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned from trauma is this:

“What you don’t change, you choose.”

Overcoming trauma doesn’t just change you — it reshapes how you lead. When you’ve lived through instability, loss, and survival, you learn to listen differently. You learn to pause before reacting. You learn to look for what’s not being said. 

For me, growing up around addiction taught me to stay calm under pressure, to adapt quickly, and to see people as whole, not just through the lens of their worst day. As a leader, I bring that same lens to my team and to the people we serve. I lead with empathy because I know what it feels like to be unseen. I seek clarity because I know how damaging silence can be. And I value progress over perfection — because healing, like leadership, is rarely linear.

Trauma gave me grit. Leadership gave me purpose. And now, I get to use both to build things that help others heal — and hopefully make their path a little easier.

Even though I’m no longer on the ground working at treatment centers, the work I do now matters just as much to me. If I can build something that makes a clinician’s day easier — that helps a patient get care faster — and maybe, just maybe, helps a family get their mom, dad, sister, or son back, then I’ve done my job.

“Behavioral health is hard. Leading with heart is harder. But our mission? It’s worth it.”
Brittany Hines
Director of Product & Customer Success