Dedicated to Integrating Mental Health in Public Safety
Our Story and Mission
Founded to address the gaps between mental health services and emergency response systems, The Green Signal Initiative champions collaboration across counties and states. Our mission is to empower communities with resources, education, and strategic proposals that improve crisis intervention and overall public safety.
Meet Our Founder and Keynote Speaker
Meet Our Founder
Stacey Burrell, RN
Founder, The Green Signal Initiative
Stacey Burrell is a registered nurse and behavioral health professional with years of direct clinical experience serving individuals living with Severe Persistent Mental Illness across forensic, community, and crisis settings in North Carolina.
But her understanding of this work doesn’t come from her career alone.
In September 2020, Stacey experienced a medical emergency — a stroke. When EMS arrived, she wasn’t treated as a patient in crisis. Her emergency was labeled a psychiatric behavioral health call, and the care she received in her most vulnerable moment was dismissive and disrespectful. She survived. But she never forgot what it felt like to be misidentified, mislabeled, and mistreated by the very system designed to help her.
That day changed everything.
Stacey came to understand — personally and profoundly — what individuals with severe mental illness face every day: encounters with first responders who have no context, no information, and no way of knowing who is standing in front of them. She knew the statistics from her clinical work. People with mental illness are 16 times more likely to be killed during a law enforcement encounter. One in five police calls involves a mental health component. She had now lived the reality behind those numbers.