Healthy Rural California

Kristy Bird MaKieve, MBA, CAE, is the founder, CEO and GME Administrator of Healthy Rural California in Chico. Healthy Rural California is accredited as a Sponsoring Institution for Graduate Medical Education. Our first cohort of Community Psychiatry Residents will matriculate in June 2024. We have submitted an application for accreditation to launch an Integrated Behavioral Health Family Medicine Residency by 2025. Kristy is also the Executive Director of Butte-Glenn Medical Society, the Lost Sierra Medical Society and North Valley Medical Association in Redding, now representing healthcare leaders in 10 counties. Kristy is passionate about workforce education and training as a key solution to access to care and mental health care in underserved, rural areas. Kristy worked at UC Davis for almost a decade helping launch the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing and supporting the dean of medical education. In 2015, Kristy was the lead staff person who helped secure $15 million in funding to establish Behavioral Health research and policy centers at UC Davis and UCLA, where she became interested in system-wide solutions to the growing mental health crisis. Best described as a meandering path of interesting work, Kristy’s career started teaching art to people who are blind, teaching English in Japan, running Japanese language lessons at the Japan Society of Boston, launching a graphic design staffing service in Sacramento before running a statewide education program for the California School Boards Association in Sacramento. Kristy earned her MBA from UC Davis Graduate School of Management in 2015. Kristy earned her BA from Barnard College of Columbia University in New York. She was born in Berkeley, California but grew up on Long Island, New York where she was often asked if she was from California. Kristy moved to Sacramento in 1997.