Long-time NAMI Minnesota Leader Announces Retirement

May 8, 2025

After 24 years at the helm, Sue Abderholden, MPH, is retiring as executive director at NAMI Minnesota, effective October 15.  

The NAMI Minnesota Board of Directors has hired an executive search firm to find her replacement.  

“It’s impossible to put into words the impact Sue has had over the past two decades,” said Jessica Gourneau, PhD, LP, president of the NAMI Minnesota board. “She led the way in transforming Minnesota’s mental health system — helping pass laws to bring mental health awareness and treatment into schools, separate out children’s mental health from the child protection system, increase the diversity of our mental health workforce, expand crisis services statewide, expand Medicaid to cover mental health care, and fight for mental health parity protections.” 

Sue Abderholden, MPH

"When I first walked through the doors of NAMI Minnesota, we were a small and scrappy team, but we had a big dream: to make sure no one navigating a mental illness had to do it alone,” she wrote in a May 1 email.  

“In the years since, together we built something extraordinary,” she wrote. “We changed laws to build our mental health system. We raised awareness, fought discrimination, and grew our programming to meet the communities’ needs. We didn’t just dream about change — we made it happen.” 

Abderholden, a long-time advocacy partner of the MMA, said she plans to spend more time with her family and friends, travel a little, and catch up on a huge stack of books.