Business Women Awards 2025
INDUSTRY LEADER SOCIAL SERVICES/NONPROFIT:
Beth Bixby, Tides Family Services CEO
WINDS OF CHANGE have been swirling around children’s behavioral health, particularly with justice and child welfare, within Rhode Island. Beth Bixby, CEO of Tides Family Services, remains focused on protecting what’s working for the organization.
“I’ve been advocating really hard to make sure no family falls through the cracks, especially those with very complex needs, who have historically been underserved,” said Bixby, who leads the West Warwick-based social services nonprofit.
Tides provides critical community-based child welfare, behavioral health and juvenile justice programs for children and families throughout the state. Under Bixby’s leadership, Tides has expanded into Newport and Washington counties. Bixby, a Tides client herself, remembered one organizer seeing her when she worked at Dunkin’ Donuts to check in on her and others he worked with.
It was a check-in that led Bixby down a positive path.
“A famous quote that he always said, a Maya Angelou quote, ‘It’s not what you say or do for someone that they remember, it’s how you make them feel,’ ” Bixby said, “and I just remembered that when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do for a career, and that helped me figure that out.”
Bixby began her career as a substance use counselor and clinician before joining Tides in 2001. She has held various roles at the organization and has been its top executive since 2015. Bixby also hosts state legislative summits and collaborates with other organizations and leaders to address child welfare problems.
Bixby has overseen a substantial increase in Tides’ operating budget, which has allowed the organization to expand its reach and its range of offered services. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, she ensured that the organization continued its in-person service delivery. Bixby also helped create the Preserving Families Network, which is now the largest of its kind in the state and has supported thousands of youths since 2007.
“My role is to set the course for sustainability and the vision to ensure that we always stay true to the mission of the work that we do,” she said.
That work includes advocating for state funding to help the organization best serve vulnerable children and families across the Ocean State, as well as ensuring that the Tides’ staff’s needs are met.
Under Bixby’s leadership, in partnership with the Community Care Alliance, Tides established the NEXO Behavioral and Mental Health Center. The center focuses on providing effective care, especially for minorities and low-income families.
In 2024, Tides began supporting the St. Mary’s Home for Children in North Providence after details from a December 2023 investigation by the R.I. Office of the Child Advocate found “significant safety concerns and abusive living conditions,” which led to leadership changes there, per local reports. With Tides now leading St. Mary’s, the center continues to provide services for 50 children and youths.
Rachel Yoder, Tides’ senior vice president of treatment programs and operations, says Bixby’s strategy and innovation have brought some of the organization’s larger programs to life.
“When she was in direct service [and] worked in some of the programs that we had here at Tides, [she] recognized that there were ways to strengthen them, make improvements in them, blend different modalities together,” Yoder said. “Through that, [it] created some of our more-innovative homegrown programs that are what Tides is known for today.”
Though overseeing those programs is not part of Bixby’s current role, they are effective in keeping Rhode Island’s youths at home with their families and Bixby’s advocacy is necessary, Yoder says.
“It’s a lot that’s gone into the foundation of her role where it is now, and I think that drives a lot of her passion, is that she has the experience, boots on the ground, delivering the model, enhancing it,” Yoder said. “So when she’s up at the Statehouse, and she’s advocating, she’s really walked the walk with work with families.”
When asked for what advice she’d have for others who might want to get into the field, Bixby said, “To always remember your ‘why’ and not to lose that.”
