CEO/President

Throughout Sushma D. Taylor’s career she has had a primary vision and focus - to create opportunities and remove barriers for individuals and families who have been displaced by the effects of homelessness, unemployment, drug and/or alcohol abuse, poor health, mental health problems, and criminal justice involvement. She believes that there is extraordinary potential in the seemingly most ordinary person. She has long been a champion of those requiring social rehabilitation, creating and providing services in the State of California and elsewhere that effect tremendous change for community members in need, improving their quality of life and promoting personal and social responsibility.

Dr. Taylor holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration, a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology, and is a Licensed Marriage Family Therapist. When she arrived in Marin County in 1974 she built upon her previous experience in social services by serving as the Director of Marin and Sonoma County’s Treatment Alternative to Street Crime (TASC) projects in coordination with each county’s mental health department, developing and supervising a unique justice diversion to treatment project that was replicated nationally.

In 1981 Dr. Taylor assumed the role of Executive Director of Center Point, Inc, a small private, non-profit drug and alcohol treatment program for men and women in San Rafael. Over the twenty-nine years of her remarkable stewardship, Center Point has grown tremendously, responding to the complex needs of those suffering from disenfranchisement in our community. Believing that adversity can be overcome and the extraordinary can be achieved by each of the clients she serves, Dr. Taylor has developed a wide array of services throughout California and, more recently, in Oklahoma. These include community- and institutional-based residential rehabilitation programs for men, women, and pregnant and parenting women and their children, outpatient services, adolescent and adult drug courts, comprehensive vocational services, including job training and placement, transitional housing, a primary health care clinic, mental health services, parenting education, and family reunification services.

The success of these programs has been outstanding. In 1971, a staff of six provided services at one program site in Marin County. Today, Center Point has multiple programs in Marin County including the flagship 47 bed men’s program, a 44 bed program for women and parenting women and their children, vocational and transitional housing services, and outpatient programs serving more than 750 individuals and families a year. In addition, Center Point has grown into a multi-state agency serving over 7,000 people each year at different program sites in California and Oklahoma with a staff of over 200 employees.

Center Point clients receive a wide continuum of individualized services, all created by Dr. Taylor and funded through grants and contracts that she has very successfully pursued. Dr. Taylor has designed each program to advance socially positive changes that sustain abstinence, reduce dependence, crime and anti-social behavior, and promote increased self-reliance and civic responsibility. Graduates of Center Point’s treatment programs move on to transitional housing and continuing care services to reinforce learning and changed behavior before they fully reintegrate into the community. Many men and women have become highly successful in their chosen career, many have obtained undergraduate and graduate degrees, and all have learned to help others in the community as they have been helped. Her vision that individuals and families can reclaim dignity and self-worth is realized everyday.

Dr. Taylor has taken these successful models and created projects to meet the demand for rehabilitative services in California, Oklahoma, and beyond. Dr. Taylor has successfully established intensive treatment services for male and female inmates with drug problems in thirteen innovative programs in eight California state prisons dramatically reducing crime and recidivism. In collaboration with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, she developed a model community alternative sentencing program for pregnant and parenting women with children. In 2005 Center Point opened an innovative community correctional program for 200 male inmates in Oklahoma. In 2007 the Center Point Tulsa Women and Children’s Program, replicating the San Rafael model, began serving non-serious women offenders in a community setting. Approximately 600 incarcerated and previous incarcerated individuals a day receive recovery services created by Sushma D. Taylor, her contribution to keeping our communities safe through changing the behavior, beliefs, and attitudes of criminal justice involved clients.

As a result of her innovative work over the last 35 plus years, Dr. Taylor has long been considered a prominent leader and spokeswoman in the arena of health and social rehabilitation. She has been lauded as one of the foremost authorities in the nation on treatment services for women, having served as a special consultant to the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges in the development of polices for the treatment of pregnant and postpartum women and their children. She provides consultation, presentations, and trainings locally and across the nation and world. Through her work for the U. S. State Department, she has visited many nations to assist governments in establishing substance abuse treatment programs.

Dr. Taylor now works closely with local, state, and federal agencies and representatives to form policy and new legislation that advance the field of treatment and, in the last five years, services for veterans returning from warfield. She has been a consultant to the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) in the White House, was a member of the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment’s National Advisory Council, and has served on innumerable advisory groups for federal and state agencies. Dr. Taylor is currently the President of the Treatment Communities of America, the first woman in the histoy of the organization to be elected to such a position in the pre-eminent national association in the field, and is the Co-Chair of the California Perinatal Treatment Network.

Dr. Taylor was born in India and has lived in the West Indies, Sweden, England, and South East Asia. Her father was an ambassador for the government of India. The frequent relocation of the family gave Dr. Taylor a multi-cultural orientation and the ability to speak several languages. Dr. Taylor is married to another psychologist, Rod Taylor, and has one child, a son, Thaine, who served his country as a United States Marine.

Sushma Taylor believes that her ultimate and true success is the success of those she serves.