Dr. Keita Franklin is an accomplished senior executive who is widely credited with revolutionizing several large scale national public health systems. She has focused her expertise in key wellness areas to include suicide prevention, mental health, and substance abuse.
A transformational leader, Franklin has spent her 25-year career driving complex organizational and policy change in the federal sector before recently transitioning to the private sector. She has served as a senior executive in both the Department of Defense (DoD) and Department of Veteran Affairs (VA), where she served as the principal advisor on all matters related to suicide prevention. As a national leader in the prevention of suicide, Franklin was responsible for leading a multi-discipline team of experts in the advancement of evidence-based prevention practices for over three million active-duty members, 20 million veterans, and their families.
Franklin has represented the DoD and VA during testimony in front of both chambers of Congress and has advised the Office of the President, the Domestic Policy Council, and the National Security Council. An innovative leader, she spearheaded a national effort to close the gaps between the DoD and VA by advocating and executing a presidential executive order addressing critical periods of risk for servicemembers and veterans.
A recognized expert, Franklin serves on multiple national-level committees/boards such as the National Academies of Sciences, the Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention, the Fort Hood Task Force, and the American Association of Suicidology to name a few.
Since transitioning to the private sector, Franklin serves as an executive in the government and public service practice at Deloitte, where she provides leadership, on matters related to mental health, across the federal health sector. She has also been instrumental in the advancement of suicide risk screening in her role as co-director of the Columbia Lighthouse Project and has championed evidence-based practices with the goal of obtaining more efficacious mental health care outcomes for at-risk population groups.
Franklin has a PhD in social work from Virginia Commonwealth University and an advanced certificate from the Center for Advancement of Research Methods and Analysis. Franklin holds certificates from Harvard Kennedy School Executive Education on Leading Large Organizational Change and Women in Leadership, as well as the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Kenan-Flagler Business School course on Executive Leadership.
Franklin has published in the Journal of Alcohol Studies about military substance abuse and has chapters in the Handbook of Military Social Work and the Social Work around the Globe about military family issues.
She joined the Wounded Warrior Project® board of directors in 2024.
