Christopher Bennett

I came into this work through fire. I’m a man in long-term recovery, and I know what it’s like to sit on the other side of the table, scared, angry, exhausted, hopeless and unsure if anything will actually work. My career began working in high-end treatment with individuals living with severe, chronic mental illness and then transitioning to working with homeless veterans navigating trauma, mental health, addiction, and despair. Two different worlds, same truth: the system wasn’t built for the people inside it.

Over the last 17 years, I’ve served in many roles in behavioral health – tech, driver, case manager, counselor, interventionist, family consultant, business consultant, founder, and CEO. I’ve co-founded and exited multiple companies, advised national organizations, and led a self-funded private equity group backing values-driven operators. What ties it all together is this: I’ve seen up close how the system breaks people, and I’m not interested in making it slightly better. I’m here to rebuild it from the ground up.

At Ava Health, I oversee our strategic vision, marketing, and company culture to ensure everything we build is trauma-informed, outcomes-driven, and human-first. We measure success by meaningful long-term stability and wellness including housing, employment, reunification, and dignity, not just symptoms. And we design care that I’d trust with my own family because I’ve been the person on the other end of that call.

My promise is simple: we will never build anything at Ava that sacrifices humanity for efficiency. Not now. Not ever.

I’m grounded by my fiancé and daughter, the silence of mountains, ultra-endurance adventures, the serenity of meditation, and a belief that life’s purpose is to be in service of something greater than yourself.