Kerry Morrison, Founder and Executive Director of Heart Forward LA, entered this field not through a clinical door, but through the community door. She spent 22 years managing the business improvement district in Hollywood, which helped to spark an economic renaissance to lure back business, tourism and entertainment. Troubled by the inability to help people with untreated serious mental illness living on the streets of Hollywood, she applied for a Stanton Fellowship which afforded her an opportunity to explore better approaches to mental health care to bring ideas back to Los Angeles. Her two-year study fellowship led her to Trieste, Italy, where she discovered the world-recognized system that focuses upon robust community support, an authentic belief in recovery and a focus upon the whole person. She brought others back to see it and worked with Los Angeles leaders to begin work to adapt the model to address mental health system change in L.A. The collaboration led to a state-funded mental health pilot in Hollywood, inspired by Trieste.
Morrison has visited Trieste seven times and lived there for a month in 2019, embedded in their system. She most recently (October 2024) escorted a group of 20 leaders from throughout the US to study the system, as a result of a grant awarded by The Hilton Foundation. Heart Forward LA models the guiding principles inspired by Trieste by partnering with Hollywood-based residential communities, community volunteers, the LA County jail and other locations to practice a culture of Radical Hospitality which contributes to social inclusion, personal flourishing and reduced isolation. Morrison also hosts a podcast which seeks to juxtapose the dysfunction of the American mental health system against the North Star which is Trieste. It is called Heart Forward: Conversations from the Heart.