Melissa Wettengel

Melissa Wettengel is a public health strategist, systems advocate, and peer support services leader working at the intersection of mental health, recovery, and social justice. Since becoming HALI’s Chief Executive Officer in 2020, she has shepherded the organization through significant transformation—expanding services, strengthening infrastructure, and building a “dream team” to support our local community and collaboratively advance peer services on Long Island and across New York State. She is passionate about reducing health disparities for people with mental health challenges through access to housing, employment, and social supports.

Melissa leads with transparency and compassion, cultivating a mission-aligned workplace rooted in mutual trust and accountability. Under her leadership, HALI has tripled its street outreach Mobile Shower Unit program, developed prison-to-community re-entry housing to reduce recidivism, and built two innovative INSET (Intensive and Sustained Engagement Team) programs, providing an alternative for people uninterested in traditional mental health services.

Melissa has a 20+ year management career in both the private and nonprofit space, including the development, leadership, and evaluation of peer-delivered crisis interventions. Melissa founded the Long Island Peer Supervision Learning Collaborative as well as the Long Island Peer Specialist Community of Practice, a mutual support professional association for peer professionals.

Melissa holds a Master of Public Health from Stony Brook University and is trained as both a NY Certified Peer Specialist and Certified Peer Advocate. She brings both professional and lived experience to her work, with a focus on building recovery-oriented systems rooted in human rights, empowerment, and human potential.

A lifelong Long Islander, Melissa lives with her husband of over 25 years and a beautiful cat named Delilah. She shamelessly loves all things Taylor Swift, and her favorite places are the wooded trails in Suffolk where she lives, and the ocean beaches in Nassau where she grew up.