On November 1, 2025, Susan M. Szulewski, MD, MBA, began her tenure as president and chief operating officer of McLean Hospital, succeeding longtime President and Psychiatrist in Chief Scott L. Rauch, MD.
Now, several months into the role, Horizons, McLean’s publication for friends and supporters of the hospital, sat down with Szulewski to discuss her early impressions, guiding priorities, and aspirations for the hospital’s next chapter—building on McLean’s legacy of excellence while shaping its future.
What drew you to psychiatry initially—and ultimately to McLean?
I knew I wanted to pursue psychiatry even before medical school. I was drawn to the complexity of mental illness and the opportunity to care for patients and families during some of their most vulnerable and uncertain moments.
Much of my clinical work, including leading McLean’s Clinical Evaluation Center, involved meeting patients and families at critical points of need and helping ensure they could access appropriate care. That experience reinforced the importance of matching patients and families with the right teams, infrastructure, and resources to support their treatment.
Having grown up in this area, I was aware of McLean from an early age and its role in advancing mental health care. Joining McLean allowed me to be part of a team deeply committed to improving the care of patients and families through its clinical work, research, and educational mission.
You have been at McLean for more than a decade; what new insights about the hospital have you gained since stepping into this new role?
I have long appreciated the extraordinary commitment of the people who work here; now I’m getting a broader perspective on the full scope of the institution and how many different parts come together to support patients and families. This underscores both the complexity of the care we provide and the deep expertise of the people who make it possible.
I also see more fully how clinical care, research, and education are sustained by the collective efforts of clinicians, researchers, educators, and staff across the organization—as well as through philanthropic investment.
What are some of your priorities for your first year as president and COO?
At its core, my role is about stewardship. It is about ensuring that we remain well positioned to serve patients and families, and advance mental health care. Here are four of my priorities:
- Listen to and engage with staff across McLean to understand their experiences and perspectives and ensure clear and consistent communication in return. This mutual exchange is essential to making thoughtful decisions that will benefit our patients and our people.
- Strengthen the operational structure to ensure excellent care, improve how decisions are made and communicated, and align resources with our most important priorities.
- Support our workforce. The work done at McLean is demanding, and we have a responsibility to create an environment where clinicians, researchers, educators, and staff can perform at their best.
- Ensure McLean’s long-term financial stability. This is essential, as financial strength allows us to invest in patient care, advance scientific discovery, and sustain our educational efforts in training future leaders. It ensures that we remain strong and resilient in uncertain times.
There is tremendous upheaval in health care today. What do you see as McLean’s most important challenges at this moment?
The challenges facing health care right now are significant, particularly in behavioral health. Demand for care continues to grow, patients are presenting with increasingly complex needs, and we are navigating workforce pressures and financial constraints.
We must navigate these realities while continuing to deliver the highly specialized care that McLean is known for. What gives me confidence is McLean itself: our people, our depth of expertise, and our longstanding leadership in advancing psychiatric care.
How does being part of Mass General Brigham (MGB) strengthen McLean?
It strengthens us through a connection to a broader clinical and academic community while preserving our unique mission, identity, and leadership in advancing psychiatric care.
My partnership with Maurizio Fava, MD, chair of the MGB Department of Psychiatry, has been especially important in establishing close alignment between McLean and the broader academic department. Maurizio brings extraordinary scientific leadership and a deep commitment to advancing psychiatric research, education, and clinical care.
This affiliation bolsters collaboration and expands opportunities, while preserving the specialized expertise that defines McLean and strengthening our shared efforts to advance mental health care.
The start of your new role dovetailed with the end of The Way Forward Campaign; in time you will preside over the grand opening of a new child and adolescent campus, a key focus of the campaign. How will this facility advance McLean’s work in this area?
The Way Forward Campaign represents an extraordinary milestone for McLean. Through the generosity and vision of our donors, we are creating a new child and adolescent campus designed to provide highly specialized psychiatric care for young people and their families.
This campus will bring together clinical excellence, research, and education in an environment intentionally designed to support healing and recovery, strengthening our ability to care for young patients with complex needs, while supporting research and training that will shape the future of child and adolescent mental health care.
Can you speak to the importance of philanthropy in our continued growth and success?
Philanthropy is essential to advancing McLean’s most innovative work. It allows us to invest in patient care, support scientific discovery that improves treatment, and sustain our efforts to train future leaders in the field.
One of the most important ways philanthropy strengthens McLean is through investment in people. Endowed chairs and faculty support allow us to recruit and retain exceptional clinicians, researchers, and educators.
Philanthropy also allows us to develop therapeutic programs and advance promising research that may not yet have traditional sources of funding. I am deeply grateful for the partnership and trust of our donors. Their generosity strengthens McLean today and positions us for the future.
