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Founder / Operator·Behavioral Health

Carter Barnhart

CEO & Co-Founder at Charlie Health

Brentwood, Tennessee, USA

CB
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Why they matter

Founder-CEO who built Charlie Health from scratch into a multi-state virtual high-acuity behavioral health platform, with direct Carlyle-portfolio operating experience from Newport Healthcare.

Background

Carter Barnhart co-founded Charlie Health in 2020 with Dr. Caroline Fenkel after her own adolescent mental health crisis led her to Newport Academy, where she was later treated and then spent 11 years rising to Chief Experience Officer as Newport Healthcare grew from 15 employees to over 2,000 under Carlyle Group ownership. She became CEO of Charlie Health on August 4, 2021, and has since scaled it into a virtual high-acuity intensive outpatient (IOP) mental health and substance use provider operating across roughly 40 states.

Notable deals

  • 2021
    Appointed CEO of Charlie Health after 11 years at Newport Healthcare (Carlyle Group-owned), where she became the youngest-ever female C-suite member of a Carlyle portfolio company
  • 2022
    Named to Inc. Magazine's Female Founders 100 list for scaling Charlie Health
  • 2024
    Led Charlie Health's national partnership with Cartwheel, giving 400,000+ students across 100+ school districts access to higher-acuity virtual mental health care
  • 2025
    Launched Charlie Health's first dedicated virtual primary substance use disorder (SUD) treatment program with medication-assisted treatment

Call-prep brief

Carter Barnhart — CEO & Co-Founder, Charlie Health

Background

  • Personal history with behavioral health treatment as a teen at Newport Academy; joined Newport Healthcare afterward and spent 11 years there, rising to Chief Experience Officer while the company (Carlyle Group-owned) grew from 15 to 2,000+ employees.
  • Co-founded Charlie Health in 2020 with Dr. Caroline Fenkel (Chief Clinical Officer); became CEO in August 2021.

Current focus

  • Scaling Charlie Health's virtual intensive outpatient (IOP) model for high-acuity adolescents and adults across ~40 states.
  • Recently expanded into primary substance use disorder treatment with medication-assisted treatment (April 2025) and school-system partnerships (Cartwheel, September 2024).

What she cares about

  • Access to care for high-acuity patients who "fall through the cracks" of traditional once-weekly outpatient therapy.
  • Positions Charlie Health as a category creator ("first virtual-first high-acuity clinic") rather than a generic telehealth player — likely sensitive to being lumped in with lower-acuity teletherapy apps.

Recent moves

  • SUD program launch (2025), Cartwheel school-district partnership (2024), continued state-by-state licensure expansion.
  • Funding history is largely undisclosed beyond an $850K 2020 seed round (Operator Partners) — company has repeatedly declined to confirm total raised or valuation, a likely diligence friction point.

Potential sensitivities

  • Personal trauma story is central to her public narrative; approach with care, not as a data point.
  • Reimbursement/payer mix and regulatory scrutiny of virtual high-acuity behavioral health (a sector regulators watch closely) may be a sore spot.

Questions to ask

  1. What is Charlie Health's actual payer mix and reimbursement trajectory for virtual high-acuity IOP care, and how has that shifted since 2021?
  2. How does she think about consolidation in behavioral health (e.g., recent Spring Health/Alma activity) and Charlie Health's own M&A appetite, either as acquirer or target?
  3. What did she learn from the Newport Healthcare/Carlyle ownership period that shapes how she'd evaluate a PE partner today?

Outreach draft

Subject
Quick call on behavioral health rollup thesis
Hi Carter, I'm [PLACEHOLDER NAME] with a private equity team building a thesis around virtual and high-acuity behavioral health. Your path from Newport Healthcare through to building Charlie Health into a multi-state virtual IOP platform is exactly the operator perspective we'd value. We're not pitching anything today — just looking to learn from people who've actually built and scaled in this space, including how you think about payer dynamics, consolidation, and where the next wave of capital should go. Would you have 20 minutes in the next couple of weeks for a call? Happy to work around your schedule. Best, [PLACEHOLDER NAME]

Linked companies

Sources