Brave Health Names Sarah Tilton Chief Executive Officer

July 20, 2026— Brave Health, a virtual behavioral health company serving Medicaid and Medicare populations, today announced that Sarah Tilton has been named Chief Executive Officer. Tilton succeeds co-founder Jake Schwartz, who will remain on the board. She has served as Brave's President and Chief Operating Officer, and has learned the business function by function over 6 years with the company. 

“Sarah has led almost all of Brave’s key initiatives: she’s strengthened our marketing, operations, data, and decision-making while helping us navigate massive new opportunities,” said Schwartz. 

Access was never the finish line," said Tilton. "Patients need clinicians who are available and accept Medicaid. They need to be reached at the moment they are ready for care, and they need the right clinical support once they get there. Technology is what makes all three work at scale, not a substitute for any of them. A Medicaid-first business only works long-term if it's built to sustain itself clinically and financially."

Tilton has led Brave's expansion to 14 states, where Brave holds contracts with the national managed care organizations serving Medicaid populations — Centene, Elevance, Molina, UnitedHealthcare, Aetna Better Health, and Humana — and works alongside them on care management and gap-closure programs beyond standard network participation. She and her team built the systems that let Brave's clinical workforce match the needs of each market it enters, and built out Brave's referral channels with health plans, hospital systems, and primary care providers.

"The behavioral health companies that matter most over the next decade will be the ones that can prove they impact outcomes and access simultaneously. Sarah has built Brave around exactly that thesis, and we're confident she's the right leader to scale it," said Anna Fagin, Partner at Town Hall Ventures. 

As CEO, Tilton will lead Brave's work across the three things access depends on: building clinical capacity, connecting with members at the moment they need care, and delivering the right care in the right amount — with technology enabling all three, as it has since day one. That work drives the outcomes payers managing total cost of care are held to: closing gaps in care, supporting outpatient stabilization, and reducing avoidable hospitalizations for the Medicaid populations Brave primarily serves.

Tilton came to Brave directly from General Assembly, the workforce education company, where she was an early employee and spent nine years scaling its consumer education business ahead of its 2017 acquisition by The Adecco Group for $414 million.