Experience changes
perspective.

Founder Dr. Shelley Padgett brings experience across high-acuity nursing, psychiatric practice, clinician education and healthcare operations. Her work connects clinical judgment, systems thinking and organizational innovation, with an emphasis on human agency and more accountable systems of care.

Dr. Padgett brings more than 24 years of experience across healthcare, education, leadership, and entrepreneurship. Her career began in critical care nursing, where she spent 14 years in high-acuity environments, including trauma and burns at UAB’s Level I Trauma Center, neurocritical care at Johns Hopkins, and cardiovascular surgical critical care. Those experiences shaped how she thinks: in systems, patterns, risk, human performance, and the conditions that influence outcomes.

That foundation carried her from bedside care into psychiatry, education, healthcare operations, and organizational development. Across those settings, she has built training programs, developed clinical and operational infrastructure, designed workflows, supervised clinicians, supported interdisciplinary teams, and helped organizations grow while preserving quality, safety, and integrity.

Most recently, she served as Director of Provider Success and Education at a large NYC telehealth practice, where she helped scale the organization from a small startup to more than 125 providers in three years. Her work included provider education, clinical quality initiatives, operational systems development, workforce support, and strategic collaborations with external partners across behavioral health and healthcare technology.

Today, as the founder of Limmera, her work sits at the intersection of psychiatry, systems thinking, clinical innovation, education, organizational design, and healthcare strategy. She tends to approach difficult problems by looking beneath the visible issue to the structure producing it. Whether she is working with patients, clinicians, founders, or healthcare organizations, her aim is the same: to understand complexity clearly enough to build something safer, more coherent, and more useful.

In her own words: clinical perspective

Hello! I’m Shelley Padgett, a board-certified psychiatric nurse practitioner and the founder of Limmera. I was raised in Alabama and bring more than 24 years of experience across healthcare, education, and leadership. My career began in critical care nursing, where I spent 14 years in high-acuity environments, including trauma and burns at UAB’s Level I Trauma Center, neurocritical care at Johns Hopkins, and cardiovascular surgical critical care. Those experiences taught me to think in systems and patterns, and to pay close attention to the conditions that shape outcomes. That foundation carried me into psychiatry, and in 2022 I moved my practice to New York City, bringing the perspective of Southern roots and big-city clinical experience.

I created this practice as a direct response to the “industry standards” I saw dominating healthcare: models that too often treat patients and providers like commodities. My practice is built to resist those exploitative structures and to offer something different: thoughtful, personal, relationship-centered care.

My clinical training includes psychiatric nurse practitioner education at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree from Chatham University. I specialize in treating anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, PTSD, ADHD, Autism, Borderline Personality Disorder, and sleep difficulties. I also provide integrative evidence-based approaches, such as ketamine-assisted therapy, when appropriate, for treatment-resistant presentations.

Liminal means “the space between”: that transitional, sometimes uncertain space where change takes root. I, too, have stood in that in-between place, and with excellent mental health support, I learned how to embrace it as a space of growth and renewal. Now, I walk alongside my clients as they step into their own thresholds, helping them find hope, healing, and new life. What matters in my work is truth, integrity, and faithfulness.

Whether I am working with patients, clinicians, or healthcare organizations, my aim is the same: to understand complexity clearly enough to build something safer, more coherent, and more useful. I look forward to meeting you and learning about your story.

Ernie Davis is Co-Founder of Limmera and one of the foundational architects of its organizational and operational infrastructure.

From the earliest stages of development, he has helped transform complex ideas into functioning systems, contributing to clinical documentation standards, quality assurance, provider education and veteran disability programs. Known for his precision, persistence and willingness to challenge assumptions, Ernie brings an essential perspective to organizational development: innovation requires both imagination and accountability. His contributions also extend into music, storytelling and creative exploration, reflecting a shared commitment to understanding human experience, resilience and transformation. At Limmera, Ernie helps bridge vision and execution, ensuring that ambitious ideas are supported by thoughtful, reliable systems.

Dr. Dale Werner brings extensive experience in healthcare economics, strategy, finance, and organizational development. His work spans payers, providers and healthcare transformation, with a particular focus on industry literacy, independent clinical practice, and informed decision-making. At Limmera, he helps connect ambitious ideas to the financial and operational realities of healthcare.

Dr. Werner brings experience across the healthcare ecosystem, spanning payers, providers, pharmacy benefit management, medical devices, and pharmaceuticals. He has held leadership roles in strategic finance, corporate development, analytics, and operations at Fortune 10 health insurers and large health systems. In Big 4 consulting, he worked on healthcare industry-shaping engagements through nationally impactful M&A, strategy, and transformation, and he continues to advise healthcare clients through Mindloft with a focus on patient experience, clinical and operational engagement, and access to care.

Dr. Werner has created and supported multiple behavioral health clinics and MSOs, ranging from private pay to payer-focused models, including Medicare- and Medicaid-centered, government-funded, and hybrid-reimbursed practices. He has built the payer contracting, credentialing, and operational infrastructure that supports growing multidisciplinary clinical teams. This work gives him a direct view of how reimbursement models, network participation, and regulatory understanding shape the financial complexities of human-centered care.

His work connects healthcare economics, behavioral strategy, organizational decision-making, and strategic finance. Dr. Werner advocates for expanding access to care by reducing stigma, maintaining strict controls over AI in clinical care, and limiting the influence of technology investment over clinical independence. He believes that, with the right information, clinicians can build and maintain sustainable, independent practices.

He holds a PhD in business psychology with research in behavioral economics, decision science, and consumer psychology, along with an MS in psychology, an MBA, and a BA in Economics, and he is a PsyD candidate and U.S. Navy veteran. He is certified as a Six Sigma Lean Master Black Belt, Prosci change management practitioner, executive coach, and valuation analyst. He is particularly interested in how clinicians and healthcare leaders interpret the financial and regulatory systems around them, and how that literacy improves the quality of their clinical, operational, and business decisions.

Madeline Flowers serves as Limmera's Creative Director, translating the founder's vision into a cohesive visual identity.

With a passion for fashion, aesthetics and thoughtfully designed environments, she helped develop Limmera's signature color palette and guides branding decisions, visual communications and public-facing materials. Madeline is also an emerging nurse leader in the Trauma & Burns ICU at UAB, bringing a perspective shaped by both high-acuity clinical care and creative expression.

Rachel Barry Stinson brings systems thinking, entrepreneurial experience and human-centered judgment to Limmera.

A longtime thought partner to the founder, she has helped shape and support the organization's evolving vision. Her ability to connect ideas across business, community, philanthropy and organizational strategy is complemented by a commitment to ethical leadership and meaningful human relationships. Drawing on experience in humanitarian service, entrepreneurship and relationship-building, Rachel helps Limmera consider not only what is possible, but what is worth building.

Greg McNeff brings a systems-level perspective to Limmera, examining how organizational structures, technology, processes and decisions interact - and identifying vulnerabilities that may not be immediately apparent.

A longtime strategic thought partner to the founder, Greg is valued for his independent judgment, willingness to challenge assumptions and ability to evaluate complex ideas from multiple perspectives. His contributions include strategic planning, risk assessment, governance considerations and organizational resilience. By identifying weaknesses in emerging systems and anticipating potential consequences, Greg helps strengthen the architecture supporting Limmera's long-term development.

Joe Olive brings extensive experience in business operations, organizational systems and technology integration to Limmera.

His career includes building a construction consulting firm and serving in executive leadership as Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. Combining operational experience with expertise in Claude and applied AI technologies, Joe helps bridge the gap between emerging technological capabilities and practical organizational needs. His approach emphasizes thoughtful process design, effective implementation and ensuring that technology serves the people and systems it is intended to support.

Timothy King contributes to Limmera's strategic development, bringing experience across business, technology, workforce solutions and organizational systems.

His ability to connect complex ideas, anticipate downstream consequences and identify emerging opportunities makes him a valuable strategic thought partner. Tim also helps develop external relationships and potential partnerships, connecting Limmera with people and organizations that may contribute to its long-term growth and mission.

Antonia "Toni" King plays a central role in Limmera's daily clinical operations, coordinating much of the administrative work that supports patient care, including scheduling, patient communications, billing, coding and clinical documentation workflows.

Adaptable and resourceful in a fast-paced healthcare environment, Toni helps maintain the organization, consistency and responsiveness essential to a functioning psychiatric practice. She also contributes to Limmera's technology initiatives and serves as Lead Developer for The Limmera Project.