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TRAILS

TRAILS is the U-M-founded school mental health implementation platform. About 115 employees in Ann Arbor, adjacent to the Center for Academic Innovation.

A2Hub Editorial· Rusty Roof Media· Updated May 4, 2026

TRAILS

TRAILS sits in the part of the Ann Arbor tech ecosystem that does not get talked about often enough. U-M-founded mission-driven organizations that have grown into substantial employers without going through the venture capital scaling motion. The organization was founded at the University of Michigan in 2013 as a mental health implementation program for K-12 schools, built around evidence-based clinical practices that the founding clinicians wanted to make actually accessible to school staff in the field. TRAILS has grown to approximately 115 employees per Built In's aggregate reporting, runs training and technical assistance relationships with schools and districts across the country, and operates adjacent to the University of Michigan's Center for Academic Innovation in the broader U-M implementation-science and behavioral-health community. For a city whose tech narrative is dominated by venture-backed startups, TRAILS is a useful reminder that some of Ann Arbor's most consequential technology organizations are structured as mission-driven entities and funded through grants, district contracts, and philanthropic partnerships.

Quick facts

  • Founded: 2013, at the University of Michigan
  • Founders: Founded by a team of U-M clinicians and implementation researchers led by Dr. Elizabeth Koschmann
  • HQ: Ann Arbor, Michigan
  • Headcount: Approximately 115 per Built In's aggregate reporting
  • Organizational structure: Mission-driven organization; funded via grants, philanthropic support, district contracts, and foundation partnerships
  • Mission: Evidence-based mental health training and implementation support for K-12 schools
  • Adjacent U-M affiliation: Close working relationships with U-M Medicine and the U-M Center for Academic Innovation community
  • Current leader: Dr. Elizabeth Koschmann, founder and executive director
  • Sector tags: healthtech, edtech, mental health, nonprofit, implementation science
  • Careers: trailstowellness.org/careers
  • Website: trailstowellness.org
  • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/trails-to-wellness

What TRAILS makes

TRAILS is something between a curriculum, a training program, a clinical-protocol library, and an ongoing technical assistance relationship that schools and districts adopt to build durable mental health support capacity for students. The structural insight the organization was built on is that the bottleneck in school-based mental health is not knowledge of what works. The clinical evidence on how to support adolescent mental health in school settings has been reasonably well documented for years. The bottleneck is implementation. Training school staff, supporting them through the rollout, providing the materials and protocols they need to deliver care, and sustaining that capacity as staff turn over.

Evidence-based clinical protocols. Curriculum materials and protocols rooted in cognitive behavioral therapy and related evidence-based practices for adolescent anxiety, depression, suicidality, and the stress reactions that show up in classroom settings. The protocols are packaged so that trained school staff can deliver them with fidelity rather than being structured as clinician-only interventions.

Training and coaching. Multi-phase training for school counselors, social workers, psychologists, and other student-support staff. Training includes foundational coursework, applied skill practice, and ongoing coaching cycles that run into the school year rather than ending after an initial workshop.

Implementation support. Technical assistance for districts implementing TRAILS, covering change management, rollout planning, measurement, and sustaining capacity across staff turnover. This is the operational difference between a training program that produces a brief spike in capability and a platform that produces durable capability change.

Digital tooling. Protocol libraries, fidelity tracking, outcome measurement, and operational tooling that lets a district see whether its TRAILS implementation is actually being delivered as designed. The digital layer is what makes TRAILS a real technology organization rather than only a training nonprofit.

Tiered program model. TRAILS operates a tiered service model across universal classroom education, small-group skill-building, and more intensive individual support. The tiering lets districts deploy the program at the intensity a given school population actually needs.

A school or district adopts TRAILS by training its own staff in the protocols. Those staff deliver the care with ongoing TRAILS support. The model deliberately does not put TRAILS clinicians in the school. The school staff who already know the students deliver the care, with TRAILS providing the framework, training, and technical assistance. That is the operational unlock. There are not enough adolescent mental health clinicians in the United States to staff every school directly. There are, however, school-based counselors, social workers, and psychologists in most schools. Equipping that existing workforce to deliver evidence-based care is the only economically viable way to scale.

The Ann Arbor story

TRAILS was founded in 2013 inside the University of Michigan by a team of clinicians and implementation researchers led by Dr. Elizabeth Koschmann, who continues to lead the organization as founder and executive director. The founding context matters. U-M's Department of Psychiatry, the Michigan Medicine network, and the U-M Center for Academic Innovation community provided the clinical research base, the implementation-science methodology, and the education-systems knowledge that informed the program. TRAILS grew inside U-M before structuring into a distinct organizational entity, and the working relationships with U-M Medicine and the Center for Academic Innovation community have persisted through the organization's scale-up. For a profile about adjacency rather than reporting lines, that Center for Academic Innovation community is part of why TRAILS sits structurally where it does in the ecosystem.

The growth trajectory has been steady rather than explosive. TRAILS has expanded from an initial Michigan-focused footprint into partnerships across multiple states, with district-level deployments that span urban, suburban, and rural settings. Headcount has grown to approximately 115 per Built In's reporting, with staff spanning clinical training roles, district partnership managers, curriculum developers, software engineers and product managers on the digital tooling side, research and measurement staff, and operations. That is a substantial in-town employer. For comparison, it is larger than several of the venture-backed startups profiled on this site.

Ann Arbor is the right city for this work. U-M produces clinical social workers, psychologists, educators, and public health professionals in the specific mix TRAILS needs. The cost structure of operating from Ann Arbor gives the organization more runway per grant dollar than a coastal base would. And the broader life-sciences pillar and Ann Arbor healthtech ecosystem, with Workit Health on the telehealth addiction side and ArborMetrix on the clinical-data-platform side, gives TRAILS a peer set of serious mission-adjacent organizations. The Center for Academic Innovation adjacency is useful for the program's education-systems work and for shared methodology conversations across U-M's implementation-science community.

Funding and structure

TRAILS operates as a mission-driven organization rather than as a venture-backed startup. Funding comes from a mix of federal and state grants, philanthropic support (including several multi-year foundation commitments), district and state-level service contracts, and project-specific funding partnerships. The funding model sustains the organization without the unit-economics pressure of a typical SaaS company, which is the right model for the work. Schools cannot pay venture-scale per-seat pricing for mental health implementation support, and the public-good case for delivering this work at school-system scale is strong enough that grant and philanthropic capital is available.

That structural choice has trade-offs. The organization will not produce a venture-style exit. The flip side is durability. Several venture-backed adolescent mental health platforms have collapsed in the post-2022 funding environment. TRAILS has continued to grow through the same window because its unit economics are not dependent on venture-growth assumptions.

Culture and hiring

TRAILS hires clinical trainers and coaches with backgrounds in CBT and school-based mental health, district partnership managers, curriculum developers, implementation science researchers, software engineers and product managers on the digital tooling team, measurement and evaluation staff, and operations and finance. The work profile is unusually interdisciplinary. A product manager at TRAILS is working with clinicians, school-system administrators, and education researchers simultaneously. That is a specific taste, and it suits candidates who want mission-aligned technical work.

Work model is hybrid with an Ann Arbor anchor and field-based work for roles that support district partnerships across the country. Compensation and benefits are consistent with a well-funded mission-driven nonprofit in higher-education-adjacent work. Public Glassdoor signal trends positive on mission alignment, work, and team depth.

Why they matter for Ann Arbor tech

For Ann Arbor specifically, TRAILS is part of a small but meaningful set of U-M-founded mission-driven technology organizations that anchor the city's clinical and behavioral health technology cluster. The pattern resembles what Arbor Research Collaborative for Health represents on the kidney and population health research side. Serious, technical, evidence-based work being done from Ann Arbor at meaningful scale, employing real numbers of clinical researchers, software engineers, and implementation specialists. That kind of organization does not produce flashy headlines. It does produce stable, mission-aligned employment for the kind of clinical and technical talent that U-M trains in volume.

FAQ

What is TRAILS? TRAILS is a school mental health training and implementation support organization founded at the University of Michigan in 2013. It trains school staff to deliver evidence-based adolescent mental health care to students through a tiered program model.

Where is TRAILS based? Ann Arbor, Michigan, with roughly 115 employees per Built In's aggregate reporting. The organization has partnerships with districts across multiple states.

Is TRAILS a for-profit company? No. TRAILS operates as a mission-driven organization rather than as a venture-backed startup. Funding comes from a mix of grants, philanthropic support, district contracts, and foundation partnerships.

Who delivers the actual care? School-based counselors, social workers, and psychologists who have been trained in the TRAILS protocols. TRAILS does not staff clinicians directly in schools. The model equips existing school mental health staff to deliver evidence-based care, with TRAILS providing curriculum, training, coaching, and ongoing implementation support.

Why is TRAILS on an Ann Arbor tech site? TRAILS is one of the larger U-M-founded employers in Washtenaw County, operates a substantial digital and operational technology stack, and is part of the Ann Arbor clinical and behavioral health technology cluster. The U-M Center for Academic Innovation community and Michigan Medicine adjacencies matter for the work.

Who runs TRAILS? Dr. Elizabeth Koschmann is the founder and executive director. The leadership team spans clinical, research, education, and operational disciplines, consistent with the organization's interdisciplinary work.

Related Ann Arbor healthtech and mission-driven organizations

  • Workit Health is the Ann Arbor telehealth addiction treatment company with complementary evidence-based behavioral health work.
  • Amesite is the Ann Arbor NASDAQ-listed AI edtech company, with adjacencies in institution-facing learning technology.
  • ArborMetrix is the Ann Arbor healthcare real-world data analytics company operating in the broader clinical-data-platform category.
  • The Ann Arbor healthtech hub is the category directory.
  • The Ann Arbor life-sciences pillar covers the broader Michigan Medicine-rooted cluster.
  • The site homepage is the master directory.