Join us as we hear about the Opioid Epidemic and abatement efforts from the Tennessee Abatement Council and author Sam Quinones.

Speaker Bios:

Mary Shelton

Mary Shelton is the Executive Director of Tennessee’s Opioid Abatement Council. As Executive Director, Ms. Shelton provides day-to-day leadership, management, and oversight for the functions of the Council, directly supports Council members, and supervises Council staff.  She was selected by a unanimous vote of the Council’s membership at their first meeting on July 8, 2022.

Ms. Shelton was previously the Director of Behavioral Health Services at the Division of TennCare where she provided end-to-end oversight of all mental health and substance use disorder Medicaid benefits for 1.4 million TennCare beneficiaries, including annual expense management of $500 million. She directed the design, implementation, and operations of TennCare’s statewide buprenorphine and methadone Medication Assisted Treatment programs which serves 12,000 TennCare beneficiaries annually. Ms. Shelton oversaw behavioral health and primary care integration efforts and the value-based payment programs for multiple provider-level programs. 

Ms. Shelton has worked for the State of Tennessee for more than 30 years, serving Tennesseans at both the Division of TennCare and the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services. She is an alumnus of LEAD Tennessee and has received the 2009 President’s Award from Tennessee Association of Mental Health Organizations (TAMHO) and the 2022 Public Policy Advocacy Award from National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), Tennessee.

She has her undergraduate degree from Tennessee Technological University, graduate degree from Trevecca Nazarene University and studied Public Health at East Tennessee State University.

Nathan Payne

Nathan holds a master’s degree in mental health counseling from Tennessee Tech University; he is also a Certified Peer Recovery Specialist with 10+ years of experience working in the addiction recovery field. 

Nathan currently serves as Program Director for the Opioid Abatement Office; in his role he assists the Executive Director in day-to-day functions as well as overseeing the development and implementation of the Community Advocacy Panel. In his spare time, Nathan enjoys ultrarunning as well as blacksmithing and woodworking. 

Sam Quinones 

Sam Quinones is a journalist and author whose work has been pivotal in understanding America’s opioid crisis. His award-winning books include Dreamland (2015), a landmark account of the epidemic’s origins, and The Least of Us (2021), which examines the rise of fentanyl and meth and highlights community resilience.

A former Los Angeles Times reporter, Quinones spent a decade in Mexico covering immigration, trafficking, and culture, then returned to the U.S. to report on gangs, drugs, and border issues. His storytelling combines investigative depth with the human stories behind the drug trade and recovery efforts.

Quinones has received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Maria Moors Cabot Prize, and the Alicia Patterson Fellowship. He writes the Dreamland Newsletter on Substack and speaks nationwide on drug policy, addiction, and grassroots solutions.

To read more about Sam, visit his website here.