GROVE
INSTITUTE
Where care, culture, and collaboration intersect to create new possibilities for individuals and communities
& where backcountry meets behavioral health
About Us
Founded by Kallie Kurtz, LICSW, Grove Institute is designed to be a collective space for healing, learning, and expanding knowledge of behavioral health at the intersections of clinical practice, research, policy, law, and outdoor leadership. At its core, Grove Institute is a clinical mental health practice grounded in culture, connection, and collaboration between clients, clinicians, and community.
Together, we are cultivating Grove to grow into:
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A hub for the research, education, and expansion of knowledge across disciplines of behavioral health
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A policy and legal consultation center advocating for care-based responses to behavioral health conditions
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A community and cultural space where healing, learning, and justice are woven together
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As a collective, Grove Institute symbolizes our vision to:
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Root our work in care, community, and interconnection.
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Challenge systems that fail and nurture those that heal.
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Cultivate knowledge that strengthens both individuals and society.
Our Mission
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A statement from our founder
We chose the name Grove because a grove is more than a stand of trees, it is an ecosystem of connection, shelter, and resilience. In a grove, roots intertwine, each tree strengthening the others. It is a place of gathering, protection, and growth. Groves also remind us of the natural world’s wisdom: trees connect not only through visible roots, but through vast and subtle ecological networks, exchanging nutrients, information, and support across distances. Just as groves are part of a larger living system, so too are we as humans, connected in small, often unseen ways that shape our collective survival and thriving.
The word Institute reflects our mission to create a structured yet collaborative space where people come together to apply the best solutions we know today while fostering the innovative ones we will need tomorrow. An institute is not only a place of study, but a living forum of exchange, accountability, and collective problem-solving.
At the same time, we acknowledge the reality that institutions, especially within mental health and social systems, have caused profound harm. Institutions have often perpetuated stigma, enforced hierarchy, silenced lived experience, and replicated oppressive structures within the very spaces meant for care and healing. We do not shy away from this truth. Instead, we are working to redress institution back to its roots: as a collaborative scaffolding built on accountability, collective wisdom, and shared responsibility. While much harm has been and continues to be done in the name of institutions, we believe there is opportunity to repair, to realign with structures of our world where necessary, and to reimagine what an institute can be when rooted in justice, connection, and care.
Grove Institute is rooted – like a grove of trees – in the belief that health and change happen in connection. At its core, the Institute fosters collaboration, culture, and belonging while expanding collective understanding of behavioral health — breaking down stigma, increasing access, and challenging the systems that mislabel or criminalize human conditions that are, at their heart, health needs.