Meet Dr. Tammy Martin-Causey

Her story

Dr. Martin-Causey has spent more than 20 years teaching professionals how to do difficult people work well. She began as a clinical program director in Greensboro, North Carolina, where she led a county-wide, multi-agency planning effort and authored the $500,000 federal grant that funded it. That early lesson stayed with her: real change happens when people with competing priorities find a reason to move together.

She went on to teach and supervise at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, where she also consulted to the Simon School of Business, and later taught doctoral-level courses in Arizona. She then founded Tamaca Leadership to bring what she knew about people, performance and change to business leaders.

Why this focus

Across clinical work, board leadership and coaching, the same thing keeps turning out to matter most: how people work with each other. Technical skill gets people in the door. Relationships decide what they can do once they're in. Today Dr. Martin-Causey puts special energy into helping early-career professionals, and the leaders who manage them, build the everyday relationship skills that many never had much chance to practice.

Clinical work

Alongside her leadership work, Dr. Martin-Causey is a licensed psychologist who leads an outpatient practice in Carefree, Arizona, and she still sees clients every week. She trains and supervises predoctoral interns, postdoctoral residents and master's-level counseling students. Her clinical work draws on CBT, DBT, trauma-informed care and exposure-based treatments, with measurement-based care to track how clients are doing.

She has also designed clinical programs for organizations beyond her practice: a substance use evaluation and treatment recommendation program for physicians with impairments, for a substance use treatment hospital; stress management services for physicians facing malpractice claims, for a medical malpractice insurer; and counseling for pregnant and postpartum mothers, for a birthing center. Earlier in her career she directed a child abuse services program, building its outcome measures. Clinical work keeps her grounded in what leaders and clinicians actually face, and it informs how she builds training that people use.

Leadership she has lived

Dr. Martin-Causey doesn't only coach leadership; she practices it. She served as President of the Division of Independent Practice of the American Psychological Association and now represents Arizona on the APA Council. She sits on the board of the Arizona Psychological Association and is Chair-Elect of the Association of Practicing Psychologists Caucus. These are volunteer roles where nobody reports to anyone, so every result depends on influence, consensus and trust.

She also built and has run her own professional practice for more than 20 years, entirely outside the insurance system. She understands entrepreneurship, payroll, risk and growth from the inside.

Beyond work

Dr. Martin-Causey is also a writer, with a postgraduate certificate from the New Directions Writing Program. She lives in Carefree, Arizona, and works with clients nationwide, virtually and on site.