Find Recovery, by People in Recovery

I am a person in long term recovery and a Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor with more than a decade of experience providing substance use disorder treatment and recovery support across detoxification, residential, outpatient, intensive outpatient, jail based, and court involved settings. My career spans direct clinical care, peer support, systems development, leadership, and public service, allowing me to understand recovery from the inside out and at every level of the system.

I began as a Certified Peer Support Specialist before transitioning into clinical and leadership roles. My practice draws on Motivational Interviewing, CBT, DBT, relapse prevention, trauma informed care, Thinking for a Change, Moral Reconation Therapy, and Recovery Oriented Systems of Care principles. I have worked extensively with justice involved populations, post overdose engagement teams, and individuals with co occurring mental health and substance use disorders.

Throughout my career, I have provided services in detoxification units, residential treatment facilities, and community based intensive outpatient programs as both a group facilitator and individual counselor. I have also served as Coordinator of the Quick Response Team QRT and as Director of the LEAD Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program, helping bridge public safety and behavioral health systems to expand access to recovery pathways.

Penny and I co founded and facilitated the STAR diversion program in partnership with the Findlay Municipal Court, developing a court approved education and diversion initiative focused on accountability, behavioral change, and recovery support.

Beyond direct service, I have served for seven years and continue to serve on the Ohio Chemical Dependency Professionals Board Treatment Committee, contributing to licensure standards, education and training requirements, ethical oversight, and workforce policy development. I have collaborated with ADAMHS Boards, participated in opioid task forces, and served on nonprofit boards, including as a member of the Board of Directors for Focus Recovery and Wellness Community.

I have presented on recovery, stigma reduction, and workforce development at the University of Findlay, the University of Bluffton, the University of Toledo, and Ohio Northern University. I have also provided testimony before the Ohio Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review (JCARR) on behavioral health workforce shortages and access to care.

I currently provide substance use disorder treatment at the Allen-Oakwood Correctional Institution (AOCI) in Lima, Ohio, which includes the Oakwood Correctional Facility (OCF)—the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction's specialized forensic unit for inmates in acute mental health crisis. Working at this intersection of incarceration, addiction, and serious mental illness reinforces what has defined my entire career: meeting people where they are.

Red Door Recovery Network is the product of everything I have lived, learned, and built—designed to reduce barriers, center lived experience, and connect people to care with dignity, accuracy, and respect.

My work reflects a commitment to strengthening recovery systems at every level, from individual healing to policy reform, while remaining grounded in lived experience and frontline service.

Our co-founder is a seasoned peer recovery leader whose work has shaped recovery access and outcomes across multiple systems of care. She served as the Opioid Quick Response Team (QRT) Director, leading post-overdose engagement efforts and coordinating rapid, compassionate outreach to individuals and families at critical moments of readiness for change. In addition, she spent many years as a jail-based case manager, working directly with incarcerated individuals to support re-entry, treatment linkage, and the early foundations of recovery—often engaging people at their most vulnerable and overlooked moments.

As a Regional Peer Center Manager and CPRS Supervisor, she built three peer recovery centers from the ground up—these centers did not exist until she developed, launched, and operationalized them. She authored all policies, procedures, rules, and training manuals for the peer support professionals staffing each location, establishing the standards that guided day-to-day operations and ensured consistent, ethical peer practice across all three sites. She simultaneously managed all three centers and supervised approximately 15 certified peer supporters, ensuring program fidelity and trauma-informed engagement. She is highly experienced in group facilitation and recovery education, with hands-on expertise in Matrix Model, Living in Balance, and SMART Recovery, and has facilitated a wide range of groups including yoga, art in recovery, life-skills development, and active recovery programming.

She also co-developed the Survivors Talking About Recovery (STAR) program in partnership with Scott and the Findlay Municipal Court. Penny was instrumental in building the program from the ground up—identifying, recruiting, and coordinating all guest speakers who shared their lived experiences with court-ordered participants. Her ability to connect with survivors and family members willing to tell their stories gave the program its heart and its impact, ensuring that every session carried authentic, powerful testimony from people who had lived through the realities of addiction and recovery.

Penny's greatest strength has always been the clients no one else wanted to take on—people caught in decades-long cycles of incarceration and addiction, written off by systems that had stopped trying. She chose them. She sat with men and women who had been locked up more times than they could count, who had burned every bridge and buried every chance, and she helped them build something they had never had: a life with purpose. That was her specialty—not a program or a model, but an unwillingness to give up on people the rest of the world had already given up on.

Across every role and setting, Penny has provided direct peer support to hundreds of individuals impacted by substance use disorder, combining lived experience, structured recovery models, and human connection to help people move from crisis toward stability. Her leadership is grounded in service, dignity, and accountability, and her impact is measured not just in programs built—but in lives changed through consistent, person-centered peer support.

Red Door Recovery Network carries forward everything Penny has built, opened, and fought for—a belief that recovery is possible for everyone, and that the people best equipped to guide others through it are those who have walked the path themselves.

Her life's work is proof that one person's willingness to show up—in a jail cell, a courtroom, a peer center, or a moment of crisis—can open a door that changes everything.