Author: Tammy Nelson

April Wilson Smith, MPH, is a PhD student in Population Health at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. Her research focuses on harm reduction approaches to people who use substances when they enter the healthcare system.

April's other interest in healthcare is interprofessional education and teamwork. Her work with the Jefferson Center for InterProfessional Education won the 2016 James B. Erdmann PhD award for Excellence in Interprofessional Education. She is currently building a large, multidisciplinary coalition to create an interprofessional education module for healthcare professionals in best practices for the care of people who use drugs when they present in the acute care setting.

April is a Certified SMART Recovery facilitator and founded the first SMART Recovery meeting in the Philadelphia city limits. She is also co-founder of the only Harm Reduction, Abstinence and Moderation Support meeting in Philadelphia.

April recently accepted a position as Harm Reduction Epidemiologist with Families for Sensible Drug Policy, which is a non-profit dedicated to helping families advocate for drug policies that save drug users' lives and keep families together and healthy.  Co-founder and President, Barry Lessin, is also a Pro Talk columnist . 

April graduated from Yale University in 1996. She was a union organizer for healthcare workers for 18 years before going back to school for her Master of Public Health, and spent ten years as Director of Organizing for Pennsylvania's largest nurses' union. She lives in West Philadelphia with her beautiful black cat, Loviefluffy.

Located in Portland, OR, Olivia Pennelle (Liv) is an experienced writer, journalist, and coach. She is the founder of the popular site Liv’s Recovery Kitchen, a site dedicated to helping people flourish in their recovery.

Liv is passionate about challenging limiting mentalities and empowering others to direct their own lives, health, and recovery. You can find her articles across the web on podcasts and addiction recovery websites, including The Fix, Recovery.org, Workit Health, and Ravishly. Liv was recently featured in VICE.

If you're interested in connecting with Liv, you can find her on Instagram. She also created a new Facebook group called Life After 12 Steps, where she proudly sees members thriving, rather than forcing themselves to do something that doesn’t work.

Additionally, Liv offers free resources on her website, including the e-book entitled Nourishing You, which is designed to give you the tools to achieve your health goals in straightforward language.

Dr. Eric Maisel is the author of more than 40 books in the areas of creativity, meaning and mental health. He is widely regarded as America’s foremost creativity coach and has recently developed natural psychology, the new psychology of meaning. He writes the Coaching the Artist Within column for Professional Artist Magazine, and blogs for sites like the Global Summit on Diagnostic Alternatives and Mad in America. Dr. Maisel’s books for creative and performing artists include Secrets of a Creativity Coach, Making Your Creative Mark, Fearless Creating, Coaching the Artist Within, The Van Gogh Blues, The Creativity Book, Affirmations for Artists, Performance Anxiety, Write Mind, Deep Writing, A Writer’s Space, A Writer’s Paris, A Writer’s San Francisco, Creative Recovery and Creativity for Life. His books on mental health and meaning include Why Smart People Hurt, Rethinking Depression, Brainstorm: Harnessing the Power of Productive Obsessions, Toxic Criticism, and the forthcoming Life Purpose Boot Camp. Dr. Maisel leads workshops nationally and internationally. He presents at workshop centers like Omega, Kripalu, Esalen, Hollyhock, and Rowe, at events like the Paris Writers Workshop, at annual conferences of organizations like Romance Writers of America and the American Psychological Association, and in locations like San Francisco, New York, London, Paris, Prague, Rome and Berlin. Dr. Maisel lives in the San Francisco Bay Area where he maintains an active creativity coaching practice.

Helaina Hovitz is a journalist, editor, author, content strategist, mental health advocate and native New Yorker who has always had the unreasonable notion that she can help change the world.

Her memoir, After 9/11: One Girl’s Journey Through Darkness to a New Beginning, details her recovery from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and alcoholism.

Her experience has led her to a career as a journalist who writes about social good, social issues, mental health, and the ways that people are working to help make the world a better place.

Her continuing bylines appear in The New York Times, Women’s Health, Glamour, Salon, Newsday, New York Observer, Teen Vogue, VICE, Newsweek, Reader’s Digest, HEALTH, Fast Company, The Fix,The Daily Meal, Tasting Table, and many others.

To connect with Helaina, visit HelainaHovitz.com, follow her on Twitter @HelainaHovitz, Facebook/com/HelainaNHovitz, or reach out on LinkedIn.

Suzula Bidon is an attorney, advocate, and educator dedicated to policy reform that recognizes addiction as a public health issue best addressed with treatment – not punishment. In long-term recovery from addiction and depression herself, Bidon is also the creator of Recovery Yoga Meetings™, a yoga curriculum designed to support those seeking recovery.

Bidon struggled with addiction and depression for 18 years. After experimenting with alcohol and marijuana as a teenager, she moved to New York to study at Barnard College, and discovered harder drugs. She got addicted to heroin and withdrew from school. Two years later, while in a methadone treatment program, she returned to Barnard and graduated with a degree in theater.

After college, Bidon struggled to maintain sobriety, and she eventually relapsed on meth. She started dealing meth to support her habit, and in 2005, a friend asked her to send some of the drug to him in New York. It was a setup, and Bidon was federally indicted for a conspiracy drug charge.

Bidon spent 27 months in federal prison, and the experience inspired her to become a lawyer. She graduated magna cum laude from William Mitchell College of Law, and was admitted to the Minnesota bar. She practiced criminal defense, then served as the Interim Executive Director of Minnesota Recovery Connection, Minnesota’s first and largest Recovery Community Organization. Bidon worked closely with the Minnesota Department of Human Services to reform Minnesota’s Substance Use Disorder Treatment and Recovery Policy.

Currently, Bidon runs her own law firm, Bidon Law PLLC, specializing in expungements and policy consulting. Bidon also leads weekly Recovery Yoga Meetings™ in yoga centers and treatment facilities throughout Minnesota, and trains and certifies yoga teachers to lead Recovery Yoga Meetings™ throughout the country.

Driven by her own experience with addiction, recovery, and the criminal justice system, Bidon is committed to eradicating discrimination and the collateral consequences that prevent people with the disease of addiction from maintaining lives in recovery. She speaks regularly about her personal experience, and addiction law and policy, in a variety of forums. She has testified at the legislature about sentencing guideline reform, she presents Continuing Legal Education seminars for legal professionals, she speaks in treatment centers, and at events around the country. She has been featured in The Huffington Post, Star Tribune, and Forbes.com. Her article, “A New Call to Action: Lawyers and Addiction” was published in the Jan/Feb 2017 issue of The Hennepin Lawyer.

Bidon volunteers her time for public service as well. She is a member of Minnesota’s Lawyers Assistance Program, Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers (LCL), where she sits on the Cases and Interventions Committee. Bidon is also the Chair of the Ramsey County Citizen’s Advisory Council Chemical Health Committee.

With over seven years of experience treating the chemically-dependent population of San Diego, Lindsay Kramer is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (MFT) that brings expertise, compassion, and perpetually-evolving insight into her work at Caroline Stewart and Associates. Lindsay graduated from the University of San Diego with her Master's degree in Marital and Family Therapy 2008, but began her work with families and their children in 2004 by providing parent education and social skills groups to hundreds of families in San Bernardino country.

A San Diego native, Lindsay continued her work with school-aged children while beginning graduate school in 2006, but found her passion in the mental health field when she initiated her clinical hours at the Phoenix House of San Diego. During this three-year period, Lindsay immersed herself in the demographic of adolescents and their families that struggled to overcome substance abuse/dependence. From there, Lindsay solidified her future as a psychotherapist as she learned that the "dual diagnosis" focus was inherently a second language due to the combination of her own family experience and resounding comfort in this often-challenging work. Lindsay then transitioned to San Diego's East County empire as she took a job as a Dual Diagnosis clinician for the county-funded nonprofit, San Diego Youth Services. Lindsay spent three more years deepening her understanding of multi-generational addiction and mental illnesses by providing outpatient services to low-income families through East County juvenile probation and school-based clinical sites. Lindsay now treats chemically-dependent adults within an inpatient/day treatment setting though the SHARP McDonald Center, which allows her to continue enhancing her passion for overall recovery and long-term growth within the individuals and families in which she serves.

Though typically provided on a long-term treatment modality, Lindsay also provides psychotherapy on a short-term, solution-focused basis. Lindsay is fluent in working with individuals, couples, and families, and loves a good therapeutic challenge. Aside from her expertise in chemical dependency/addictive behaviors, Lindsay specializes in the treatment of depressive and anxiety disorders, behavioral problems in adolescents (ranging from ADHD to conduct disorder), complex traumas (including abuse and PTSD), personality disorders, and phase of life problems. Lindsay is also always up-to-date with current drug trends that are so pervasively (and unfortunately) impacting our communities, families, and children.