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.

Jay Westbrook is a multiple award-winning clinician & speaker, Visiting Faculty Scholar at Harvard Medical School, and a specialist in End-of-Life care & education. He holds an MS in Gerontology, is a Grief Recovery Specialist, an R.N., & a Certified Hospice & Palliative Nurse. Saddened by the number of mature adults dying with diseases related to their substance abuse, he now also works with the recovery community to guide the mature adult alcoholic/addict to find & maintain sobriety & recovery. He can be reached at CompassionateJourney@hotmail.com

Tori Utley is an entrepreneur working jointly in technology innovation and addiction recovery, holding an M.B.A. and an addictions counseling license in Minnesota. By day, she works as a mobile Product Manager at Mayo Clinic and is working with the Department of Psychiatry and Psychology on a new mobile application for mood monitoring and mental health.

Outside of Mayo Clinic, she is the Founder and CEO of an early‐stage tech and social venture startup company, Tinua, with the goal of reducing monetary waste by reallocating for social impact. She is also the Founder and Executive Director of More Than An Addict, an organization committed to the reduction of addiction stigma through promoting education, employment, and entrepreneurship for individuals in long‐term recovery, as well as the Co‐Founder of an upcoming innovation to addiction treatment and sober housing, with the goal of keeping recovering individuals “safe, sober, now.”

In addition to her work with addiction recovery, she is a Contributing Writer with Forbes, maintains participation with the Forbes Under 30 Network, and serves as the Director of Strategic Engagement at Mission 21, an anti‐trafficking organization in Minnesota.

Linda Hatch has had a long career in clinical psychology including teaching, research, student counseling, child psychology and crisis intervention. In addition she worked for many years through the court system evaluating sex offenders, sexually violent predators and mentally ill offenders. In recent years her work has been in the field of trauma and addiction. Linda is the author of the books Living with a Sex Addict: The Basics from Crisis to Recovery and Relationships in Recovery: A Guide for Sex Addicts who are Starting Over. She devotes considerable time to her writing which includes blogging on her regular column on PsychCentral.com as well as on her own website. Linda lives in Santa Barbara, California with her husband David, their border collie Perry and their cat Clara.

Marni Greenberg is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist in California (License # PSY23970) with a doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology. She opened her private practice in the summer of 2011 after 10 years of experience working for non-profit agencies in San Diego, California and Boston, Massachusetts. In addition to her private practice, Dr. Greenberg also works with H.E.L.P. (Home-Based Effective Living Professionals), providing in-home therapy services, and she performs assessments for U.S. veterans to clarify their mental health diagnosis.