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Board Members and StaffNCMHR StaffLauren Spiro, Director
She has served on a number of boards and was a founding board member of two non-profit mental health corporations. She has served on CARF's International Cultural Diversity Advisory Group and International Standards Advisory Committee and on numerous federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's initiatives, projects, webinars, and planning committees. She has traveled a long road from being labeled and institutionalized as a teenager with chronic schizophrenia to traveling the country as an educator and advocate for systems change while inspiring audiences to think differently about the personal, organizational and social dynamics of recovery, inclusion and liberation. She is passionate about her vision of an America where every individual is respected and embraced as a valued member of the community. She has an M.A. in Clinical/Community Psychology and is an artist who has awakened to the power of creative expression as a tool to transform society. Raymond L. Bridge, Director of Public PolicyRay is a person in recovery from depression who became an advocate because of his own experiences and those of his family members. He is passionate about empowerment and justice. Beginning in 1990 he helped to found and lead three mental health consumer organizations: the Northern Virginia Mental Health Consumers Association, VOCAL, and the Laurie Mitchell Employment Center in Northern Virginia. Ray has been active in advocacy and transformation of Virginia’s public mental health system at the state, regional and local level. He served as president of the state Mental Health Planning Council for three years, was a member of an Olmstead Oversight Committee, and helped to design Virginia’s Medicaid Buy-in program. In 2008, Ray played a leading role in creating seven recovery projects in Northern Virginia that were funded as part of the Governor’s mental health transformation initiative. Ray comes to NCMHR from Mental Health America, where he was a writer and consumer advocate. He spent a career in government communications. NCMHR Board of Directors
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Copyright © 2012, National Coalition for Mental Health Recovery, Inc. All rights reserved |
As director of the National Coalition for Mental Health Recovery (www.ncmhr.org), the largest U.S. grassroots organization representing people with the lived experience of mental health recovery, Lauren Spiro's vision of social justice and liberation fuels the Coalition's work on Capitol Hill and the Washington DC metropolitan region, advancing the values, policies and legislative priorities of mental health consumers/survivor/ex-psychiatric inmates across the country.
Ronda was labeled with mental illness at a very young age and decided early on that she would somehow devote her life to helping people with their rights and recovery journeys. She is the Executive Director of KEY Consumer Organization Inc., an education & advocacy organization for people with mental health and addiction issues. Ronda has a Governor's appointment to the legislative Mental Illness & Addiction Commission. She has served in this capacity for the last 6 years. She is Chair of the Indiana Consumer Council, a member of the Indiana Mental Health & Addiction Planning & Advisory Council; Chair of the Indiana Protection & Advocacy Mental Illness Advisory Council; Secretary of the IPAS Commission; and participates on various boards and councils throughout the state. 
Linda has been the Executive Director of the statewide consumer run agency of Vermont (Vermont Psychiatric Survivors) for 9 years. Previously she was the Recovery Education Coordinator for Vermont Recovery Education Project. Linda began having mental health issues at age 6. She is passionate about recovery and building peer leadership. Linda believes that recovery is a personal process which each individual must define for one’s self.
Mike is the Executive Director of On Our Own of Maryland, Inc., a statewide mental health consumer advocacy and education organization, which has a combined membership of over 1,400 people and represents 20 affiliated independent, mental health consumer-operated agencies around Maryland. Mr. Finkle is also a former Chairperson of the joint Maryland Advisory Council on Mental Hygiene and the federal P.L. 102-21 State Planning Council. He has been involved in mental health consumer advocacy since 1981 and helped coordinate and host the first national Alternatives Conference which was held in 1985 in Baltimore, MD.
Dan obtained a PhD in biochemistry and carried out neurochemical research at the National Institutes of Mental Health. During the course of that work, he was labeled with mental illness. He recovered, earned a medical degree and became a psychiatrist. As co-founder and Executive Director of the National Empowerment Center, he has been an outspoken advocate for rights and recovery. Dan was a Commissioner on the White House New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. He promotes recovery throughout the US and in Japan, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, United Kingdom, Portugal and Korea.
My home is Lafayette, Louisiana and I am very happy to be an advocate for those of us who suffer from mental illness. I am presently president for the primary state consumer organization, Meaningful Minds of Louisiana. My advocacy work has been to bridge gaps between Office of Mental Health and those that are served by this consumer-run organization, I am President of the local chapter for Mental Health Association and co- chair for the Regional Advisory Council in my region. I am also very active in committees within my state on the state level. Making a difference is what I choose to do with my life.
Five years ago, Todd Lange fueled his recovery from depression and anxiety through service to NAMI and the peer-run Wellness Center in Dubuque. Todd credits his ongoing recovery to building connections with others and finding purposeful work.
Kathy is Director of Consumer Organization and Networking Technical Assistance Center (CONTAC), West Virginia, which oversees implementation of self-help education and training programs such as the Leadership Academy. She has facilitated Leadership Academy workshops and presentations for several years as well as authored articles on leadership and empowerment. Ms. Muscari applies both personal and professional expertise to facilitate skill-development in areas of wellness and recovery, non-profit governance, transformational leadership, and peer support.
Ann Rider lives in Phoenix, Arizona, where she grew up and lived a psychiatric and substance abuse history. She became involved in the c/s/x movement 11 years ago when she wrote her first peer support curriculum. She has since written two more distinct peer support curriculum, including one currently in use by a Native American provider in Arizona and the one in use by her agency, Recovery Empowerment Network (REN). Ann earned an MSW from Arizona State University where she has taught and where she continues to teach social work interns. She did undergrad work in mediation and dialogue and continues to work in conflict resolution. Ann is currently the Executive Director of REN, having founded it in 2005. REN was awarded a statewide consumer network grant by SAMHSA, expanding their activities in system transformation and legislative advocacy. Ann brought 300 people from peer-run programs in Arizona to the state legislature, four days after the tragic shootings in Tucson in 2011. Her basic belief is that people can reclaim a full life in the community, and that all of us can learn to exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. 
Joseph Rogers is executive director of the National Mental Health Consumers' Self-Help Clearinghouse, one of five consumer and consumer supporter national technical assistance centers funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration/Center for Mental Health Services; and chief of advocacy of the Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania. He has testified before U.S. Senate committees; has consulted in more than 30 states, as well as nationally and internationally; has served on numerous boards and committees; and has received a number of local and national awards, including the 2005 Heinz Award for the Human Condition, which is accompanied by a $250,000 unrestricted cash award.
David (Dave) Sanders has had an eighteen year career in the behavioral healthcare field. He has spent the last decade of his career working for the WV Mental Health Consumers Association doing systemic community and public policy advocacy at the state and local level, and recently joined the West Virginia Bureau for Behavioral Health and Health Facilities in the Office of Consumer Affairs and Community Outreach. Dave is in recovery from mental health and substance abuse issues, and enjoys sharing the story of his recovery journey with others, as well as mental health public policy analysis and advocacy. He has presented nationally on several topics including public policy advocacy, psychiatric advance directives, supported housing, due process issues in involuntary treatment and mental health recovery. In his spare time he enjoys volunteering as a mental health and addiction state policy analyst for a cross disability advocacy group known as the Fair Shake Network. 
Co-Founder and Director of Advocacy/Program Development of Consumer Action Network (CAN) is a leading advocate on consumer issues in the District of Columbia. She has promoted self-direction and recovery for users of mental health services in many ways, from co-launching the first consumer-operated professional organization, to promoting entrepreneurship concepts for consumers, and Serving on various State and national-level committees and advisory boards, including the DC State Mental Health Planning Council. She encourages people who use services to be involved in policy and program development to become drivers of system change. Effie is also a member of the Board of Directors for the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless and is passionate about enhancing housing options for persons with disabilities.
Charles Willis is the Georgia Peer Support Resiliency Project Director with the GA Mental Health Consumer Network, an organization that promotes recovery through advocacy, education, employment empowerment, peer support and self-help. His work in the area of Self Directed Recovery has led him to become an Advanced Level Wrap Facilitator through the Copeland Center. He is an enthusiastic individual with over 20 years of successful, results-oriented experience in the helping professions of education and facilitation. In addition, Mr. Willis has worked as a Senior Research Interviewer with Emory University Grace Crum Rollins School of Public Health. .jpg)
Amy Zulich is the director of Peerlink National Technical Assistance Center, a SAMHSA funded project of Mental Health America of Oregon. MHAO/Peerlink is an inclusive grass roots mental health organization dedicated to empowering consumer/survivor voices to drive services and policies that foster wellness and full participation in life choices and recovery. Before working for MHAO, Amy developed and coordinated programs at Empowerment Initiatives, a peer-run agency providing peer mentor services in Portland Oregon. She also serves on Disability Rights Oregon's PAIMI (Protection and Advocacy for Individuals with Mental Illness) Council and on the board of directors of the Oregon Consumer/Survivor Coalition. She uses her personal and professional experiences with wellness and mental health recovery to power her service and advocacy efforts.
Sally Zinman has been a pioneer in the mental patient rights movement for almost thirty years. In 1977, Sally founded a client-run organization called the Mental Patients' Rights Association in West Palm Beach, Florida. This organization developed a small, unfunded, all-volunteer client-run community center and shared living space. These were among the first client-run drop-in centers and supportive housing projects in the country. Later, in 1985 in Berkeley, California, she helped found the Coalition for Alternatives in Mental health, known as the Berkeley Drop-In Center, one of the first funded self-help agencies in the country.