- Meet Our Team -
Chief Operating Officer
Why I Do This Work Ava Health is my legacy work—the culmination of almost 35 years of daily practice.
Our behavioral health system is fractured. It is siloed, disjointed, and too often driven by what someone can afford rather than what they need. The disparities are plain. And at this stage in my life and career, I find I’m no longer tilting at windmills.
Instead, I’m building something rooted in integration, belonging, and the idea that high-quality care should be a right, not a reward.
What I Bring Professionally I’ve worked across nearly every setting imaginable—long-term therapeutic communities, skilled nursing for Medicaid clients with complex co-occurring needs, methadone programs, OBOT, harm reduction efforts like needle exchange and safer dancing, even wet houses.
I bring deep operational expertise, but more than that, I bring curiosity. After all these years, I still believe this: the people we serve are our greatest teachers.
How I Show Up at Ava I show up ready to ask, “Why not?”
At Ava, we build cultures of curiosity. We honor the wisdom and experience of those we serve—not as case numbers or outcomes to be managed, but as fellow travelers in search of meaning and purpose. We are here both as guides and as pilgrims.
The Emotional Core
Ava Health is where I stopped pointing fingers and started building answers.
I no longer have to focus on what others aren’t doing—I get to invest my energy in what we can do. This work allows me to center curiosity, to ask:
What don’t I know? How can I show up differently? That’s where transformation lives.
What Grounds Me Love. My sons are the center of my life. Watching them grow and succeed is the deepest joy I know.
I hold close the words of Carl Rogers, paraphrased here: To be unchanging is a kind of living death. Life—real life—is messy. It moves. There are highs and lows, joy, and pain. And I welcome all of it as the price of this magical existence.
