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Interim Leadership Team

Written on . Posted in News.

Dear Friends, Colleagues, Collaborators, Funders, and Community Partners:

With a mixture of sadness and optimism, I’d like to let you know that the Chicago Recovery Alliance has established an interim leadership team. Greg Scott will serve as the Interim Executive Director with considerable support from Associate Directors Karen Stanczykiewicz and Suzanne Carlberg-Racich. I (Maya Doe-Simkins) will be temporarily stepping into Greg’s former role of Director of Media & Communications.

This team is extraordinarily capable of supporting the incredible CRA crew to continue doing the amazing work that CRA does in Chicago (and beyond) as well as ensure that the future of CRA remains true to Dan’s radical vision of love and wellness for people who use drugs and Any Positive Change. Here’s a little background on the interim leadership team:

  • Greg Scott started working with CRA in 2001. For 17 years he served as the volunteer Director of Research, but recently transitioned to Director of Media & Communications (he’s overseeing a redo of the CRA website…can you believe it?!?!) He spent 12 years doing weekly street outreach, on the silver van and on foot. Greg is also a professor and the Director of the Faculty Scholarship Support Center at DePaul University. He is the founder and president of Sawbuck Productions, Inc., and the founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of Video Ethnography.

    • Karen Stanczykiewicz has been working at CRA since 2000, starting as a volunteer in 1998. She does outreach, HCV testing and linkage to care, and grant writing. Karen has a clear vision and fierce dedication to honoring Dan’s legacy and ensuring that CRA continues to be operated with love and compassion by and for people who use drugs- “It’s important that individuals who use drugs not only find and access harm reduction, but also inform and provide services. To me it’s a way of life.”

    Suzanne Carlberg-Racich has been a CRA volunteer since 2001. Over that time, she’s done a little bit of everything, from outreach and testing to training, volunteer management, and grant reporting. Recently, she became CRA’s Director of Research and oversees the needle exchange research exemption. Suzanne is a professor in the Master of Public Health Program at DePaul University, where she works to illuminate, contextualize, and correct social injustice among systematically disenfranchised populations.

In collaboration with our Board and CRA staff, we will be planning a search for permanent executive leadership over the course of the next several months. Please contact us with any thoughts, ideas, feedback, etc.

Greg Scott  
Karen Stanczykiewicz  
Suzanne Carlberg-Racich  
Maya Doe-Simkins  

A message from Greg Scott, Interim Executive Director of the Chicago Recovery Alliance:

Stepping in right now is humbling and daunting, but it’s the greatest professional and personal honor I’ve ever known. I’m also completely confident in the whole CRA crew. On a personal note, Dan introduced me to harm reduction about 20 years ago and shortly after that brought me into CRA’s work. There’s no one, besides my parents and my son, who has influenced my personhood and character more than Dan.

The past four weeks have vacillated between excruciating grief and ecstatic hope for the future. It has been comforting to know how far and wide our Harm Reduction family reaches. Thank you for sharing love and loss with us … we will continue to mourn, heal, and thrive .. together, always.

The CRA team is nothing short of incredible. Since we lost Dan — who was friend and chosen family, so much more than “boss” — the team has not missed a single van, outreach site, or training. CRA is also in great shape financially — we have more, and more varied, funding sources for different projects than ever before. CRA is unstoppable!

We will not only continue and grow our Chicago-based work, but we also plan to continue and expand our national and international projects. If Dan was your sole contact for this stuff, please contact one of us to continue. BIGG LOVE to you all.

Greg Scott, 19 September 2018