An episode of Changing the Conversation podcast
“Relationships are complicated. Everybody is surviving. Everybody’s trying to figure it out. My thought is if we can’t figure it out in our space, how are we going to expect the community to figure it out? We have to dive into some really difficult things and do it through the lens of who we are and where we came from.”
June 8, 2026
[Music]
Lee Locke-Hardy (Producer) (00:06):
Hello, and welcome to Changing the Conversation. This conversation was recorded with a live audience in Charlotte, North Carolina on August 20th, 2025. Listen as host Ashley Stewart interviews Cherene Caraco, Founder and CEO of the peer-run, Charlotte-based, Promise Resource Network.
Ashley Stewart (Host)(00:26):
Changing the Conversation has been an incredible opportunity to talk to different people, to gather information, to talk about change and what that looks like. And the values inherent in Changing the Conversation means having the conversation differently. I’m your host for today, I’m Ashley Stewart, and I’m the Director of Strategic Transformation and Innovation at C4 Innovations. And here clearly with someone who needs no introduction, Miss Cherene Caraco. It’s an honor to be able to have this conversation with you. For those of you who don’t know, I am a huge fan of Cherene, and just deeply admire her work. And no, she has no idea what I’m going to ask her and what we are going to ask her together, so let’s do this.
Cherene Allen-Caraco (Guest) (01:12):
Okay. Let me warm up. Let me get ready.
Ashley (01:15):
The wonderful thing about this though, is that in the conversations we’ve been having over the last couple of days, I’ve heard you have these conversations with a multitude of different people. So, I know these are things that you’re talking about and I think this is a wonderful opportunity because we might not have all had the opportunity to be in those spaces. So not everyone gets to hear about your philosophies, your approach that is just so transformative. So, let’s start off with what first inspired you to create Promise Resource Network?
Cherene (01:42):
Anger. I’m a transplant to North Carolina. So I’m a Chicago native, to New York. And before I moved to North Carolina in 2004, I had been working in mental health and substance use services for about a decade and a half. And I had the wonderful opportunity at that time to work all over the country and work internationally. I thought I had seen some of the best and some of the worst that our systems had to offer us.
(02:08):
And then I moved to North Carolina, and it was like moving 25 years back in time. Things like harm reduction were not even discussed. Peer support did not exist in our state. There were no peer-run organizations. We were relegated to the identity of client but couldn’t be colleague. I would talk about mental health recovery and people would Google it, because they just had never heard that those of us that have been labeled with serious mental illness or severe and persistent mental illness actually recover. So people were just unaware of both the literature and the research, but also the reality of how we heal and how we thrive and how we overcome. And so, the system was very traditional, I will say, very carceral, but there was an interest in opening it up to figuring out how we do it differently.
(03:06):
So anyways, I was asked to be on a committee. I was working for a clubhouse, as a matter of fact, my first job here was working at a clubhouse, and I was stunned and shocked and asked to be on this committee. So, I had nothing to lose. I was a northerner, everybody knows that northerners know everything. And so I would grab a flip chart and markers and be like, “No, no, no, no. We’re going to talking about this. We mean this.” And I would bring in 14 longitudinal studies about recovery and I would start talking about harm reduction in practice and other variations of recovery and all of this stuff. And I just got the attention of some of the right people.
(03:40):
And after an eight-month process, a funder came to me and said, “I hear what you’re saying.” And they said, “So, what would it look like if we did it differently?” And I designed what ended up being Promise Resource Network. Never in a million years. I was not a CEO, I was a mental patient. I learned how to be a CEO, I knew how to be a mental patient. Right? And so that came honestly, but I had to learn all of this. I was not intending to start an organization in any way, shape, or form. But really in a nugget, I was saying that we have to be, those of us that have lived this every single day have an expertise that is unmatched. We have a wisdom that policy needs. We should be reforming systems based on our leadership. We should be the expectation. When services are provided, we should expect that people will heal and become well and recover. And you do not have your biggest constituency in the narrative leading the way, and that is those of us who live this every single day.
(04:40):
And so I was able to just convince them to suspend what they know, be open to what is possible. And then we hired the first peer supporter in the state of North Carolina in 2004 and haven’t looked back.
Ashley (04:54):
I love that, and I think it’s so powerful. It reminds me how important it is that we are prepared for the yes. I think a lot of times in our work, we’re taught to advocate to be part of the good fight, to be ready for every single no that’s going to come our way. But it’s equally as important to be prepared for the yes, because when someone says, “How do we make the change?” We have to have-
Cherene (05:15):
Exactly.
Ashley (05:17):
… that next step ready, that prepared for the yes. And I think that’s such a beautiful example of what is possible when we’re prepared for the yes. And as we’re building up folks, we should be also helping them realize that yes is coming and we need to be locked in and ready for it.
Cherene (05:33):
That’s right.
Ashley (05:33):
Along that line, Promise Resource Network is often cited as an innovator. Can you give us an example? I know there’s so many, but give us an example of a big, bold idea that just took off. And maybe an example of something that you’re like, “We learned from that.” I like to call them opportunities.
Cherene (05:52):
Honestly, I lean into it very humbly because if it could be messed up, I promise you, we have. And we continue to mess it up and grow and figure it out, and I think messiness is a part of this. If we’re not doing it right, it’s going to be perfect and that’s not what we’re looking for. Doing it right means that we have to embrace that it’s going to be chaotic and not work sometimes.
(06:13):
Big, bold ideas. Well, I’ll tell you the overarching one, which was with PRN, the majority of people that we have relationships with have been kicked out of everything. So literally, they can’t go to a crisis stabilization unit without the police being called. The treatment programs won’t serve them. ACT providers have punitively discharged. So we literally are the safety net in our community for people that can go no place else. They call us the last house on the last street. It makes me sad and frustrated for our community, but the truth is that these systems were never designed by us, for us, or with us. And so, it’s a mystery when it doesn’t work for us, right? It’s shocking.
(06:59):
And so for us, the boldness is always listening to our community about what’s missing, what is necessary, what would people show up for and want to be a part of. And then we are constantly innovating. What is missing? What do people want? We are there to help open doors, to create that energy and that commitment to find the funding so that anything we do next is a representation of the community. It’s what people have said that they wanted.
(07:31):
And I say this all the time, we don’t colonize other people’s communities. I’m asked all the time to take a program that PRN and operates and bring it into somebody else’s community. I was just asked to do that in California, as a matter of fact. And the first thing I said to that administration is, “We don’t colonize anybody else’s community.” That’s not how this works, right? And so just that alone, saying no to things that are inconsistent with our values and not chasing the money and not doing it in a way that doesn’t reflect who we are as a community is really important, but we will support your community to figure out what they want and what they need. We’re happy to do that. And so in terms of the boldness, we can’t take credit for it. It is designed by our community, and we just step in to making it happen.
(08:24):
Certainly, I’ll tell you the most difficult idea to manifest in our state was the peer respites, by far, took me the longest to convince people. And part of it is there’s a clinical bias. That is the reality, that is the absolute truth. And the fact that it is a nonclinical space, it is a comfortable space, it’s a healing space, it is not a locked space, had a lot of people really freaked out. People are afraid of safety and they’re afraid of nonclinical and all these sort of things. And so, that was kind of the bold on that we finally got off the ground and I’m grateful they just funded four more peer respites in North Carolina with other organizations, which I’m always happy to see. I’m not trying to build an empire in any way, shape, or form. And we’re starting tumor ourselves, and so that was one that I was really particularly proud of.
(09:25):
Our next one is designing an all peer mobile team. We’ve been asked by a county in North Carolina, a large county to design an all peer mobile team. They don’t want police co-responders. They said, “If you want clinicians, that’s fine, but it needs to be peer-run, peer led, operated by a peer-run organization.”
(09:46):
And so our next step is to dig into that and then hopefully get some scalability in North Carolina.
Ashley (09:52):
I love it. A little off script, not that either of us are paying attention to the script. When you talk about bringing in the community, engaging the community, we talk about that in a lot of different spaces. We know that that’s an inherent value, we know that that’s something that folks should be doing. What for you has that looked like in practice? When you say, “No, we’re not going to come in and we’re not going to colonize any place. We’re not going to drop something in that’s already designed. This has to be designed in collaboration,” what does that actually take and what does that require?
Cherene (10:22):
Well, I mean, it starts with will. This is seductive. I did a keynote once on seduction and how when you get a lanyard and you get a degrees and letters and names and funding starts coming your way and you become bigger than life in some people’s eyes, you can completely lose sight of where you came from. I’ll speak in me language. I can lose sight of where I came from. Humility was out the door. Ego is leading the way, which is really our wounds, is leading the way. And I get into a dominant stance and want to just start acquiring and growing and building and building and I’ve lost it. Right? And so for me, it starts with the will and the intention to be intentional.
(11:05):
We take our time with decisions. Should there be a lock on the door? Typically, we are like, everything is open access and we don’t do locks in our organization. When somebody brings that to us, “Cherene, somebody wants a lock on the door.” We have to dig into that and really examine that one simple thing against our values, against our history. For us, it’s all about the history of the movement. Is this compatible or consistent with who we are? Why is this happening, whatever the it is? How would we resolve this in a way that is consistent with our values? And if we are going to do something that it isn’t, we need to own it. We need to give context behind the content, so not just make a decision but understand our why, and know that we are not leaning into our values in that moment and we have to own that. What seems like small decisions are huge decisions if they are not done in the context of what we believe in as a community and as a system.
(12:09):
Then it’s shutting up and listening. Right? One of the advantages that we have with PRN is we don’t sit in one space. So we’re not in the policy space and that’s what we do. We’re not in the advocacy space and that’s what we do. We’re not in the training TA consulting space and that’s what we do. And we’re not in the service space and that’s what we do. We have to do all of it, that is just the reality of system change. Right? But because we are a part of so many communities and people have welcomed us into their lives, we also have people with their solutions. They’re just not being listened to. And so, part of it what it means that we shut up, we listen, step aside, remove the barriers, open the doors so that the rightful people can be heard. Sometimes it has to be translated through our organization just because of our history and our reputation and our reach. Sometimes we leverage the privilege that we have to make sure the right person or somebody else is heard, and we also incubate other startups.
(13:14):
And I’ll stop with this. One of the things that I said early on is if we ever got to the place where we are a strong organization and what it took to get there, I can’t even explain to you. My hair was straight when I started this. I say my hair was straight, and so was I. Boy, do things change.
(13:38):
Oh, it was so hard. It was so, so hard. And I could not find other organizations that would share resources. Even before all the insurance became accessible, I was looking for other nonprofits that would do insurance sharing and support us with administration and finding a mentor and leveraging their history. Nobody would do it. And so, I… Oh, it sounds like some of you have had that experience. So now we are in a position where we support other upcoming leaders or newly formed peer-run nonprofits. For me, it’s got to be operated by the community that it’s designed to support or we’re not doing it. So I’m not looking for just anybody, I’m looking for people that live it. And we will leverage our funding. We will pay for salaries. We will seek funding with that organization, and then they design what that looks like. Some organizations want a two-year support and then they sunset.
(14:33):
We helped incubate the first recovery high school in the state of North Carolina and they are… Oh my God, and they’re freaking amazing. They’re amazing. But we did that for three years. Now they’re like six years into it and they don’t need us anymore, but they were on our insurance and we helped them set up their books and set up their organizational structures, and all the things so that they could shine and do what they do because I know what it’s like to be the person to answer the phones, to write the policy, to go into the meetings, to serve people, you can’t do it well. And our type of work has got to be built on doing great work because our bar is this high. We have to prove it over and over and over again. If we are distracted by other things, we can’t do the good work and demonstrate impact. And so, part of our role is to support other emerging leaders to not have to worry about those things so they can do the great work, demonstrate impact, and they can run.
(15:35):
Some organizations want to become an arm of PRN. We have one that right now has become an arm of PRN and that’s okay too, but it really is a decision from the organization, their leader.
Ashley (15:45):
I love it. Something that stood out to me, so much stood out to me, but one of the things you said are people who aren’t being listened to and why. Who’s not being listened to? Why? Where are folks not being able to access those spaces?
Cherene (15:57):
I said all of us. None of us are being listened to.
Ashley (16:00):
Yeah. Peer-run organizations often operate differently from traditional providers and certainly, that’s something that we’re immediately seeing. How does that distinction shape PRN’s culture and specifically, success?
Cherene (16:14):
Oh, in every way, shape, or form. I’m going to give you a very specific concrete example. I’m looking at my team back there, because we have spent two weeks immersing ourselves into re-imagining one of our programs. And we pose this question, we are seeing more people being asked to leave for a day, and we have never as an organization done that. When we are asking people to leave, that is a failure on our part. That’s what that represents. So something in our environment within our team, within how we are supporting people to come into the organization, something has broken down, because we’re defaulting to patterns of oppression. That is a pattern of oppression. When telling somebody, “Today is not your day, come back tomorrow,” I don’t accept that. That’s not okay because we’re the last house on the last block, right? And every time we ask somebody to leave, they are being disconnected from their community, The only safe space, the only safe people. Right? And so I’m very, very worried about that shifting, that becoming a culture.
(17:23):
So we have taken a break as a team and we have come back to center to try to understand, what do we need to redo, relearn, unlearn, and redesign? Because we want to get to the point where that happens never, that that is considered a failure for us. And so, that’s a very concrete, very messy, flawed example of something we are grappling in one of our spaces that’s completely open access. And so you have people, you have 100 people walking through the door that may have never met each other that come from different worlds trying to make it work in one space. It’s complicated. Relationships are complicated. Everybody is surviving, everybody’s trying to figure it out. My thought is, if we can’t figure it out in our space, how are we going to expect the community to figure it out? We have to dive into some really difficult things and do it through the lens of who we are and where we came from. I don’t know if that answers your question, but it was an honest example.
Ashley (18:31):
It does. It does because in a traditional space it might have been just, this is our triage process and you’re showing the level of emotion and intentionality that goes into providing or creating access.
Cherene (18:44):
Yeah, that’s it, it’s access. People are not going to show up healed. We wouldn’t have a job if people showed up healed.
Ashley (18:52):
Literally.
Cherene (18:52):
And so expecting people to show up in a way that you think they should show up, first of all, that’s not peer support, that’s judgmental, that is not culturally relevant. And then we were expecting you to already show up with all of these experiences and this knowledge and these skills and this psychological safety that does not exist in the world. That’s what we do for a living.
Ashley (19:14):
Yeah.
Cherene (19:14):
Yeah.
Ashley (19:15):
Literally.
Cherene (19:15):
Thank you. Y’all hear that?
Ashley (19:18):
That’s what we do.
(19:21):
So, this one came from just hearing some things that many, many compliments and also just questions about a lot of times people refer to the secret sauce and what is the secret sauce, right? But peer-run agencies are often held to a very high standard. A lot of times that’s driven predominantly by things like bias. So a lot of folks have heard you flip the script on that a bit, particularly as it relates to things like the number of audits and compliance requirements that you have to navigate, and you have embraced that and positioned it as a strength or something that you lean into. Can you share with us a little bit about that process and how you do that?
Cherene (20:00):
Yeah. So I will say it’s been evolutionary. When we started as an organization, we didn’t have any of those. Remember I said, I started as a mental patient, not a CEO, I had to learn how to be a CEO? I mean that really honestly. I’d never written a policy before. I didn’t know anything about labor laws, EEOC, HR compliance, fiscal management, checks and balances, the way strong boards operate. I didn’t know that you needed to get a charitable solicitation license as a 501(c)(3) if you’re going to do any fundraising. All these details, had no idea what any of them meant, so I had to learn them.
(20:37):
So a lot of our policies have happened as a result of our learning and something going awry and us realizing like, oh snap, if we had that in place, then that would’ve helped us, that would’ve supported us to not veer from our values or to really double down as an organization on who we are and we’re not willing to bend or change. But it also would’ve protected our organization when things go south, our team members and our community of people that gift us with the opportunity to be in relationship. And so, do I love policy? I don’t love it, but I appreciate it when I need it because that helps us, that protects us as an organization so we need it.
(21:26):
When we do have to create policy, it gets funky because we don’t want to just create policy and push it in on our team, yet some things we have to, some things legally we’re bound to. We don’t have a choice. It can’t be a democratic process for everything because we literally would not be able to move forward. But then there are other things, we’ve been spending this time with you all at C4, as a matter of fact, and building the awareness from our team’s perspective of things that they find important, that they want to prioritize. That has automatically led to, we need a procedure for this or we need a process or a policy for that. And so, it really has to be developed over time as much within team as we possibly can. And for the things that are compliance-based, we have to give context behind the content. So we have to explain the why instead of just saying, “This is a policy and we have to do it.” That doesn’t feel good, but it also doesn’t give us the information about why this particular policy is important.
(22:26):
And then there are other things that just support us. Like we have a policy around the CROWN Act, and we want to make sure that that expression of culture and selfhood is embraced without fear in any way of retaliation or reprisal. We realize the more people we have working at PRN that people have been harmed in organizations, for real, harmed. And so we also want to create policies that are protecting of our team members.
Ashley (22:55):
Yeah. Trauma-informed policy.
Cherene (22:58):
Trauma-informed policies.
Ashley (22:58):
Trauma-informed data. These are things that we’ve been talking about. There’s a trust that’s built. There’s truth and there’s trust and there’s trauma that’s in things like policies. If I don’t understand and this policy is supposed to be impacting me and my livelihood and there’s not a space to even understand it, how is that building trust? I think that’s so powerful.
Cherene (23:17):
Can you say one more thing?
Ashley (23:17):
Absolutely.
Cherene (23:18):
I also want to own that the tension is real. Our team can probably attest that the tension between the admin and the programs are real tensions. Right? Administration and operations are looking at compliance and requirements and structures and what we need to be viable and sustainable and all the stuff and programs are looking at this person who’s on the streets and no place to go and feeling lost. And so, two worlds are so completely different but ultimately want the same thing, and the tension is for real.
(23:59):
We have some really strong administrative folks that would make us very admin heavy if we allowed it. Right? We’ve also come from situations that we were very people and heart centered and didn’t have the structures in place. For me in my position, we need an equal amount of both because both are required, probably more heart and more people than admin, but both are absolutely necessary to make the organization run. So we’re constantly reminding ourselves, there’s a natural tension between operations and programs and we have to recognize that and lean into it.
Ashley (24:36):
Yeah, yeah. More on natural tensions, how have you navigated relationships with state and federal systems that may not always understand peer-run models? And I’m going to attach a second question onto that, so I’ll rephrase it. But in what ways do you communicate the impact of your work to those folks?
Cherene (24:58):
Somebody said to me this week, “I like your phrases,” and I am grateful for that, saying that. I’ve had to find ways to take things that are confusing to people and translate them into things that are practical and understandable. If I show up with emotion, I know you know what I’m talking about. If I just show up in pure emotion, pure wounds, and pure passion, I have lost so many people and so many relationships that could have been because I showed up in my anger and my frustration and my heart and my, “You don’t understand,” type of thing. What I realized is, that’s not how work gets done, and nobody wants to be pointed out that they don’t understand or they don’t get it or they’re not in this with us. Right? And so, passion is not enough. I think it was Devin that said, “That’s not going to keep the lights on. You need it. It’s necessary. It can be the fuel, but it can’t lead the way.”
(25:56):
So, I’ve found different anecdotes to translate complex policy things into people. Let’s talk about what that looks like on the ground with human beings, but also to translate it up. I find that we don’t have a lot of people that are good code switchers that can be in multiple worlds in multiple times and be able to speak policy, speak advocacy, speak provider, speak MCO, speak human, and be able to do that translation across the board. We need our translators in this work or nothing is going to get done. It’s true, isn’t it? It’s absolutely true. We need to hang in those spaces and we need to understand it not just from a surface level and not to rebuke it, but to really understand this is what they’re grappling with.
(26:43):
Laura Van Tosh, which is a good friend of mine and a pioneer in the peer movement for many, many, many, many years, once said to me, I was lamenting with her one time, 1:00 in the morning about all the things we’re up against at the state level at that time. And she just really patiently and respectfully and gently listened, and then she said, “You know, Cherene, have you ever thought that maybe you’re playing the wrong game?” And I said, “What do you mean?” She said, “Every word that has come out of your mouth has been a fighting word. It’s been war. It’s been fighting. Do you ever think that maybe while you’re playing the game of war, they’re playing the game of chess? You’re playing the wrong game, friend.” And she was absolutely freaking right.
(27:27):
And so when Kelly said she’ll text me when things are going awry, one of the things I said to her when she was having a meltdown in front of some federal government folks, I gave her that anecdote. And now she’ll text me and be like, “This is chess, this is not war, this is chess, this is not war.” That has allowed me to show up at the federal level and the state level in relationship with folks strategically, rather than trying to blow it up. Blowing it up doesn’t work for anybody, right? It’s how we communicate to each other at the stance that we take. Oh, huge lesson learned from me. Don’t always do it right, but still figuring it out.
Ashley (28:05):
So, how do you capture and communicate the impact of your work to funders, policymakers, and in my opinion, most importantly, the community?
Cherene (28:15):
It’s interesting. So part of it is, we have to show people, people have to experience it. One of the reasons why we wanted to invite you to come to the respite is I can talk about it all day long and I can show you pictures and I can write down all of the outcomes and all the things. And you might look at it and be impressed, maybe, or be intrigued, but you cannot understand how things are done differently until you’re exposed to how things are done differently. And so there is nothing like being surrounded by it, to cry, to fall asleep, to shed, to get your hopes shot, to reimagine what it could be and it should be.
(28:55):
So, there is something to be said about inviting people in to see it and talk to other people. Talking to me, that’s a piece of it, but people that are part of the relationship, they’re not going to lie. They’re going to give you the real-real. They’re going to tell you what it’s actually like and they’re going to tell you words and all, what it’s actually like. That is the best way for us to share our message. Of course, there is the data. We have to share data. I can’t even tell you how many analytics we have, how many dashboards we have, how many databases we have, how much reporting we do. Of course, we have to do all of that. We have to do the storytelling. This is all a part of what we do, but there is nothing like experiencing it and then translating these things in the language that a funder can hear and understand.
(29:44):
The other thing is, and I’m going to be honest about this, is that we go into these conversations with funders with non-negotiables. And I’m very honest with people, “These are our conditions to accept your funding. And if you can’t meet these conditions, we are going to love you from afar. We might be neighbors, but we’re not going to get married.” Right? And I think it’s really, really, really important for us in our types of organizations to demonstrate to funders and policymakers how this should go, how we should be valued, how we should be treated. That scarcity mentality that I started with of like, just please invite me in, please give me a seat. You don’t even have to give me a seat, I’ll sit in the corner on the floor and just look up and I won’t say anything. That’s where I started from, honestly. And it took me many, many years to get out of that mindset to be able to show up in my essence and my brilliance, and recognize that we offer gifts in our community that otherwise would not exist.
(30:49):
So, we are not here seeking pity. We are here saying, “We have some solutions in our community and you will value us in the way that we should be valued. But we are also not going to just accept what you’re giving us. This is a negotiation because any funding relationship is a partnership.”
(31:11):
And in exchange for that partnership, this is not just an exchange of money. We will not take money to stay silent. Most money is not good money. We have to negotiate so that we are not compromising on our values and becoming something that we’re not. We have to say no. We have got to expect to be treated with respect and dignity, and we have to be valued as peer-run organizations because we do things that cannot be replicated anyplace else.
Ashley (31:39):
Anyplace else. Shouting out some of your amazing team that’s here, and you talk very affectionately and carefully and lovingly about your teams more broadly. What role has your board and staff development played in sustaining growth in the continued excellence of your work?
Cherene (32:00):
The board’s been interesting. As you can imagine, over 20 years, we’ve had many iterations of boards.
Ashley (32:04):
Yes.
Cherene (32:05):
Many, many. We started out with the friends of the friends and everybody’s hanging out with their feet up and nobody’s taking minutes and nobody understands. You know how you all remember those days? Maybe some of you are in those days. So, that was our first board. Thank goodness for them because they helped it to launch so I really appreciate that version of the board. But at different times in our evolutionary stages, we’ve needed different compositions of boards, frankly. That’s an evolution as well.
(32:35):
Sometimes we need boards that are going to be supportive but not be very involved. Other times, we need boards that are going to be very involved and help us come to the next level. We need boards that believe in what we do that are not going to try to shape us to be corporate. So that’s a fundamental thing for us, is we have to be careful about who our board composition is. It’s easy to turn something into what you know when you’re working with something that you’re unfamiliar with. The natural default is to go to things that we know. So we have to be very cautious about our board.
(33:11):
Our board right now is really important to us, really valuable. We’re doing strategic planning with them. They’re creating a five-year vision for the organization. They are supporting us to this next… We have six programs in startup right now. As an organization, our board is critical to the future and the sustainability of everything that we’re doing. So, they’re important. I would just say that we have to be intentional about the type of board we need as an organization at different times in our development. Does that make sense?
Ashley (33:41):
Yes.
Cherene (33:41):
Yeah. That first board wouldn’t work for us right now, but the corporate board really would not work for us right now.
Ashley (33:47):
Absolutely.
Cherene (33:47):
Because we take a lot of risks, calculated risks as an organization, and we can’t have a board right now that is risk averse. It will hold us back.
Ashley (33:56):
Can you share a defining moment that stands out to you in your journey when you knew a peer-run organization could change lives at scale?
Cherene (34:05):
It’s not a moment. It’s such a weird thing. From the day we opened our doors, people’s lives were changed. And that’s the part that keeps us going, especially right now. Just when I think I can’t do it anymore, somebody says… I had three people two Fridays ago, randomly, not connected to each other, come to me and say, one person said, “I went to the respite and that is a once in a lifetime experience that everybody has to experience once in their lifetime.” Another person came to me and said, “I called the Warmline and it saved my life.” These things happen to us every single day in our work. We get that, to see the impact of the work that we do.
(35:02):
And so, it is individual people that are built over years of recognizing the impact that we have made, not one moment in time with one person. It has been many years of being a part of many people’s lives and seeing them thrive and grow and reimagine their life that I realized we have something special here. This doesn’t happen everywhere and it happens not in a lot of places. So for us, it wasn’t a moment. It’s been just a process. Now, when we started scaling our programs to other communities and seeing them work there, that’s when I knew it was all scalable. It didn’t matter if we were three hours away, the respite is still working in that community. There are adaptations that we’ve made, but the work is scalable and the lives are being impacted. So that’s true, but it wouldn’t be because of one moment in time.
Ashley (36:03):
Yeah. I think what’s so powerful about it, and we were having a conversation about data and all, but I think that’s the power in it. You’re looking at it through the individuals. It’s not, we’re quantifying it in this way. It’s about the heart, it’s about the people, it’s about the individuals, it’s about the opportunities.
Cherene (36:23):
Yes, because every one of those numbers, every one of those numbers is a life. It’s so easy to look at these large numbers. Our Warmline gets 110,000 calls a year. It’s easy to look at that big number and think, “Oh, this is data. And look at how good we are and look at the volume.” Every single one of those calls-
Ashley (36:44):
A person.
Cherene (36:45):
… there is a human being that is attached to it. We need the data. We do the data. We look at the data, of course, and say, “Oh, we’re doing pretty well.” All of those dashboards give us the trends about where the gaps are and what’s going well and what we might need to improve. And we look at it aggregately, but we also have to look at it individually and realize with all those numbers, there is meaning behind it. Those are lives saved as a result of the relationships that we have.
Ashley (37:12):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I’m sure you are no stranger to people presenting and bringing about doubt.
Cherene (37:21):
Today, or before we got here, or when?
Ashley (37:26):
Right, exactly. And so, when you’re moving forward and you’re creating something that is as dynamic and influential and impactful as what you all are doing, the constant doubt I’m sure is just something that has become a part of the process. There might be some element of doubt that’s attached to fear, right?
Cherene (37:47):
Yes.
Ashley (37:48):
There’s this incredible possibility, and people are fearful. How do you see that? How do you approach that? And when people come to you with this doubt, I have so many ways that I envision that you respond, but how do you respond?
Cherene (38:03):
Yeah, I love doubters. Give me a good doubter. This whole thing has been created out of people not believing that this can exist. Even when somebody walked in the respite yesterday and then we sat down, “How does this exist? How is this possible?” I heard from so many of you, “This was my hopes shot, or this helped remind me that I have my wisdom and this is real. This is true. We’re sitting in something that is real and true. This does happen. It can happen. It can occur.” Doubt comes from so many other places, from so many wounds and so much history and fear. And for me, I have to understand that and have compassion for it. It makes me sad that people can’t think beyond what they know or what’s right in front of them, that we create these systems that are like carwash systems.
(38:52):
I say that our communities should be buffets. We should have an array of options available to us where we can pick and choose. When we want nothing but dessert, we have nothing but dessert. And we want to eat all the crab legs, we have all the crab legs. Right? We should have an array of options available to us, but our systems think very linearly. So you go with an appetizer, then you have the first course, you maybe have a choice of two, then you have a second course, and maybe have a choice of two. We have it all wrong, but I understand why people get stuck in that because it’s all we know.
(39:25):
And so, I feel like part of my responsibility is to open up the vision, open up sight, and just suspend what is to be open to what can be for, one minute. We’ll get into the requirements, we’ll get into the all buts. I promise you we will answer those, but those are not the things that will lead the design. People will lead the design, and then we’ll back into the, “Yeah, but what about safety? Yeah, but what about accreditation? Yeah, but what about regulation? Yeah, but what about these limitations?” We’ll get there, but that’s the last thing we should be doing, not the first thing that we should be doing.
(40:05):
And so, if I can get people to dream again, to be opened up again, I got them. Who does not want to find hope in a world that can feel like despair? Everybody is looking for something that they can be connected to that actually is built. I use the word love. That’s my word. I feel like we have to love people that we will never meet for generations to come, and I do this out of love. We don’t have enough of it. So if I can sell that, combined with possibility, what I find is the people that walk in with their suits on and their ties tightly there, end up with their tie around their head, literally, by the time our conversations are done, because we need to tap back into human again. And then translate policy and translate requirements. Does that make sense?
Ashley (41:05):
Mm-hmm.
Cherene (41:06):
Yeah.
Ashley (41:07):
Yeah. I love the term, hope, because when I think about hope, I’m like, hope comes with a level of expectancy. If you hope for something, you can have a lot of different feelings that are happening in your body. You could be hopeful and anxious about it. You could be hopeful and excited. You can be hopeful and worried. Hope comes with a level of expectancy and how we expect things look so differently. And so, to think about how to create a space where people could lean into that hope and thereby also the discomfort that it can potentially bring.
Cherene (41:37):
Yes. Invalidate the discomfort, the discomfort is real. It doesn’t make it less than, it’s very real. So we want to validate that discomfort is real and yeah, this can be risky, not going to lie about it. And imagine what this is going to look like when people’s lives are touched.
Ashley (41:55):
As you think about the next chapter for peer-run organizations, what is a bold vision that really excites you?
Cherene (42:02):
We have to have more of us. For real, you guys, we need to have more of us. When peer support became owned by systems, we lost it. For real, we lost it. Our profession is being dictated by clinical worldview and policy and requirements that were never… It was never our language, it was never our belief system. It is not our history and it is not our worldview. None of it. It was handed to us and we have absorbed it and owned it like a second skin.
(42:38):
At what point do we take it back and say, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We should have more peer support operating out of peer-run organizations, not out of health departments and hospitals and ACT teams.” We have the person who did the research on ACT in our state and I’ve said to her, “What would it look like if ACT teams would contract peer-run organizations to provide peer support?” That doesn’t mean we’re not going to work in these environments. Of course we work in the courthouse, we work in jails, we are in physically in other settings, but our team are peer supporters, not case managers, not many clinicians. We are not a mole for the team. We are not an Uber driver. We’re not monitoring people’s medications. We are authentically peer supporters because we are in a peer-run organization.
(43:32):
So you come back to the hive and you are surrounded by peer values and peer relationships, right? We should be the experts in peer support and when peer support is needed in an environment, they should be our team members. We know they’re going to be trained. We know they’re going to be supported. We know they’re going to operate from the right values. We have to figure out how to have more of us so that there is enough supply to then reach into the demand side and say, “You’re not going to hire somebody convicted of murder. We know that that’s too risky for you, but we will,” because that’s what you need when you’re talking about people that are currently gang involved. You’re not going to hire a social worker that had a little bit of anxiety. No one call them a peer worker. No, that’s not how that works.
(44:21):
So, what we have found is there are ways to couch that relationship and that message. Let us do what we do well. I am not going to hire psychiatrists even though I could, because our work environment is not conducive for psychiatrists to come and do their practice. We will be questioning them, doubting them, and they’re not going to be a hierarchy in our environment. It’s not going to work. Right? I know that. But just like we should not be having psychiatrists and clinicians for us, for our organization, no shade on peer-run organizations that do it, I just want to be clear. We are not going to do that for us, it’s not right for our organization. But stop then hiring peer workers to work in your environment that is not conducive for real good peer work to exist in a meaningful way. If you are going to hire peer supporters, you need a lot of organizational readiness, get technical assistance, get consulting, learn how to do it without doing harm, because at the end of the day, you’re not going to get the outcomes that you seek because you’re turning us into case managers.
(45:21):
Right? So my big, bold vision, we have more peer-run organizations that are doing the real peer support, and we are lessening other clinical organizations, hiring peer supporters, and just co-opting them into their work. And accreditation, we need a peer-run organization national accreditation. Our leaders in the room, we need a national accreditation for peer-run organizations.
(45:48):
Human beings did not segregate ourselves. Systems segregated us. So we have the substance use recovery community that’s abstinence-based, 12-step, harm reduction, mental health. We have such a division that was segregated not by us but by our communities and by our funding. So, let me just start there because my experience might be different than your experience, is when we get to the root of the majority of what the people I know have experienced, it’s trauma. And so for some of us, trauma is labeled as mental illness. If that’s the door that we were put into, that was the door I always put into at a young age. For some of us, trauma manifests as substance use. For some of us, trauma looks like incarceration. For some of us, trauma results in being unhoused. But if we get to the core of its trauma, okay, that’s just Cherene, and my belief system. So then why are we dividing people based on a system that we never created?
(46:55):
When it comes to some of those accreditations, we have to expand… Let me say something else that’s going to be unpopular. Peer support from a people’s perspective came from the mental health community. The origins were mental health. It wasn’t substance use. So I love you, my substance use harm reductionists and recovery folks, but you did not invent peer support. You didn’t. I’m grateful because we are also an RCO and we are a harm reduction agency. We believe that all paths are valid paths. And when you have an accreditation that is leaning so strongly into one worldview, one culture, one iteration of peer support, you have all of the other ones that are not being brought into that fold. It doesn’t resonate, it’s not relevant. So it is an option for some organizations to do that version of accreditation. That is not necessarily going to resonate-
Ashley (48:05):
Interesting.
Cherene (48:06):
… or translate with all peer-run organizations. Does that make sense?
Ashley (48:12):
Mm-hmm.
Cherene (48:13):
Okay. So looking at creating accreditation that is rooted in peer values, not peer values from a substance use recovery lens, or from a harm reduction lens, or from a mental health recovery lens, but from a peer-run organizational lens becomes really critical for accreditations for standalone peer-run organizations. Okay. I thought you were going to hate me. I love it. That is not invalidating that accreditation. It’s just not a universal accreditation for peer-run organizations.
Ashley (48:48):
And I think it ties into some of the themes of what we’ve been talking about, about the nuance, about the details, about the intricacies. And so, just continuing to build on those themes that come up. There are a lot of opportunities for us to lean into those nuances, intricacies, in the humanness of it.
Cherene (49:07):
Yeah. The humanness, the humanness. I don’t care if it’s called schizophrenia or heroin. I don’t care what it’s called. It doesn’t discount, you have to have that lived experience. That’s shared experience, that’s peer support. We have to have that. Without that, we’re an ally at best, but we’re not peer support, so I’m not discounting that. And we continue to silo ourselves so much that we are not working with people anymore, we’re working with a set of diagnoses based on funding.
Ashley (49:36):
Yeah, yeah. So thinking about people who are really passionate and maybe in this space or maybe we’re supporting different folks who are in all of this gray, desiring the unity, desiring the clarity, desiring the intentional and thoughtful conversation. They’re excited, they want to make something that not only lasts, but transform systems, they have their values at the forefront of their intentions. What would be some advice that you would give a new peer leaders starting out?
Cherene (50:09):
Just start anywhere, just start. There’s no wrong way to start. There really isn’t. When I do consulting for organizations and they’re working to become trauma-informed or recovery oriented or whatever they’re working for, there’s no right place to start. I would start where your passion is, because that’s what’s going to fuel you forward. Right? So just start where it feels natural for you to begin and then be open to evolving, be open to growing. Build your community and be a part of a community. You have to show up. To say what Jesse Davis said to us last night in some other organizing spaces, the people are languishing around just show up. Can you just show up? Because we all have to do the work so somebody’s got to show up. Has to start there. Show up where you’re most passionate.
(50:56):
Also recognize that this is a marathon, it’s not a sprint. It really is. This is a long game. How many different analogies can I use-
(51:05):
It is a long game. You have to be in this. If you want to see some of the fruits of your labor, you’re going to be in it for the long haul.
(51:14):
A lot of people can start with great energy. I see it happen all the time. Organizations get started all the time, groups get started all the time, efforts get started all the time. The hard work is in the sustaining over time, especially during periods like this where it feels like everything is against us. This is when we have to really dig in and stay true to who we are and stay in our relationships and our connections. We have to work through this. It’s not going to get better on the ground. It’s not like an executive order comes out and all of a sudden nobody’s homeless anymore. Right? Mental health doesn’t exist anymore. We don’t have to worry about overdoses anymore. It’s done because we have an executive order. No, that stuff leads to more issues on the ground. And so we have to stay in it and find ways to stay in it in order to make the mark.
(52:07):
Recognize, peer support is just one thing. You may want to start an organization and row as a leader. You may want to be in policy. You may want to get involved in technical assistance, maybe training, maybe consulting. There is a space for all of us in this work, but find what resonates with you the most and just start it.
Ashley (52:27):
Yeah, I love that. Okay. So my final question is, in Changing the Conversations, if you could change the conversation in one way, what would it be and why?
Cherene (52:40):
The conversation at what level?
Ashley (52:42):
National.
Cherene (52:42):
At the national? Oh, God. Really? Where do you even start? Okay. I’m just going to be brutally honest with this.
Ashley (52:49):
I love it.
Cherene (52:50):
I find that at different times we’re going to get more traction in different areas. So let me be more specific than that. For me, I have to be involved in the national and federal work. I have to be involved in state. I have to be involved locally. And I have to be involved in all three simultaneously because at different times we are going to get momentum one place, and you’re going to get shut out someplace else.
(53:16):
For the longest time, I was shut out of our state work. The relationship that you saw with Kelly did not start that way. We came to blows in the beginning and parted ways not as friends. That relationship has developed over time, but for many years I left doing work in North Carolina, other than our local community. I did work at the federal level and the national level, but I would not touch North Carolina because they were not ready. And the finite amount of energy that I had was being used to frankly show up and be hurt all the time. It felt like I was being punched in my gut. How many different ways can somebody say, “We don’t want you at the prom,” before you realize I need to stop showing up at the prom? That’s what it felt like for many years in my home state. So I had to build an identity and a relevance outside of our state at that time. And for us, it was local and it was federal.
(54:15):
Right now, I would not touch federal. I just wouldn’t because for me, I am going to be fighting against a machine that I am not going to win. So right now for me professionally, I have to walk away from that and I have to double down on my own state. I have somebody standing here who is the director of our mental health, developmental disability, SUS services who is wanting more of this and more peer-run organizations. Why would I be spending my time and energy at the federal level when I have Kelly standing here saying, “We need this and we want this here”? So, that doesn’t mean I’m not going to still have the conversations and the relationships. I just came from DC last week, but I am not spending my time and energy there. I’m spending my time and energy in my local communities because that’s where it’s at right now, and in my state.
Ashley (55:09):
That’s a good strategy.
Cherene (55:09):
Right? It’s strategy. That’s what it is. It’s all strategy for me.
Ashley (55:13):
It’s the chess game.
Cherene (55:14):
It’s the chess game. I think sometimes part of the reason why our non-movement but historical movement stalls, is we try to push each other into these finite categories and these binaries. When I first came in, I was asked, “Are you a reformist or are you an abolitionist?” My involvement with different groups of people was dependent upon my answer because the reformists are going to say, “You’re an abolitionist, that you’re not one of us.” The abolitionists are going to say, “You want to make this shitty system better? You’re not welcome here.” And so, I learned early on that we have to be all of it and none of it because at the end of the day, I have to be a strategist. That means I have to recognize when a system can and should be reformed and my energy goes there, but the bigger system will never be abolished, so I’m not going to put my energy there.
(56:06):
There are other things where abolition is my stance because this is not acceptable because it’s harmful to us. And I have to pull out the abolition tool and use that as a strategy. But at all times, I have to sit looking at all of it and determining where do we go? Where do we organize? What are the moves that we should make? What are the messages? Who do we have that are allies? Where are we going to hit against the brick walls? How do we use the finite energy and time that we have to make changes, even if they’re little changes? Right now, I wouldn’t be having that conversation at the national level because it’s not worth my time and energy.
Ashley (56:45):
That’s good. There’s so many things that we could lean into there. Something that you said that really resonates is you talked about the finite amount of energy, and I think that it’s just a beautiful reminder of us too, that our preservation, that our wellness, that our ability to have that self-awareness about what is within our capacity and how we can do this work healthily, with joy, with energy, with fervor, and what that means for ourselves as individuals and modeling that and saying there is a capacity. And it may continue to grow, we may continue to be refilled and then do this by the work that we do, but our wellness in this work is so important. It’s so important.
Cherene (57:29):
That’s right. That’s why we have to be careful about where we’re showing up and how we’re using our wisdom and our knowledge and our expertise. Some of it’s wasted and we keep showing up in the same spaces and we get burnt out. If we get burnt out and we leave this profession, we don’t have you, and we need you. Right? And so that’s why it’s important for us to be able to determine the spaces that we should be in at what point and use it as fuel, rather than risk being burnt out on something that we feel is futile.
Ashley (58:00):
Yeah. So, formally as part of Changing the Conversation, thank you so much for being-
Cherene (58:05):
You’re welcome.
Ashley (58:06):
… a member of Changing the Conversation. Yeah.
Cherene (58:08):
Thank you for having me.
Lee (58:11):
And to our listeners, join us next time on Changing the Conversation. Visit C4innovates.com and follow us on LinkedIn and YouTube for more resources to grow your impact. Thank you for joining us. This episode was produced by Lee Locke-Hardy and Christina Murphy. Our theme song was written and performed by Peter Hanlon. Join us next time on Changing the Conversation.