An episode of Changing the Conversation podcast.
“Once a person learns how to develop healthy friendships, romantic relationships, then they no longer need chemicals the way they needed them in the past. In fact, I see substance use disorder as a pathological relationship with a chemical that’s actually a substitute for true human intimacy.”
September 28, 2026
[Music]
Livia Davis (Host) (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to Changing the Conversation. I’m your host, Livia Davis. I’m the Chief Learning Officer at C4 Innovations. Today’s conversation is part of a podcast series called Learning From Our Recovery Elders to Inform Our Work as Recovery Leaders, where we invite recovery leaders to share their wisdom. Our aim is not only to preserve our guests’ invaluable insights, but also to inspire current and future leaders as we work to continue to expand access to recovery. My guest today is Mark Sanders calling in from Chicago, Illinois.
Mark Sanders (Guest) (00:46):
And thank you for having me here, and I’m looking forward to our interview.
Livia (00:50):
Thank you, Mark. Mark, you are the co-founder of Serenity Academy of Chicago, the only recovery high school in Illinois. You are the past president of the board of the Illinois chapter of NAADAC. You have a 30-year career as a university educator. You’re an international speaker, trainer, and consultant in the behavioral health field with, I just learned, five books to your credit. And I know this year has been a busy one for you. You received two awards, one from the Illinois Certification Board’s Presidential Award, and the 2026 H. Westley Clark Award from the Association for Addiction Professionals, which is their highest national honor. Congratulations, Mark.
Mark (01:39):
Thank you so much, Livia.
Livia (01:40):
So, Mark, you have been working in the field of behavioral health and recovery for many years, and I am hoping to start us off that you can share with our audience how you got involved in recovery and why you founded the Museum of African American Addictions Recovery.
Mark (02:00):
And thank you so much, Livia. So, it was January of 1982. I just graduated from McMurray College in Jacksonville, Illinois with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and social work. I’m standing on the corner of 69th and Halsted in Chicago in one of the most economically-challenged neighborhoods anywhere in the world, where there’s lots of poverty, gang activity, drug activity, etc. And I’m standing on a bus stop without a job with a diploma, and I see a neon sign that says Youth Center. So, I walked in and said, “I just graduated with a bachelor’s degree in social work, sociology. Do you need a counselor?” They said, “We need a strong male counselor.” Livia, I knew I was a counselor and a male, but I didn’t know how strong I was. They hired me.
Livia (02:44):
Wow.
Mark (02:45):
Worked with adolescents that had alcohol and drug problems. That was 44 years ago, and thus my career began. The agency was a storefront. Part of my job was to put bars on the window when I left work so that nobody would break in and take anything that we didn’t have. There was nothing there but a typewriter. Not a computer, a typewriter. We had no heat in the winter. So, I’m freezing. Now, I didn’t read much in college, but there were some books in the corner, and I picked up one of the books. It was called Another Chance by Dr. Sharon Wegscheider. Changed my life, her book. And in the book, she talked about these various roles that children play when they come from a family where there’s addiction. She said there’s someone who has a primary addiction, someone who enables them, often a spouse or a partner, and then the children.
(03:31):
She says there are heroes and scapegoats and mascots and lost children. I said, “Oh my goodness, she knows my family,” because almost every adult male in my family had a substance use disorder. Both of my grandfathers had alcohol use disorder. My father was in one of the first generations of Americans to smoke crack cocaine. So, when I read her book, I knew I was home. I knew I found my calling. And that was 44 years ago.
Livia (03:55):
Wow.
Mark (03:56):
So, in 1986, I completed graduate school. I graduated from graduate school. January 13th, 1986. And five months later I was to give my first speech. My job when I graduated, my title was the gatekeeper for the General Motors Corporation Substance Abuse Program. We didn’t have the language of substance use disorder back then. And what we learned was, that year, the year I graduated, 1986, was the year that crack cocaine replaced marijuana as the number one street drug. So now why would General Motors Corporation hire me? I’m in Chicago. Crack cocaine hit General Motors Corporation’s headquarters in Detroit so hard that the treatment centers all over Detroit, Michigan were filled with people with stimulant use disorder of crack cocaine.
(04:40):
I had clients that I worked with who would get paid at GM on a Friday and they would take a month-long lunch break and then wind up in a treatment center in Chicago a month later. So, my job was to go out and do an assessment. And most of these treatment centers at the time were located in a white suburban community. And most of the employees coming from General Motors Corporation from Detroit were African American. And they would see me and there would be a look on their face that reminded me of a movie that I saw in the ’60s called Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. The gist of that movie was that Sidney Poitier, African American, was engaged to a woman who was white and he was to meet her parents for the first time at dinner. And when he walked in, they were so shocked to see that he was African American. Thus, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.
(05:19):
So, I’d show up in these treatment centers to do the assessment, and these African American clients would look at me like they were shocked like, “I’m glad you’re here for dinner.” Though I was there to do an assessment. And they looked uncomfortable, and sometimes they told me they were uncomfortable. They were the only African Americans there. And sometimes the staff would wonder how do I work with them, because they had not had much experience working with African American clients.
(05:42):
So that same year, May 29th, 1986, the day that changed my life forever, I was giving my first speech ever and there was a knock on the door. And I was told I had an urgent phone call, take it now. My mother was on the other end of the line. She was crying hysterically. And she told me that my dad had just died in a closet at work smoking the drug of his choice, crack cocaine. So now my dad died smoking crack.
Livia (06:01):
Right.
Mark (06:02):
A few years later, my grandfather died of cirrhosis of the liver from drinking alcohol heavy. And then I’m working with these Black clients who were really happy to see me, and the agency didn’t have a whole lot of comfort in working with African American clients. So, I started speaking on how to work with African American clients with substance use disorder. 1986, I start giving talks. And then that same year, June 15th, 1986, there was a basketball player named Len Bias. And Len Bias they said was the second coming of Michael Jordan. To this day, people debate who was the better basketball player, Michael Jordan or Len Bias. It’s a toss-up.
(06:34):
That year, June 15th, 1986, Len Bias was drafted number one by the Boston Celtics, and he was a team with Larry Bird and five of the Hall of Famers. The Bulls would not have won six championships had he played with Larry Bird. And that night after being drafted number one by the Boston Celtics, Len Bias went to a party to celebrate by snorting cocaine, had a heart attack and he died. That was June 15th, 1986. And Congress intensified the war on drugs after his death. In 1985, before his death, there were 400,000 inmates in our nation’s prisons. By 1995, as they intensified the war on drugs, the number swelled to 1 million. By 2005, 2.5 million, disproportionately African American men with substance use disorders. So, in 1991, I wrote a book called Treating the African American Male Substance Abuser. There were not many African American women in treatment. And so, it was a how-to book how to work with African American men around substance use. But I was scared to publish it.
(07:27):
One of my friends called it career suicide, quote, end quote, because African American men carry so much stigma and now, they were affiliated with the image of crack cocaine. And in 1993, I published the book Treating the African American Male Substance Abuser. So, I went around the country speaking on that book. By 1995, William White, the number one historian in the history of our profession in my opinion, he became my mentor. And so, years later, he started taking all of his articles and books that he had published, and he put them on his website, and he was a historian, and some of his knowledge of history rubbed off on me. So, I decided, “Well, why don’t I start a website where all this information I gathered around working with African Americans with substance use disorders … What if I put it in one site too?”
(08:08):
So, I created a site now known as the Museum of African American Addictions, Treatment and Recovery, a one-stop shop where people from all over the world can learn how to work more effectively with African Americans with substance use disorders. Proud to report that each year the museum is visited by people in all 50 states and approximately 80 countries. It’s doing better than I thought it would do. That’s its origin story.
Livia (08:31):
It’s just an amazing origin story, Mark. There are so many levels to this, and I am just grateful that you had the tenacity and courage both with your book and the website. We of course know of Bill White, and I actually did not know that you had drawn inspiration from his history before you started your own. So that’s fantastic connection to make. I know I’ve been to your museum website more than once. So, for this host, you have made a personal impact. Thank you, Mark.
Mark (09:02):
Thank you. Yes, that means a lot.
Livia (09:03):
So, let’s change just a little bit. And so, you’ve been at this for a minute or two, and obviously you have a lot of experience. What do you think are some of the biggest challenges facing the field of recovery?
Mark (09:16):
Yes. And so, there’s a number of them. In no certain order, funding. A friend of mine told me that the government gives you just enough money to fail. In fact, I’m going to pause for a moment just so the audience can take a moment to take that in. And it’s so often we get grants that last one to three years or five years, and then the money runs out. And sometimes when the money runs out, then programs become extinct. First off, I think the best time to apply for additional funding to support your program is when you don’t need the funding, and that programs ought to hire a grant writer of new programs before they can afford to pay themselves. Having said that, I’m also a fan of us beginning to think outside of the box.
Livia (09:51):
Amen to that.
Mark (09:51):
Non-traditional sources of revenue stream. For example, William White, my mentor, talks a lot about a group that we’ve never tapped into, and that is philanthropists, famous people in long-term recovery as a potential source of funding. As a matter of fact, the number one treatment program in Illinois, in 2020 this program received an award through NAADAC as the number one program in the country, their entire program is financed by one millionaire, a millionaire in recovery. And so, I see a day where we’ll have more for-profit, nonprofit partnerships, where the for-profit arm of the business will dedicate money to the nonprofit, which will treat substance use disorders. We’ve traveled the country and we’ve seen some programs that have businesses that are run by their clients where they pay them a real wage, and the clients are learning occupational recovery capital, developing that capital while they’re recovering at the same time. Thinking outside of the box will help us.
(10:46):
We also have a leadership crisis, not only in terms of number, but people being prepared to lead. For example, many programs across the country hire their best counselors to become clinical supervisors. Some of these individuals have that skill naturally, many do not. Those who do not naturally have the skill to supervise or to lead, sometimes they lead to intimidation, which is traumatic. In fact, I was on the committee years ago called the Annapolis Coalition, and they did a study that found that your average addiction counselor stays in their job for one year and then they leave. It takes about five years to master an evidence-based practice. How will you ever do evidence-based work if turnover is that high?
(11:26):
And the number one reason people leave, we found, it’s not difficult clients. It’s not client resistance. It’s a combination of toxic organizational dynamics and tension in the supervisor-supervisee relationship. There’s a famous expression that, “people join organizations and they leave their supervisor.” So, here’s a movement I’m in favor of. I’m a favor of a movement when people are deemed to have leadership qualities that they have to go through leadership and supervision training before they become one in order to do their job well. I know that in doing my research for years, the state of Wisconsin, if you were going to be a clinical supervisor, they put it in their state regulations that you have to have 40 hours of clinical supervision training before you became one.
(12:07):
The other challenge that I see in our profession, when I first became a counselor 44 years ago, the estimates were that 70% of the counselors were in recovery and 30% were not. But as stigma of addiction increased during the crack cocaine crisis in urban America and the methamphetamine crisis in rural America, the estimates are that it reversed itself, where it reached the point where the estimates were 70% were not in recovery and 30% are in recovery. But we see a new role emerging called the recovery coach, the recovery support specialist. The certified recovery support specialist.
(12:42):
So those numbers are going to balance itself out again, but then we have a problem. When this was first visualized, the new role, the recovery support specialist, the outreach worker, part of that vision was that licensed addictions counselors, the addictions therapists, and recovery support specialists will be able to work side by side with each having different expertise. The trained therapist would have expertise in assessment, diagnosis, and treatment planning, trauma-informed care, family therapy. The peer would have expertise in how to engage people effectively in the natural environment. As you know, Livia, there’s a big difference between engaging somebody sitting behind a desk and outdoors. They would have expertise in using their own story to motivate change, expertise in how to develop resources where non-existent, etc.
(13:32):
The problem is, as a nation, we’re starting to see an increase in the peer workforce and a decrease in the clinical workforce. And what we’re starting to see are programs and organizations overworking peers and underpaying them, having them do tasks that previously counselors did. And one of my good friends, Dr. Ijeoma Achara says that in the United States we pay for what’s important. So, unless we start compensating people with lived experience for the work that we’re wanting them to do and then training them to do the extra, we’re going to start to see rapid turnover in that space as well, where people having to choose between, “Do I drive Uber, work at Walmart at limited wage, or do I become a peer specialist?”
(14:13):
Those are some of the challenges I see. There are more, but those are the three that stand out for me for now.
Livia (14:18):
Yeah. Well, those are certainly challenges we have heard and talked about in many circles through our work. So, I can only echo that we’ve seen many of the same. And I think the leadership crisis is one I’m seeing more people really pay attention to in an organized way, which I’m happy for because there is a leadership crisis. And my personal experience is just that. I was trained as a social worker, and from a Friday to a Monday I was promoted and I was in charge of 30 people that the last week had been my colleagues with no training. This was a long time ago, but I hear you.
Mark (14:53):
Wow.
Livia (14:55):
And I made every single mistake you could possibly make because I didn’t get the training.
Mark (15:00):
Right. And my hunch, Livia, having known you just for a short amount of time, but probably what helped you ultimately is that at the end of the day, mistakes are forgiven when people know that we’re coming from a loving, from a caring place in our heart while you learn those skills at the same time.
Livia (15:13):
Yes. Yeah, and being transparent and acknowledging, “Hey, I know I was your colleague last week and we are going to have to figure this out together.” And what does that look like with now a supervisory relationship? So, in these three challenges you identified or anything else, is there anything specific that you would recommend leaders think about to move the field forward?
Mark (15:36):
Yes. And so just like we have all of these conferences with all these workshops and clinical topics, I think we need to have a forum every year where we invite recognized leaders in the field and people on the front line.
Livia (15:48):
Yep.
Mark (15:48):
We can call it the state of the union as it pertains to our profession. We want to make sure that we don’t just have leaders at the table, but also boots on the ground, people on the front-line talk about what are the challenges that we face and how can we work together to move things forward as a profession? Every year having an annual meeting where we look at how we’re doing and how can we do that better.
Livia (16:08):
Yeah, I think that’s a great idea. And I know that at different times, different folks have been convening that, so I hear you on that. I think the other thing I’ve seen sometimes, Mark, is that folks are talking about, how do we better collaborate to see if there’s things we can do together or can we go after funding together? But people feel isolated, and so a convening would also help with not feeling as isolated and maybe exploring areas of collaboration or partnership. And I know that can be hard in moments of scarcity because it can feel like a threat to try to collaborate and actually give up some control, but there’s also incredible opportunity in it. And I could see that as a potential track at a national convening.
Mark (16:52):
One of the works that I’m really proud of is in Southern Illinois. In 2005, they found 1900 meth labs in a five-county region. 1900 meth labs. And so, they had no clue as to how do we address methamphetamines. In fact, we heard back then that methamphetamines were so powerful that it would make crack cocaine look like candy. So, what they did was, first they mobilized the community, concerned citizens plus people that worked in the field, and they had an annual conference called the Methamphetamine Conference. At first, it was just information about methamphetamines. But it continued every year, it was an annual conference.
(17:30):
Now as we speak, there’s a doctor by the name of David Best, who’s been doing some writing on recovery cities, I think Southern Illinois, which is the biggest part of our state, is a recovery region. They’ve hired hundreds of peers. They have all kind of mutual aid groups. There’s one group that’s been formed that represents a ton of agencies. They’ve now worked together. They’re collaborating to be a really big force. There’s a famous African proverb that says, “Spiders’ webs, when united can carry a lion.” So, there’s really a value in coming together. We are starting to see that more and more. I started to notice that some of the funding sources started putting in grant proposals that you need to partner with other organizations. So, a day is coming and it’s happening as we speak.
Livia (18:16):
A day is coming. Well, Mark, you’ve already shared quite a bit of the history of recovery from your personal experience and your personal history line. What would you want emerging or newer recovery leaders to know about other history of recovery?
Mark (18:31):
Yeah, Carter G. Woodson said, “If you don’t understand history, you’re more likely to repeat it.” And I also want to suggest that the best in every profession understands the history of what happened before they were born. So, I would suggest emerging leaders to study the history of the profession. And if I got really specific, I would encourage them to study some things that we were doing in the ’80s. You see in the ’80s, Livia, we didn’t have evidence-based practices, but here’s what we had that mattered. We worked more with families. As a matter of fact, there were some residential programs that had family week, where the entire family could stay in treatment for a week. Isn’t that the message that addiction is a family illness, right?
Livia (19:09):
Yeah.
Mark (19:10):
We had family week. Routinely, counselors would refer families to Al-Anon, teenagers to Alateen, but we embraced the whole family believing that addiction was a family illness. When I do seminars today, I ask the counselors in the room, “When was the last time you referred anybody to Al-Anon?” “We’re not doing it. We’re mostly working with individuals.”
(19:29):
The other pioneer that I know would be valuable for you to interview who I’ve learned a lot from is Dr. Claudia Black, and Dr. Claudia Black, in the ’80s and ’90s did a lot of writing on children of alcoholics and adult children of alcoholics. She even did a coloring book for small children called; My Daddy Has a Disease. She was helping children. We did multiple family groups. And why is that important? Because some research indicates that if you work with the entire family, you increase recovery rates times three. If I can just take a brief moment to personalize it, after my dad died smoking crack cocaine May 29th, 1986, my uncle Isaac went in front of a judge, and he pleaded upon the court to give him treatment. The judge said, “Why should we give you treatment instead of incarceration? You’ve been committing crimes since you were a juvenile.”
(20:09):
He said, “Three reasons, Your Honor.” He said, “My father died of cirrhosis of the liver.” My grandfather. He said, “My brother-in-law just died of smoking crack cocaine.” My father. He said, “The third reason, Your Honor,” he said, “Every crime ever committed can be explained through untreated addiction.” They put him in treatment. He was the first member of our family to go to treatment. We count 30 members of our family who are now in recovery. Soon as he got there, they called my uncle’s 13 siblings and invited them to participate in this therapy. They said, “We don’t like him. We’re not coming. He stole from all of us to buy heroin.”
(20:37):
They called again, “We don’t like him. He stole from us to buy heroin.” Counselor called a third time and said, “We have food.” They said, “We’ll be there.” And all 13 participated. And 26 nieces and nephews, 39 of us, got into recovery. We’re on generation four. Native Americans have taught me that what you do to help a person with their recovery today will impact their family across seven generations. We’re on generation four, and it began with the family. We did that better.
(21:00):
We also had more assertive linkage back then, because almost every residential program had 12-step meetings on the premises. Now when I travel the country and I ask people to raise their hand if they have a peer-based recovery group on the premises, it can be AA, NA, CA, Celebrate Recovery, SMART Recovery, less than 1% of hands go up. So, there was more assertive linkage between the recovering community and the treatment community. That mattered. And we have more options today. There’s a value in understanding that history.
(21:28):
As a matter of fact, I encourage everybody entering this work today, number one, to realize the importance of mentorship. And if I can just quote a famous philosopher who said, “If I’ve seen far, it’s only because I stood on the shoulders of giants.” So, part of anything I’ve achieved is because I have the world’s greatest mentor in Bill White. Number two, I encourage them to read his book, Slaying the Dragon: The History of Substance Use Disorder Treatment in America, because again, the best in every field knows the history of that field, and the only way you can build upon a profession is to know what happened before you arrived.
Livia (21:59):
Agree very much. So, I also know that one of your areas of interest is helping clients develop healthy relationships in recovery. That’s also an area that’s very dear to my heart. I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about why you chose to focus on this topic, what you found, and some of your recent writings on it.
Mark (22:21):
Yeah. So, my eyebrow, I have half hair. It’s no hair on the other. It’s not a fashion statement. I didn’t arch my eyebrows to impress you during this interview. But when I was seven years old, I was left in the care of my grandfather who went to the tavern. Not the bar or the club, the tavern. It was a long time ago, to get something to drink. And when he came back, he was under anesthesia, he was drunk. I tripped and I cut my eyebrow and I was bleeding, and I went in his room to try to wake him up. For about 20 minutes I tried to wake him up, and I couldn’t. So, at seven years old, I went in the bathroom, I found the gauze, the tape and the band-aids, and I doctored myself up. I remember saying to myself, “If I’m going to depend upon anybody for the rest of my life, it’s going to be me. I’m the only person I could depend upon.” So, I went in the world believing I was the only person I could depend upon.
(23:02):
When I became a drug abuse counselor, I learned that many of our clients, almost all of them, had a history of childhood trauma and childhood abandonment. And one message they brought into their adult life was that I can only depend upon myself. I’m not worthy of love. There’s shame connected to trauma and childhood abandonment. Must be my fault. Dr. Brené Brown defines shame as the belief that I’m unlovable and unworthy of belonging. So, you discover drugs and I can’t rely on people, but this becomes my companion. You give up drugs, and now what are you left with? Issues around abandonment, trauma, and shame. So, what I started noting in my clients is the primary reason that they were relapsing and returning to drug use is because of entering into relationships with people who couldn’t possibly love them. I saw that many relapses were occurring around toxic, unhealthy relationships.
(23:48):
So, I started concluding at the core of addiction, the real work is not in discontinuing drug use, that becomes the easy lift. The heavy lift is learning how to have healthy relationships in recovery. I had a private practice, where at that time I was working with lots of women in long-term recovery, five years or longer, who would come to me for therapy and says, “Mark, I don’t need help with staying sober. I know how to do that. I need help because I’m always dating the wrong people.” She’d say, “I’ve been in recovery for 25 years. Why am I attracted to someone who’s been in recovery for 25 minutes or 25 seconds?” And so, they would end these relationships and they would say, “I haven’t spoken to that person in two weeks. I feel like I’m going through withdrawal,” like the other person became like a drug.
(24:27):
So, I wrote a workbook called Relationship Detox: Helping Clients Develop Healthy Relationships in Recovery, because Livia, I figured it out. Once a person learns how to develop healthy friendships, romantic relationships, then they no longer need chemicals the way they needed them in the past. In fact, I see substance use disorder as a pathological relationship with a chemical that’s actually a substitute for true human intimacy. And again, once our clients learn how to have chemical-free, healthy relationships, then it changes the need for drugs in order to be their companion. I can give you another observation. Sometimes in marriages where people have been together for 30 years, they stayed together for 30 years through active addiction and then separated and divorce in early recovery. In fact, Dr. Stephanie Brown, who would be a great person to interview for your series, who’ve done some of the most groundbreaking research on addiction as a family illness called Early Recovery, the trauma of early family recovery.
(25:24):
Now that person’s in a relationship with a stranger. They didn’t marry somebody who was in recovery. They married somebody who got intoxicated every night. So, I think the real work in recovery is around relationships, so that when Johann Hari said, “The opposite of addiction is not recovery, it’s connection,” that includes connections to friendships, romantic relationships, etc.
Livia (25:45):
Very articulate. I love the way you answered that question, Mark. I think part of what we find too in some of our recent work, is that community as a factor of resiliency gets at a little or some of this as well, right? And interdependence and knowing how to both be in a relationship that has mutual benefit in a very healthy way really helped people think through, “Okay, if my needs are being met through my relationships,” like you say, “do I still need the substance to meet that need?” It’s just so powerful. I know I’m going to be reading that book, Mark. Thank you.
(26:28):
So, as we get close to wrapping this up, what kind of wisdom might you be able to share with young people in the recovery movement? There’s a lot of young people coming into a movement.
Mark (26:39):
Yes. And so, throughout our interview, I’ve mentioned my relationship with William White as my mentor a number of times, because in fact, since I’m considered a pioneer and elder, I noticed as people age, they repeat the same stories over and over and over again. So, the reason I did that was to just say it’s really that important.
Livia (26:59):
It is. I agree.
Mark (26:59):
It is mentorship and moving things forward, so that makes all the big difference in the world. The other is that as they do this work, there are going to be things that … First off, what keeps us doing this work is the miracle of recovery. I’ve witnessed 44 years of miraculous recovery stories. That’s kept me going for four decades. The other thing that’s kept me going over 44 years are these long-term relationships, friendships with colleagues who’ve been doing this for decades as well. That really does matter.
(27:31):
But what I encourage young people new to the field to do is, those things that frustrate you, that keep you awake at night, make you want to leave this work and go work at a grocery store, make you want to pull out your own hair, those create opportunities. And the opportunities they create is for you to do what Gandhi called, “Be the change you want to see in the world,” is to be the person that goes out there to do those implementations to make the profession better. For instance, years ago I saw how separate we were addressing mental health and addictions, and so I did some of the first integrated co-occurring disorders programs in Illinois. There was an opening. I had not read much about relationships and recovery. It frustrated me, so I created that workbook, Relationship Detox: Helping Clients Develop Healthy Relationships in Recovery.
(28:20):
Now, should those listening to the sound of my voice who are newer to this work, when you start to invent stuff, it keeps you interested in the work more too. Someone said, “The opposite of creativity is depression.” No, they said, “No, it’s death. When you create, it’s like you’re alive.” So that’d be my encouraging words.
Livia (28:37):
Thank you, Mark. Well, you’ve already shared a little bit about what keeps you going, and certainly all those amazing instances of recovery is one of them. Is there anything else you want to share?
Mark (28:47):
Yeah, that we are actually the greatest profession in the world. And my friend Bob Carty said, “If you are good to our profession, our profession will be good to you.” So, over the years, I’ve had friends who’ve lost their job, they were unemployed for a moment, but those who were good to the profession, they always found employment, and they often wound up in a better place than where they started. So just treat the field well. Eventually what happens is gratitude sets in, you want to give back to the profession, and then Livia will call you when you’re in the winter of your career and say that we want to do a pioneer interview with you. And I want to thank you, Livia, for taking the time to interview me.
Livia (29:25):
Thank you, Mark.
Mark (29:26):
Thank you.
Livia (29:27):
Wow. You are most welcome. It’s a privilege and thank you so much for joining us today. And to our listeners, join us next time on Changing the Conversation.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
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.