Thanks for joining me, Randy. To start, could you talk a bit about where you began your work in peer support?
I had some leadership experience before MaineHealth, but it was in a different field. I came into peer support from direct service—working on the ground, at Florence House Shelter in Portland. When I stepped into a leadership role at MaineHealth, the board had committed to having a peer support leader with lived experience to guide them through a growth and integration process. But there weren’t many peer support supervisors in the state. I only knew of one, and there wasn’t a lot of interest from them in collaborating. At the time, any integration of peer support that was happening was just replicating the clinical model. There weren’t many resources or communities to turn to. No documents on how to integrate peer support, nothing on how run team meetings that include peer support, provide supervision, structure documentation, and more. So I had to figure it out through trial and error—learning from mistakes, talking to the state, and collaborating with peer support trainers and others—like my own supervisor, who was great—people who were open to the conversation.
That sounds like a huge learning curve. How did that experience shape the work you do now?
It was foundational. The program at MaineHealth grew from three people to 65 over seven years, and from $100,000 in grants to $1.5 million. That incremental growth gave me the chance to learn and adapt alongside the program. I saw what it was like to run both small and large programs, and how to encourage growth. I learned about supporting new leaders as we brought on supervisors and managers, and in turn see what they were coming up against and what kind of resources they needed. They taught me a lot too; they helped strengthen my skills through feedback and honest conversations.
One big lesson was around budgeting. I held onto a lot of the budget work because it was complicated and I felt like it was getting in the way of the managers building relationships and supporting staff, but then I realized I was also taking away opportunities for others to learn and grow, and to fully understand and manage their programs. Even though I had good intentions, it was a mistake. That taught me a lot about leadership and delegation.
Eventually, other organizations started asking how we were doing things—documentation, supervision, integration. That led to a few of us talking about how to get what we were doing on paper and sharing information on a broader scale – first, creating manuals and, later, the Peer Leadership Series. I started thinking about resourcing peer supporters who want to step into leadership positions and, at the same time, I was looking for a change. I realized I would need to move on from my position in order to do that and decided to really dedicate myself to sharing the experiences and learnings and creating spaces for folks to strategize and navigate peer support leadership and the integration process together. Partnering with CCSME was a big next step in terms of focusing on the topics and interests that could set up the next generation of leaders to continue this conversation.