My clinical training didn't prepare me for this work. Losing everything did.

I trained as an anesthesiologist — medical school at Ross University, a bachelor's degree from the University of Toronto, internship and residency at Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia. For more than a decade I practiced medicine while privately managing untreated PTSD from surviving the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center, using drugs to keep functioning in a job that had no real room for a doctor who was struggling instead of thriving.

In 2016, that came apart in public. I was arrested and charged with multiple felonies in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, for providing drugs to someone I was involved with. I was convicted, and I lost my medical license. I've written the full account here →

That collapse is also the reason my current work is credible in a way a clean résumé never would have been. Most consultants in behavioral health and harm reduction have studied the system from outside it. I've been the patient nobody wanted to treat, the physician nobody checked on, and the felon everyone assumed was finished. I bring clinical training and that lived experience to every health system, EMS agency, and public safety organization I work with — and it's the combination, not either half alone, that changes how people in a room actually listen.

Today I'm the co-founder and CEO of Elevyst, where I lead a cross-sector team helping organizations strengthen behavioral health response, implement harm reduction and trauma-informed practice, and reduce the stigma that keeps people from getting help before they hit the kind of collapse I did.