Alternatives is pleased to announce the 2022 awards:

sally zinman Lifetime achievement awardS

The Sally Zinman Lifetime Achievement Award is given to individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to the peer recovery/liberation movement throughout the course of their career.

harvey Rosenthal

Harvey Rosenthal has dedicated the last 45 years to the promotion of public mental health policies, programs, and practices that advance the recovery, rights, community inclusion, and liberation of people with mental health, addiction, and trauma-related challenges. His commitment to his work is personal, dating back to a lengthy psychiatric hospitalization at age 19.

He has served as CEO of the New York Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services since 1993. Under his leadership, NYAPRS’s advocacy has helped to shape state and national public policies and mental health systems to advance informed choice, self-determination and self-direction; oppose all forms of coercion; increase access to recovery-centered and peer support services; promote a focus on the social determinants of health and racial equity; and help to win several landmark criminal justice-related reforms.

Harvey helped to create and promote the nationally acclaimed Peer Bridger model, alternatives to coercion like the peer-led INSET initiative (an alternative to outpatient commitment), as well as several state and national recovery- and rehabilitation-focused technical assistance programs. 

His efforts have earned him the highest honors from the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, National Coalition for Mental Health Recovery, National Association of Peer Supporters, The College for Behavioral Health Leadership, Mental Health America, and the Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association. 

Amy jo young

Amy Jo Young, BS, PSS, THW, and QMHA 1, considers founding L- aPs, Inc. (Learning, Living & Loving after/along with Programs) her “most fantastic achievement.” In May 2021, she and her husband decided to create a non-profit to bridge the "lapse" in services in order to support and encourage others to seek what they need to stay in recovery while they await other services. Among Amy’s employers are Lifeways, Inc., Eastern Oregon Recovery Center (EORC), and her current employer, Maple Star Oregon. She has a firsthand understanding of addiction, behavioral health, the judicial system, surviving cancer, family problems, houselessness, and child welfare.

Award Acceptance Video

alphonso Thomas

Alphonso Thomas is a National Certified Peer Specialist (NCPS) with a forensic enhancement, and a WRAP Trainer and Facilitator. The author of two books–"The Blackout Life Plan" and "Blueprint to Wellness”–he has worked on countless forums and committees that help individuals improve their lives and create the reality they desire. 

Mr. Thomas has used his personal experience and the study of human behavior to promote self-help and self-advocacy as well as other sustainable skills of daily living. He teaches a 96-hour hybrid Peer Support course at Durham Technical Community College in North Carolina, and works as a Peer Support Specialist for the Stepping Up Initiative, whose goal is to decrease recidivism. In this role, he assists detainees, including the high-risk population, at the Forsyth County Detention Center with the tools and resources essential to helping them get acclimated back into society.

Award Acceptance Video

judi chamberlin joy in advocacy awardS

Judi was a tireless advocate for mental health systems change and fought to make “Nothing About Us Without Us!” a reality. This award is joyfully dedicated to recognizing an individual who has made enormous achievements in bringing hope into the lives of persons with lived experience and advancing the field of disability rights advocacy.

nev jones

Nev Jones, PhD is a service user/survivor researcher, activist-scholar and Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Pittsburgh. Inspired by personal experiences of intensive service involvement (for psychosis) and associated social and structural discrimination, Nev has focused her work on challenging status quo responses to individuals experiencing distress, altered states, and non-consensual realities through a combination of community organizing and mutual aid, critical pedagogy, mentoring, and change-oriented research. She leads the informal coalition Transform Mental Health Research, centered on building capacity, and supporting networking and collective advocacy, among service user/survivors invested in democratizing research. Earlier in her career, she co-founded Chicago Hearing Voices and the Bay Area Hearing Voices Network, and has collaborated with numerous peer-run and cross-disability organizations on advocacy and research projects. Recent areas of focus include documentation of the impact of poverty and structural racism on service users' experiences in and outside the mental health system, and the development of policy aimed at better supporting students with psychiatric disabilities in higher education.

Award Acceptance Video

leslie napper

 Leslie Napper, a proud native of Sacramento, is a Peer Senior Advocate for Disability Rights California (DRC) and a former Patients’ Rights Advocate in Sacramento, Yolo, Napa, and San Joaquin counties. Leslie has served as Chair of the Protection and Advocacy for Individuals with Mental Illness (PAIMI) Advisory Council, Disability Rights California’s Board of Directors, and CalMHSA Advisory Council, as well as serving on Sacramento County's Mental Health Board. She currently serves on Sacramento County's MHSA Steering Committee, representing adult mental health consumers.  

As a consultant to the California Institute for Mental Health (CIMH), Leslie developed and led a statewide African American Mental Health Consumer Leadership training, as well as facilitated and assisted in the development of trainings providing technical assistance to California's Local Mental Health Boards/Commissions. 

Lead plaintiff in Napper vs. County of Sacramento, she worked closely with DRC's legal team in litigation and settlement of the case. She is passionate about empowering others to advocate for themselves, to eliminate the stigma associated with mental illness, and to effect change. Leslie identifies as a person living with a mental health disability, and has been a respected mental health advocate for more than 15 years. She is a very proud grandmother of an autistic child.

Stefanie Lynn Kaufman-Mthimkhulu

Stefanie Lyn Kaufman-Mthimkhulu (they/she) is a white, queer and non-binary, Disabled, neurodivergent survivor of the medical and psychiatric system. They show up for their communities as a Disability Justice educator and organizer, parent, doula, peer supporter, writer, conflict intervention facilitator, and as the Founding Director of Project LETS. Their work specializes in building non-carceral, peer-led mental health care systems that exist outside of the state, reimagining everything we’ve come to learn about madness, and intervening in systems that oppress, disappear, and kill Disabled and mad folks. Stefanie is the editor of Abolition Must Include Psychiatry and the author of We Don’t Need Cops to Become Social Workers. They also have experience consulting and strategizing with folks around curriculum development, anti-ableist leadership, mental health and Disability policy, and access-centered practices.

Stefanie is also Access Cohort Coach with People’s Hub, Director on IDHA’s Board, Childbirth and Full-Spectrum Doula Core Educator with Birthing Doula Advocacy Trainings, Lead Educator for Birth & Disability (Continuing Education), Radical, a community/survivor-led researcher, and Co-lead of a research project with Dr. Nev Jones and Kelly Davis: Psychiatric Disability-Based Discrimination or Denial of an Accommodation in Post-Secondary Institutions in the United States.

Esperanza Isaac Memorial Awards

Esperanza Isaac-Perez was a nationally and internationally recognized Latina leader who often attended Alternatives. She is credited with starting Casa La Esperanza, the first clubhouse for Latinx peers in New York City. Alternatives presents the Esperanza Hope Memorial Award to a peer of color who has expanded the idea of cultural competency and has done exceptional work within the mental health and peer support community. This award is given in the spirit of Esperanza’s leadership and perseverance in advancing cultural diversity issues for people of color who are peers. 

elsa roman

Elsa Roman, LPC-A, PS, MHPS, has worked as a peer support specialist, peer support specialist supervisor, advocate, peer trainer, consultant, and leader in the peer movement. She has combined her lived experience, education, work experience, cultural background, and interest to promote and develop culturally competent services, career opportunities, and trauma-sensitive training grounded in achieving cultural diversity issues for Hispanic peers in Texas. Elsa has been a fundamental part of the development of the Peer Support Services Department in Hope Family Health Center, adding the only bilingual Peer Support Warmline in Texas, and translating various peer curriculums from English into Spanish. Also, she is one of the only three bilingual peer trainers in Texas. Elsa has received several awards for her work, including the 2022 National Association of Peer Supporters (N.A.P.S.) Steve Harrington Award. This honor is given to individuals who exemplify and uphold N.A.P.S.'s mission and values. Each awardee is judged to have contributed significantly throughout their career to the advancement of the N.A.P.S. National Practice Guidelines for Peer Supporters.

Award Acceptance Video

Fernando pena

Fernando Pena, CADC II, QMHA II, is a Dominican-American born and raised in the Bronx. Fernando moved to Portland, Oregon, in 2010 with the goal of becoming a substance abuse counselor. In 2011 he began his career working with adolescents and gang-involved Latino youth in Washington County, part of the Portland metropolitan area.

In 2016, after serving as Lead SUD Counselor on a multidisciplinary Child and Family treatment team, he took a position as a Clinical Supervisor, helping to open an intensive outpatient treatment program with supported housing in Multnomah County. 

In September 2020, with the mission of increasing recovery support services for the Latinx community in the Portland metro area, Fernando accepted the position of Director of Operations for Nw Instituto Latino. In June 2021, he accepted the position of Executive Director of Nw Instituto Latino.

The Nw Instituto Latino de Adicciones operates the first and currently only culturally and linguistically specific Latinx Recovery Community Organization in Oregon. They provide low-barrier, no-cost recovery support services and harm reduction outreach and education to the Latinx community in the Portland metro area.

Belia LopeZ

Belia Lopez has been a Community Health Worker for the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health for the past 12 years at the Harbor UCLA-Wellness Center. As a recovery-oriented individual providing both services and support, Belia is a major asset for her community, working with monolingual members and demonstrating extraordinary leadership. She is an inspiration to advancing cultural and linguistic inclusion in service of Los Angeles County’s diverse communities. She has made a difference individually and in group settings, encouraging resiliency and recovery. 

Belia has combined her lived experience, education, community services, and work experience to build a career in helping individuals have hope and to believe that recovery is possible. She has helped others deal with breaking down cultural barriers and coping with domestic violence, housing issues, legal status needs, and access to health care, education, and employment. Belia took the challenge of becoming a Peer Housing Specialist and right now she is pursuing the Certification of Peer Support Specialist for the State of California.

cookie gant and bill compton lgbtqia+ Leadership awards

The Cookie Gant and Bill Compton LGBT Leadership Award is rooted in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) participants caucusing at Alternatives conferences since 1985. From secret to official, people proclaimed their place of competence and prominence in the mental health peer community. The award recognizes leadership in a journey of coming out to make it safe to be out, proud, and diverse. It was first given at Alternatives 2007 in St. Louis, in memory of Bill Compton of California and Cookie Gant of Michigan, who led by example when it wasn’t safe to be “out.” 

dandelion hill

Dandelion Hill is a Mad, Queer, Nonbinary, Autistic, Asian American activist, space holder, and abolition-centered social worker. Their primary passion is their work at Peer Support Space, a lived experience-led collective that they co-founded that cultivates community and hubs for healing among those with shared aspects of identity. In addition to their individual and group support offerings, Peer Support Space is actively building towards the Nation’s first Queer-led and Queer-focused Respite. 

Dandelion also acts as an Advisory Board member for Blue Trunk Community Garden Network, an organization promoting community sustainability and food sovereignty in Central Florida that centers increasing food access for Queer, Trans, Disabled, racialized communities. Additionally, Dandelion volunteers their time (alongside other Disabled 2SLGBTQIA comrades) in the Access Pride Coalition, a radical communal initiative that creates events that center access for Disabled community members that are far too often left out of Pride events in Central Florida and beyond. In all their care work, Dandelion leans on their lived experience as a survivor of trauma, childhood assault, and adulthood domestic violence, which provides a compassionate framework as they engage with others and the world around them. You can connect with them and check out more of their care and advocacy work on Instagram @Dandelion.Hill 

helen skipper

Helen Skipper–"Skip," as she prefers to be called–has been working in peer support since her final release in 2007 from years of multiple incarcerations and multiple systems involvement. In her professional persona, she has transitioned out of the Senior Manager of Peer Services position at the New York City Criminal Justice Agency, where she was intentional in creating space for individuals with lived experience. Her new journey as Executive Director of the New York City Justice Peer Center began in late March 2022. Skip is also a Consultant at the Urban Institute, where she is involved in several research initiatives representing community voices and lived experience. 

A Beyond-the Bars 2020/2021 Fellow, Skip is also a Columbia University Justice-in-Education scholar while maintaining a 3.5 GPA at St. Francis College, where she has been a student representative and the first Justice-in-Education program participant to be invited to join the Honor classes. A Senior majoring in Criminal Justice, she is working toward attending graduate school and earning a PhD in Criminology. 

The inaugural Executive Chair of the NYC Peer Workforce Coalition and an executive leadership team member of the NYC Justice Peer Center, Skip was also the first Peer Supervisor employed by the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in her role in the groundbreaking, media-acclaimed Friendship Benches NYC. 

In 2022, Skip and CASES–in a joint application–were one of the 10 winners of the SAMHSA Recovery Innovation Challenge. She also received the College and Community Fellowships’ Rising Star award and Color Magazine’s Wellness Innovator Award. She lives by what she considers her mantra: “I’ve been around the block a time or two on my tricycle and use those lived experiences to color my world while assisting, supporting, advocating, and navigating for those still caught up in the oppressive and broken Criminal Justice System!”

Young Adult Peer Leadership Award

Alternatives honors an emerging young adult leader who has excelled in providing leadership to engage their peers, and who is working on changing the system to be person-centered and recovery, health, and wellness-focused.

Felicity therese krueger

Felicity Therese Krueger, a 19-year-old youth leader, grew up in rural Kentucky. Influenced by her mom’s involvement in statewide advocacy, she has been an advocate since the age of 14. After joining Kentucky Youth MOVE, she became passionate about working with youth. One opportunity led to another and she started working with Youth MOVE National, joining their Youth Best Practice Committee; and becoming the National Empowerment Center’s youngest Emotional CPR (eCPR) trainer. One of her goals has been to share her story of mental health issues and adoption, and to inspire young people to be empowered in sharing their stories.

Award Acceptance Video

howie the harp award

Howie the Harp (1953-1995), a leader of the consumer/survivor community, created peace with his music, playing his harmonica wherever he went. Howie was a longtime advocate for the arts in the consumer community. We honor the work he did by presenting an award in his memory to a person or organization that has carried on that tradition of using art for personal recovery or social change. 

lauren tenney

Lauren Tenney, PhD, MPhil, MPA, BPS, (she/they), is a queer psychiatric survivor and activist first involuntarily locked up in a psychiatric institution at age 15, in 1988. Her work aims to expose institutional corruption as a source of profit for state-sponsored organized psychiatric industries; and she believes we must abolish state-sponsored human rights violations–such as murder, torture, and slavery–enacted by people in power in public psychiatry. Starting with the Youth International Movement in New York City, in 1991 and for decades to follow, Tenney’s work focused on systems advocacy, mutual support, self-help, and activism banning violations such as institutionalization, involuntary outpatient commitment, restraint, solitary confinement, forced and uninformed electric shock treatment, drugging, and brain surgeries. Tenney has worked as a Professor of Psychology since 2005. Her dissertation, (de)VOICED (2014), shines a light on how people are silenced and retaliated against when they speak out against psychiatry. Tenney currently lives in south Florida with her service dog, Kiba, where she is developing “Mental American Monster: The Sprawl of American Psychiatry,” a docu-horror exposing psychiatry's involvement with historical and modern systems of slavery and eugenics, and modern racist, classist, gendered, and bigoted practices. Tenney is also a member of the State of Florida's PAIMI Advisory Council.