News

National Advisory Committee

Date: 01/21/2016

The National Advisory Committee (NAC) provides Cenpatico with the perspective of  persons with lived experience of mental illness and/or addictions and with the perspective of their family members and community advocates. The NAC is chaired by the Senior Director of Strategic Alliances & Development. The NAC meets with and advises members of the Senior Management Team directly.

Mertice “Gitane” Williams

Gitane is a Vocational Wellness Educator with Crestwood Behavioral Health (CBHI) in California and has been a member of the NAC for three years. She has been a part of the CBHI Corporate Leadership team for the past eight years as a peer leader and program developer. Recently, she was invited to participate on the Evaluation Committee for the California Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission, a two-year project to evaluate the recovery orientation of mental health programs. Gitane is also a public speaker for a variety of public health topics and sees her role as a storyteller, using her perspectives as an African-American lesbian woman, as well as her spirituality, cultural competence, and lived experience to help people find well being.

Stephany Bryan

Stephany is the Program Officer and Consumer and Family Liaison for the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health. She represents the perspectives of persons with lived experience of recovery and wellness from a mental illness and their families in the Hogg Foundation’s strategic planning, grant making, programs and policy activities. Before joining the Foundation, she spent 19 years advocating for improvements to federal, state and local mental health policies and services. Stephany served as Field Staff at the Georgetown University National Communities CAN! Leadership Academy in Washington, D.C. She has a certificate in finance from the American Institute of Banking and completed coursework in music at Texas State University. She also is a Certified Peer Specialist and Certified WRAP Facilitator.

Chad Holbrook

Chad is a consultant from Milwaukee, Wisconsin and is also currently enrolled in college as a History major with an emphasis on Museum Studies. He has been a life-long advocate for people with mental health issues, physical disabilities and addiction problems. He has a life’s worth of experience dealing with the health care system and the struggles people have with it.

William “Bill” Kennard

Bill has been a member of Cenpatico Behavioral Health’s National Advisory Council since 2010. He is the Founder and President of Arizona-based Life Empowering Technologies, a behavioral health information capital development company that generates individualized E-SKILL ™ solutions for individuals who receive, provide, or support others receiving behavioral health services. During his nearly forty-year career, Bill has consulted behavioral health systems in forty-nine states and seven countries and served in senior leadership roles with some of the nation’s leading organizations in advocacy (NAMI of Arizona), education and training (Boston University’s Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation and BCPR Consulting), managed care (ValueOptions), and service delivery (Recovery Innovations). Bill’s proudest professional accomplishment is the twenty–four year privilege of assisting William Anthony and his colleagues at the Boston University Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation in transforming the vision and practices of the behavioral health field by leading the university-based consultation and training team, as well as its independent consulting group BCPR Consulting, Inc.

Kai Wilder

Kai Wilder began high school as an AP student in the Cambridge Program and went on to graduate from a performing arts high school in three years. She has studied dance with the Washington Ballet at The Arc in SE Washington, D.C. and the Broadway Dance Center in New York City. While in New York, she was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, after which she was admitted to a six-month hospitalization. Upon release, she went on to get her high school diploma and began studies in Communications and Psychology at Northern Virginia Community College, as well as resumed her work with Core Health LLC, a business that promotes strengthening individual health and wellness through enriching communities. While aspiring to become an established advocate and ambassador for youth regarding behavioral health, she is committed to becoming a part of something bigger than herself.

Jane Adams, Ph.D.

Dr. Jane Adams is the Executive Director of Keys for Networking, Inc., the Kansas state organization of the Federation of Families for Children's Mental Health. Dr. Adams also serves as an executive board member of the Federation of Families for Children's Mental Health. She served as an Associate Professor of Special Education in Learning Disabilities and Behavior Disorders at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas and as principal/special education director of Kansas's largest institution for 200 adjudicated male juvenile offenders. Dr. Adams is a member of the Kansas Social Rehabilitation Services 2002 Task Force to explore the role of state mental hospitals in community-based continuum of services for children. She has authored and co-authored such products as the Keys CD-ROM and online WrapAround Training modules (Strengths-based planning, Cultural Competence, Family Involvement, and School Mental Health Collaboration); "STAR, A five module CD-ROM Parent Guide to Proactive Discipline"; "Blamed and Ashamed", a youth-directed national research study of co-occurring mental health, substance abuse treatments; and several others. She received her Master's and Ph.D. from Kansas State University, and her Bachelor's degree from Marymount University in 1969. Dr. Adams has two grown children.