Leadership

Mary Jo McMillen
Executive Director
Mary Jo is well recognized for her leadership and advocacy work with state and local governments, treatment agencies, healthcare entities, and community partners, promoting public awareness about substance use disorders and recovery through listening to people with lived experience.
In 2007, Mary Jo joined a group of colleagues and people in recovery to establish USARA as a non-profit advocacy organization. In 2010 she became the Executive Director and USARA became a statewide peer-run Recovery Community Organization (RCO). In 2011, with the support of community partners and the Board of Directors, she opened Utah’s first Recovery Community Center in Salt Lake County.
Mary Jo is most proud of USARA’s dedicated team of Peer Recovery Coaches, Family Recovery Coaches, volunteers, and administrative staff that have developed and implemented non-clinical Recovery Support Services and best practices for peer coaching and family support. USARA’s entire staff collaboratively works with local community leaders, government entities, treatment providers, healthcare clinics, hospitals, public health, courts, jails and probation services, homeless shelters, and others to help individuals and family members connect with resources they need to support recovery from addiction. There is a saying she learned in early recovery that holds true for her and others today, “What we can’t do alone, we can do together.”
Mary Jo loves the life she lives and is truly grateful for a loving family and dear friends. Her greatest blessing is being a mom to two amazing daughters and being married to her best friend Shawn. She adores children of all ages, dogs, and her happy places are on a yoga mat, walks with her family, going to the beach, and spending time in Utah’s beautiful desert!

Evan Done
Associate Director
Evan is a person in long-term recovery from both a substance use and mood disorder and has been on USARA’s staff since April 2017. With over ten years of experience in social justice advocacy, he is dedicated to creating a more equitable and sustainable world.

Mitchel Staheli
Finance Director

Becca Brown
Education & Training Director
Prior to joining USARA, Becca dedicated over 15 years in the Social Services sector, cultivating a specialty in Career & Life Coaching for individuals with significant disadvantages. In Early 2015 Becca joined USARA’s team and now serves as the Education & Training Director, working toward the vision of statewide Recovery Services that are accessible to all who desire.
In her free time, Becca loves to read and write. However, her greatest pride & joy in life is her family. She treasures the gift of watching her children thrive and loves going on adventures with her husband, children, and fur-son, Yoshi.

Marcie Gray
Program Manager

Patrick Cox
Program Manager

Tiffany Naccarato
Program Manager/Community Empowerment Coordinator

Jareth Williams
ARCHES Program Manager
Jareth wants to be able to give back the same support to the recovery community that he received when he first began his journey.
Jareth has two beautiful daughters that are his world. Some of his hobbies include: D&D, Magic the Gathering, video games, reading fantasy books, and going on walks.

Teresa Kim
Administrative Coordinator/Human Resources
In her free time, Teresa enjoys spending time in the outdoors with family, friends, and of course, dogs.
Salt Lake County Staff

Kayla Jensen
Peer Recovery Coach

Andy Deines
Peer Recovery Coach

Tryana Scaramella
Peer Recovery Coach
Tryana proudly serves the community that so freely gave her the support that she needed. She loves to play softball, loves to cook, go camping, go hiking, have nerf gun wars, and drive around with the music all the way turned up! She is very proud of her journey and the woman she has become along the way.

Julie Sanders
Peer Employment Coach
Julie has an inspiring 17 year old daughter, Hannah, and an angel-baby, Jaxon. She and Hannah know how to make an adventure out of any situation. Her life motto is, “Everything is better with a little country music.” (preferably Tim McGraw).

Brandy Kueffner
Peer Recovery Coach
ARCHES

Karissa MacDonald
Peer Recovery Coach

Ashley Kley
Peer Recovery Coach

Vanessa Genova
Peer Recovery Coach

Valerie Jansen
Peer Recovery Coach
What keeps excitement in life for Valerie is being able to view it through the eyes of her three children, going for walks, playing at parks, adventures and camping. This is her way out of the sense of self and into theirs for these are the moments in life that she is grateful for. Her favorite quote “You haven’t come this far, to only come this far’ helps keep the momentum under her feet as she paves her way here at USARA.

Sami Lindsay
Peer Recovery Coach
CRAFT Family Support

Darlene Schultz
Family Support Coordinator
Darlene is a wife, mother, and a proud Grandma to two very special kids. She lost her son, Adam, to an overdose in 2012, yet continues to change the hearts and minds of people with negative perception toward substance use disorders. She has proven herself to USARA through her deep sense of purpose and commitment to the CRAFT Family Support Group.

Jennifer Slack
Family Support Facilitator
One of Jennifer’s children struggled with SUD and mental health challenges beginning in 2017. She was desperate to help her child. After a particularly difficult situation with her loved one, she knew she needed to change herself because what she was doing wasn’t changing her child. Through a google search she discovered Dr. Robert Meyer’s book “How to Get Your Loved One Sober, Alternatives to Nagging, Pleading, and Threatening”. She ordered the book online and then discovered there were CRAFT groups she could attend right where she lived. She and her husband attended the next available group in person at the beginning of 2020, transitioning to the online format at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Prior to CRAFT, Jennifer had been living in fear and constant stress and not really living her own life as she was so hyper-focused on the choices of her loved one. As she and her husband continued to practice the “alternatives”, life slowly improved. Their family relationships improved, stress was reduced, and they celebrated as their loved one figured out what works best for him in his journey of recovery. Her loved one later told her, “My life started getting better after those books showed up in our house”. She and her husband now co-facilitate an online group every Wednesday through USARA. She is now a trainer and mentor of facilitators and helps coach families to improve their CRAFT skills.
While practicing the self-care she learned in CRAFT, Jennifer began training to become a mindfulness teacher through Breathworks in April of 2021. She will complete her training in the latter half of 2022. Through this training and mindful lived experience, Jennifer has been able to take up cycling again for short rides on her recumbent electrified trike. Jennifer’s life motto is: “Let all your things be done with love.”

John Garbett
Family Support Facilitator

Joyce Eckman
Family Support Facilitator
In 2011 Joyce began the biggest challenge of her life in the depths of the addiction world. Being the mother of a child struggling with a substance use disorder is nothing that any school could ever teach or prepare you for. Like so many families who suffer in that darkness and horror, Joyce searched for some sort of relief from the insanity, pain, and hopelessness. Nothing brought any real comfort or felt right to her until she finally found USARA at the premier showing of ‘The Anonymous People’ in 2013. When she learned about the CRAFT Family Support group, she went to the next meeting available. Through attending those group meetings, she learned there were things she could do to encourage her son by changing their communication from “confrontation” into “conversation”. It was finally okay to love him right where he was! Less than a year later, her son began his recovery and she continued to attend and facilitate weekly CRAFT Family Support Meetings.
In 2019, Joyce received the Utah Honors Recovery Ambassador Award in recognition of her contribution for helping families learn the very skills and tools she continues to use every day. She facilitates 2 weekly CRAFT Family Support groups along with individual and family phone coaching. She shares hope with every mother, father, spouse, child, sibling, and friend who loves someone suffering from substance use disorder.
Ogden/Weber County Staff

Elizabeth Myers
Peer Recovery Coach

Kelsey Pierce
Forensic Peer Recovery Coach

Margie Nelson
Peer Recovery Coach
Price/Carbon County Staff

Mersades Morgan
Peer Recovery Coach/Community Empowerment Coordinator
Mersades prides herself on her passion for helping others out of the hopelessness and depths of addiction. Prior to joining USARA, Mersades has experience working in an inpatient treatment facility where she was Head of Employee Experience and Lead Recovery Advocate working one-on-one with individuals. Her goal is to advocate and empower those that have been affected by addiction. Mersades has a beautiful family of five that she cherishes and credits much of her success to their love and support.

Moab/Grand County Staff

Lanette Denton
Peer Recovery Coach
Recovery is the most important thing in her life, it enables her to maintain her family and the things that are important to her. Lanette’s gratitude seems like a never ending stream and when she wakes up each day to the blessing of having her children with her, a safe home for them, and heading out to a job she loves that allows room for not only helping others; but a space where she can learn as an individual, a woman, and a mother.
She says, “I feel like I have everything that I have ever wanted. I will be celebrating another year in long term recovery in July of this year. I want to shout out to the world that recovery is possible and to never give up!”

Heidi Thompson
Peer Recovery Coach
She not only found herself, but also purpose through volunteering to run recovery meetings, helping with recovery day and family fun nights, and being involved in USARA and other recovery community events, both in and out of town.
She is an active member in 12 step meetings, has 2 beautiful daughters and strives to be a positive role model for all those she comes in contact with. She has a passion for helping others find what she found through USARA and that is empowerment, support, and encouragement. And hope is what we create! We DO recover!!
St. George/Southwest Utah Staff

Ben Martinez
Peer Recovery Coach
A Saint George native, Ben enjoys all the wonder that Southern Utah has to offer. He enjoys hiking, climbing, and camping in the natural beauty that surrounds Saint George. He is also passionate about live music and comedy, and can be found at a live show from Vegas to SLC on any given weekend. Ben’s biggest joy in life would be his dog, if his landlord would let him have one.

Crystal Randall
Peer Recovery Coach