ED2Recovery+ Peer Conference 2024
Conference Presenters
Home | Agenda | Presenters | Presentations
Betsy Atwell
Presenting: “Know Your Limits: Protecting Your Boundaries When Working Across Multiple Systems”
Betsy Atwell (LPC, CSAC, ICS) is a Licensed Professional Counselor, Clinical Substance Abuse Counselor, and Independent Clinical Supervisor in the state of Wisconsin. She graduated from Antioch University New England with an MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling in 2014. She has worked in the field of substance use services for 12 years providing individual therapy, group therapy, assessments, and clinical supervision. For 9 years, she worked within the hospital system in Madison and managed NewStart. She now oversees the crisis and outpatient mental health services as the Mental Health Supervisor at Green County Human Services. Betsy believes that the lives of people who have or do use substances of any kind should be valued and celebrated and she is honored to participate in this conference.
Lisa Marie Brodsky Auter
Presenting: “Grief is a Backpack: carrying what can’t be fixed”
Lisa Marie Brodsky Auter is Lead Peer Support and Peer Support Group Coordinator at SOAR Case Management in Madison, WI. Lisa Marie is also a Poetry Therapy Practitioner offering individual and group opportunities to combine creative writing and emotional wellness. The author of two books, her poetry and non-fiction have also been widely published and she is currently working on a book that combines peer support ethics and values with training in expressive arts. Lisa Marie considers herself an advocate for normalizing struggles around grief and all mental health experiences as part of the human experience.
Maria Carmen Beltran
Opening Speaker
Maria Carmen Beltran was born and raised in Milwaukee, WI. A Mother of seven adult children & Grandmother of seven.
She is a Strong Resident Leader, Organizer & Activist in her community of Lindsay Heights.
She fights for stigma changes and state policies for all families.
As a Proud Alumni of Wisconsin Women’s Network Policy Institute ’23, she has learned how to change policies for all to have equal rights to live a healthy, active life with access to medical insurance for mental health & drug/alcohol addiction; for families to live in lead-free homes, keeping neighborhoods safe & clean and for equal & affordable housing in the City of Milwaukee. This is very near and dear to her heart and will always EMPOWER others to break down Barriers & Stigmas to be STRONG LEADERS.
Lead with passion, success will follow
Maria Carmen Beltran
Ritu Bhatnagar
Presenting: “Advocating with Allies – the Good Samaritan Coalition”
Dr. Bhatnagar is an addiction psychiatrist and clinical professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health Department of Psychiatry. She is Director of Psychiatric Services at University Health Services and Principal Investigator for Wisconsin Voices for Recovery. She is an active member of the Wisconsin Society of Addiction Medicine (WISAM), is the WISAM representative to the Council on Legislation for the Wisconsin Medical Society and serves on the Medicaid Advisory Committee, the Ending Deaths of Despair Task Force and the State Council for Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse.
After a decade in a specialty addiction treatment setting, she is supporting educational initiatives related to the treatment of substance use disorders. She seeks to develop novel community collaborations to address the impact of substance use and mental health disorders.
Annette Czarnecki
Presenting: “Advocating with Allies – the Good Samaritan Coalition”
Annette became a Certified Grief Support Specialist after losing three family members to overdose. She facilitates a GRASP peer overdose support group in Dane County. Her journey to compassion spans more than 20 years, starting with the death of two brothers to prescription overdose to losing her stepdaughter Sarah Caldwell to overdose in 2020. Annette is passionate about treating mental health and substance use epidemics as a public health crisis.
Michelle Haumschild
Presenting: “Organizing and Professionalism in Peer Support Roles: Balancing Compassion and Boundaries”
Michelle has worked for Safe Communities since 2020. She primarily works with justice-involved persons and is very passionate about treatment over incarceration.
Outside of her work at Safe Communities she is a counselor at Tellurian Detox Center. In her free time, she referees high school basketball and umpires softball/baseball.
She has two children and 3 dogs. She has been told that she has an impressive taste in music and that she is “fun recovery coach.” All jokes aside, she loves her job and loves walking alongside people on their journey to obtaining a better life.
Bev Kelley-Miller
Presenting: “Advocating with Allies – the Good Samaritan Coalition”
Bev earned a masters in psychology and taught psychology courses at FVTC. Less than a year after retiring from FVTC, Bev lost her youngest daughter, Megan Kelley, 22, to a preventable overdose when her friend failed to call 911 because he feared incarceration for himself and Megan. Ten weeks after Megan’s death in April 2015, Bev became a Recovery Coach. In 2016, Bev initiated the Wisconsin Memorial Quilts project to remember and honor loved ones lost to Substance Use Disorder (SUD). She tours the State of Wisconsin displaying the Quilts and posts everyday on Facebook loved ones lost to SUD. Bev also advocates on policy issues related to SUD and is an active member of ESTHER-Fox Valley, a transformational justice taskforce.
Amy Parins
Presenting: “Motivational Interviewing for Recovery Coaches”
Amy Parins (DMSc, PA-C) has over 15 years of experience as a Physician Assistant working clinically in internal medicine, addiction medicine, urgent care and behavioral health. Amy is passionate about improving the health and wellbeing of health care providers and patients alike. She is a certified motivational interviewing trainer, accepted in the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers (MINT 2023). Amy leads workshops for health care teams to enhance their abilities to help their patients make difficult behavior changes.
Tarah Stangler
Tarah (she/they) is a transplant from the Twin Cities area who came to Madison 5 years ago for undergrad where she studied English and Community & Nonprofit Leadership. In 2020, they left undergrad to focus on organizing and supporting her community during the uprising. Her background in organizing and lived experience with substances informs the work she does and focuses their approach to harm reduction in community centered, abolitionist solutions.
When they’re not organizing or working at OutReach as the Harm Reduction Services Director, you’ll find her cooking enough food to feed the city of Madison, working with plants, and spending time with her loved ones.
Marybeth Studelska
Presenting: “Advocating with Allies – the Good Samaritan Coalition”
Marybeth has extensive experience as a teacher and a parent of two daughters with mental health and substance use issues. She has seen first hand how people fall through the cracks and are incarcerated. Marybeth has taught at many different grade levels, as well as adults via a program she created for parenting spirited children/young adults. She continues to work as Certified Parent Peer Specialist to help other parents whose children have a substance use disorder.
Matt Traver
Closing Speaker
Matthew Traver battled mental health and substance abuse issues for most of his life. After a series of arrests, he was at a crossroads either to go to prison or try a new way of life, which was introduced through participating in Brown County treatment court. After a few stumbles, he ultimately excelled in the program and upon graduation dived into recovery service work and started giving back. Working with his best friend, David John Peters, the non-profit NEVER GIVE UP was founded during the pandemic. This is what Matt dedicates his life to today. Here’s to another twenty-four!
Michael Waupoose
Presenting: “Mindfulness: a Tool for Recovery”
Michael Waupoose (LSCW) began his meditation journey 16 years ago, starting with a Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) class. Michael is a certified MBSR teacher through the UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness and has been teaching in the UW Health Mindfulness Program since 2011. He is also trained in offering Mindfulness Based Relapse Prevention. He developed the UW Health MBSR teacher training program and is a MBSR teacher trainer for the University of California San Diego – Center for Mindfulness. He offers adult MBSR classes, MBSR classes for the BIPOC community, and teachers mediation classes on his Reservation. Michael Waupoose in an enrolled member of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin and is an 8-year veteran of the United States Air Force. He is a retired clinical social worker and substance abuse counselor with over 30 years of experience
