Jeffrey Gross, ThD, PhD, MS, MA, SAC-IT is a person in recovery whose experience with prescription painkillers and heroin led to profound personal consequences and a season in which much of his life had to be rebuilt. His journey home required more than abstinence—it required restoring relationships, rediscovering purpose, accepting responsibility, and finding a community in which healing and meaningful change could take root. Today, Jeffrey draws upon that experience to walk alongside others affected by addiction, trauma, loss, and the difficult work of rebuilding their lives.
As part of his journey forward, Jeffrey earned doctorates in theology and Christian counseling. He is also in his fifth year of formation toward becoming a psychologist at the Wisconsin School of Professional Psychology, where he is pursuing a Doctor of Psychology in Clinical Psychology. His education has not replaced his lived experience; rather, it has helped him better understand it and use it in service to others. Jeffrey is the founder and Executive Director of Restoring Hope Ministries, where he works to make counseling, peer support, recovery education, reentry assistance, and faith-based care accessible to individuals and families.
As a Certified Peer Specialist and Substance Abuse Counselor–In Training, Jeffrey has supported recovery through individual and group counseling, community education, ministry partnerships, and advocacy for people whose stories are too often reduced to diagnoses, labels, or past decisions. His lived experience continues to shape the questions he brings into clinical training, ministry leadership, and community advocacy.
Jeffrey encourages professionals, scholars, peers, churches, and community leaders to remain curious about addiction—not only about the substance or behavior itself, but also about the pain, disconnection, identity struggles, trauma, and unmet needs that may surround it. He believes people are best supported when we seek to understand their whole story rather than define them by one chapter of it.
Jeffrey’s goal in serving on the Wisconsin Voices for Recovery Advisory Council is not simply to arrive with answers, but to help the Council ask better questions. He believes recovery advocacy should bring people together rather than become divided by political or ideological differences. For Jeffrey, addiction is deeply connected to disconnection, and recovery becomes possible through belonging, dignity, accountability, hope, and relationships that welcome people home. His education and community work strengthen his commitment to building bridges among lived experience, peer support, faith communities, treatment providers, and the broader recovery community.
