“I found my calling, or it found me, through my own addiction,” says Holly Cekala, who has been in recovery for 12 years. Today she is is one of the state’s leading advocates in the field of addiction recovery and executive director of ƵARES.
Cekala's work in advocacy found roots at Ƶ, where she began researching chemical dependency under the leadership of her mentor Robin Montvila, director of Ƶ’s Chemical Dependency/Addiction Studies program.
While a student, Cekala also began volunteering at the Anchor Recovery Community Center (ARCC) and was soon made manager of three ARCCs. Within a year and a half, she opened two additional ARCC facilities: one in Warwick and another at the women’s Adult Correctional Institution (ACI).
Cekala began training individuals at ARCC and the ACI to become peer recovery specialists. She went on to petition the Rhode Island Certification Board for Licensed Chemical Dependency Professionals to make peer recovery specialists a certified position. She won approval and became the first certified trainer of peer recovery specialists.
In the fall of 2014, she was invited by the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy to the White House to commemorate the 25th anniversary of National Drug and Alcohol Addiction Recovery Month.
For her advocacy work, Cekala won the Ƶ Leadership Award in the category of Vital Contribution to the Community.
According to her mentor, Montvilo, “I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time to recognize this very promising student. Holly’s incredible commitment, energy and concern for the well-being of society are rivaled by none. I can only imagine what her impact will be in the future. I am very much in awe of this totally amazing student.”
Cekala serves on a Washington-based panel – Addiction and Recovery in the United States: Reinforcing Community-Based Solutions” – for the Altarum Institute, with co-panelists Senator Sheldon Whitehouse; Michael Boticelli, White House Office of National Drug Control Policy; Tom Coderre, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration; and others. She also serves on the board of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights at Brown University and on the board for the Behavioral Health and Addiction Institute at Ƶ. In 2015 she was appointed by RI Governor Gina Raimondo to the Reinvent Medicaid Counsel.