Our Team
Meet the experts dedicated to advancing recovery outcomes through research and innovation.
In Memory of John Lehman
Founder
John Lehman was the founder and visionary of ROI. John was a person in stable recovery from Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD). He championed recovery support services that measurably enhance recovery outcomes. He was always grateful for opportunities to collaborate with thought leaders, academic research scientists, and recovery advocates across the globe. John dedicated his life to promoting and supporting recovery-focused organizations and people in the recovery process. His passion, dedication, and commitment to promoting evidence-based practices and building recovery capital have been instrumental in shaping the field of recovery. We are committed to carrying forward his vision and ensuring that his legacy lives on through our work. We will honor his memory by continuing to work tirelessly to promote evidence-based practices and support people in their recovery journeys.
David W. Best Ph.D.
Research Director
David Best Ph.D. is Professor and Director of the Centre for Addiction Recovery Research (CARR) at Leeds Trinity University. He is also Honorary Professor in the School of Regulation and Global Governance at The Australian National University and Honorary Associate Professor in Eastern Health Clinical School at Monash University in Melbourne. He currently serves as Research Director of the Recovery Outcomes Institute in Florida. He has published more than 230 peer-reviewed papers in the areas of substance use, offending and recovery as well as eight authored or edited books and special issues and more than 70 book chapters and technical reports. His primary area of work is around recovery and specifically in the area of recovery capital. He leads ROI’s research initiatives and is responsible for ensuring that our research is relevant and responsive to the needs of the recovery community.
Jessica Best
Executive Director
Jessica Best is the Executive Director for Recovery Outcomes Institute, Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to empowering recovery-focused organizations and people in the recovery process, by promoting and supporting scientific research that builds recovery capital. With a passion for problem-solving and helping others, Jessica has played a pivotal role in leading the organization's efforts to promote recovery and implement evidence-based initiatives in recovery organizations. She brings a wealth of expertise in organizational management, community engagement, and program development, and is committed to creating positive change in the lives of those affected by addiction.
Phil Hodgson Ph.D.
Research Advisory Board Member
Phil Hodgson Ph.D. is Dean of Faculty at Leeds Trinity University. He has over 35 years of experience working, researching, and teaching within the criminal justice arena. He has undertaken a variety of roles including leading a research team that conducted the national evaluation of the Home Office 'Testing on Arrest' pilot; has been a Criminal Justice Manager for a Drugs Action Team in a major UK City (which included introducing rapid prescribing services to the City and commissioning and managing drug intervention workers in police custody suites), and was seconded to the National Treatment Agency as Deputy Regional Manager where in addition to performance managing drug teams he acted as a Regional Champion for the Restrictions on Bail project. Since moving into academia his research interests have primarily centred upon policing, young people, and drugs.
Arun Sondhi, Ph.D. MBA
Research Advisory Board Member
Arun Sondhi, PhD MBA, has over 25 years of experience in quantitative and qualitative evaluation research methods across policing, criminal justice, offender/public/veteran health, substance misuse and mental health domains. His recent research interests focus on supporting the application of quasi-experimental techniques to determine treatment/intervention effectiveness. Arun is an analyst at Therapeutic Solutions (Addictions) Ltd. and he has previously worked in an academic capacity for Imperial College, London and at the Home Office (for the United Kingdom government).
Emily Hennessy Ph.D.
Research Advisory Board Member
Emily A. Hennessy, Ph.D. is Associate Director of the Recovery Research Institute, Director of the National Center on Youth Prevention, Treatment, and Recovery, and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Her research focuses on adolescent health behavior change, with a primary emphasis on substance use disorder prevention, treatment, and recovery. Supported by a K01 career development award from NIAAA, her current work examines social network and recovery capital mechanisms in adolescent recovery using social identity mapping. She also specializes in evidence synthesis methods, serves as Associate Methods Editor for the Campbell Collaboration, is on the editorial board of Psychological Bulletin, and co-chairs the Campbell Review Group on Substance Use Treatment and Recovery.
Lauren Hoffman Ph.D.
Research Advisory Board Member
Lauren Hoffman, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a Research Scientist at the Recovery Research Institute within the Center for Addiction Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. Her NIDA-funded research focuses on identifying the biopsychosocial factors associated with successful substance use disorder treatment and recovery, with a particular emphasis on opioid use disorder and real-world applicability. Her long-term goal is to translate these findings into innovative interventions that reduce barriers to effective treatment and support sustained recovery. Dr. Hoffman also serves as Chair of the Nominations and Elections Committee for the APA’s Society of Addiction Psychology and is a member of the NIDA Consortium on Addiction Recovery Science.
Beth Collinson, Ph.D., MRes
Research Advisory Board Member
Beth Collinson Ph.D. is Senior Manager of Research and Evaluation at The Phoenix, a non-profit that harnesses the transformational power of community and connection to support those in recovery from substance use, those choosing to live sober and allies and supporters of these individuals. Beth completed her PhD at University of Derby, and as part of this developed the Asset Based Community Engagement framework, a unique approach that maps community resources and actively connects individuals in need to these. This framework has gained global recognition and is utilized in the UK, USA, Canada, and New Zealand to support community development and reintegrate individuals, such as those returning from addiction treatment or out of the criminal justice system. Beth coordinates an addiction recovery Public and Patient Involvement Panel in the UK, empowering individuals with firsthand experience to shape addiction recovery and associated research.
David Patton, Ph.D.
Research Advisory Board Member
David Patton Ph.D.'s research centres on the lived experience of people recovering from addiction and rehabilitating from offending histories. It uses the often marginalised voices of these individuals to co-produce utopian visions of how the criminal justice system and society can be radically transformed to promote human flourishing. David Patton Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in Criminology. He was previously a Senior Researcher at the University of Cambridge. He has worked on projects funded by the Home Office, ESRC, NIHR and the Big Lottery Fund, as well as numerous local authority initiatives. He is an international keynote speaker and has presented at the United Nations. He is currently developing a national series of local drug recovery evidence-base linked to Lived Experience Recovery Organisations.
Amy Mericle, Ph.D.
Research Advisory Board Member
Scientist, Alcohol Research Group at the Public Health Institute. Amy Mericle Ph.D. is an addiction health services researcher whose work focuses on highlighting gaps in the substance use continuum of care and examining innovative approaches to increase access to and improve the quality and availability of substance use treatment and recovery support services. She has been conducting research on recovery housing for over a decade and currently leads the National Study of Treatment and Addiction Recovery Residences (NSTARR) and co-leads the Infrastructure for Studying Treatment and Addiction Recovery Residences (I-STARR) projects. In addition to leading her own studies and collaborating with other scientists at the Public Health Institute and around the country, she has also served on the Board of Directors for the National Alliance for Recovery Residences (NARR) and currently serves on the Institutional Review Board for the Public Health Institute.
Reed Yearwood
Research Advisory Board Member
Reed Yearwood is pursuing a master’s in addiction studies (IPAS) from the Institute of Psychiatry Psychology & Neuroscience at King’s College London(UK), the School of Biomedicine at The University of Adelaide(AU), and VCU School of Medicine(US). Reed is co-founder of Holistic Addictions Recovery, a recovery community organization located in rural southwestern Virginia (United States). An addiction and recovery activist, Reed serves on the board of directors for the Virginia Association of Recovery Residences, spearheaded collegiate recovery programs; including Virginia Polytechnic & State University (Virginia Tech), and championed collegiate recovery at Radford University within his role as Recovery Support Specialist. His research interests stress Applied Sociology, designing epidemiological and ethnographic methods to specialize approaches toward civil transformation.
Matt Belanger, Ph.D.
Research Advisory Board Member
Matt Belanger, Ph.D. received his doctorate in Addiction Psychology/Data Science at the University of Dundee. His research focuses on the neurobehavioral mechanisms underpinning Pavlovian-to-Instrumental Transfer and its intersection with addiction (i.e., the influence of conditioned environmental cues on drug-seeking or consumption behaviors). Matt has a BSc in Kinesiology (2017) from the University of Massachusetts–Amherst and an MSc in Brain Sciences (2019) from the University of Glasgow. Previously, he worked as a research scientist in the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at Universitätsklinikum Carl Gustav Carus in Dresden, Germany.
Adela Bunaciu
Research Advisory Board Member
Adela Bunaciu is a Research Assistant at the Recovery Outcomes Institute. She is currently pursuing a PhD degree at the University of Dundee in Scotland, UK. Her research focuses on investigating the impact of recovery support group engagement on the development of recovery capital. Adela has a keen interest in the measurement of recovery capital, and she enjoys taking part in various research projects in the field of recovery capital. She previously completed a master’s degree in health psychology at the University of St Andrews and a bachelor’s degree in Psychology at the University of Dundee.