Career Mentors

“My career mentor was an excellent match for me. I was paired with him because we both have a passion for harm reduction and we hit it off immediately. His knowledge, kindness and compassion was evident, and [I found] a learning opportunity with each meeting we had. I ended up asking him to be my capstone mentor as well. His years of experience working at the Federal Government…provided me with much needed guidance on [where to] begin my job search after graduation. I learned so much from my meetings with him. We still talk a couple times a month!”

Thaddeus Wientzen ’24, Overdose Survive Outreach Peer Recovery Coach at MedStar Hospital

Libby Jones, MsC

Program Director, Global Health Advocacy Initiative

Libby Jones is the program director of GHAI’s Overdose Prevention Initiative. Libby leads the Initiative’s advocacy efforts, advancing federal policies that will reduce the overdose death rate in the United States. As the program director, Libby has written and spoken on overdose prevention policy on Capitol Hill, at national conferences, and in the press, including op-eds, podcast appearances, and media interviews. Prior to joining GHAI, Libby served as government relations officer at the Pew Charitable Trusts’ substance use prevention and treatment initiative, as well as holding various positions in U.S. federal agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, Economic Development Administration, and the U.S. Department of Justice. She holds a MSc in human rights from the London School of Economics and a BA in government from the College of William and Mary.

Robert Kent, JD

President, Kent Strategic Advisors, LLC

Robert A. Kent serves as a healthcare strategic policy advisor focused on helping clients maximize their opportunities to serve those in need of help.

Robert previously served as the General Counsel with the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). In this role, Robert provided overall legal support to all components of ONDCP. During his time at ONDCP, Robert helped advance policy changes to: eliminate the DEA X-waiver making buprenorphine access easier; adopt regulations to allow mobile methadone access nationwide; extend take home methadone dosing permanently; significantly update the rules that govern  access to methadone; extend the rule to allow telephonic initiation to buprenorphine; made investments in harm reduction services; proposed a balanced approach to the scheduling of fentanyl related substances; proposed investments in people and technology to increase our intervention efforts at the border; and proposed a science-based rescheduling of marijuana.

Robert has received numerous awards recognizing his impact on the recovery field including: the Caron Foundation Legal Professional Public Service Award; the Coalition of Behavioral Health Agencies Leadership Awards; the American Association for the Treatment of Opioid Dependence’s Nyswander/Dole “Marie” Award; the Long Island Recovery Association Friend of Recovery Award; the Northern Tier Providers Coalition Public Service Award; the Friends of Recovery New York’s Charles Devlin Recovery Advocate Award; Christopher’s Reason’s Outstanding Leader in the Recovery Community Award; the NYAPRS’ Public Policy Leadership Award; the MHANYS’s CEO Award; and the NYS Justice Center’s Champion Award. 

Kimberly Freese, LAC, M.P.A.

Regional Director, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)

Kimberly Freese is the Regional Director for SAMHSA serving Region 7: Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, and Nebraska, since 2015. Ms. Freese has worked in the behavioral health care field since 1992. Her clinical work was early in her career and mainly focused on addiction services, initially in community-based settings in women’s and children’s residential programs in Kansas. She then moved into executive leadership roles primarily. Ms. Freese provided leadership as program director in programs with criminal justice clients in community-based residential and outpatient settings, as well as with prison-based substance use disorder care.

Ms. Freese was recruited to the state of Kansas with the Addiction and Prevention Services Division as the Medicaid Coordinator. As the liaison between the behavioral health and Medicaid divisions, her primary responsibility was to ensure Medicaid policy was aligned with the state goals for addiction services. This was accomplished via a pre-paid inpatient health plan; part of our 1915 b/c managed care waiver for behavioral health. Ms. Freese was part of the team that wrote the waiver, request for proposals, awarded the contract and then led the team that managed the contractor for the five years of this waiver.

Joey Longley, JD

Staff Attorney, ACLU Disability Rights Program

Joey Longley is a staff attorney at the ACLU Disability Rights Program, where he leads work enforcing the ADA on behalf of people with substance use disorder. Before joining the ACLU, he was a project director with the Addiction and Public Policy Initiative at the O’Neill Institute and a Senior Advisor at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Longley was previously an Equal Justice Works Fellow at the ACLU National Prison Project. He clerked for Judge Roy McLeese of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. He received his J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was president of the Board of Student Advisers, and a B.A. from the Ohio State University.

Kevin P. Mulvey, PhD

Executive Director, International Consortium of Universities for Drug Demand Reduction (ICUDDR)

Dr. Kevin P. Mulvey is a respected Applied Sociologist and Executive Director with over 30 years of experience in addressing substance use disorder (SUD) through prevention, treatment, and recovery initiatives. Currently serving as the Executive Director of the International Consortium of Universities for Drug Demand Reduction (ICUDDR), he champions global efforts to improve
education and policy development in addiction studies.

Dr. Mulvey’s distinguished career includes 22 years with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), where he held various senior leadership roles. As the Program Development Lead in the Office of Prevention Innovation, he focused on data strategies, policy development, and performance evaluation. He has also served as the Acting Division Director and Chief of the Performance and Technical Assistance Branch in SAMHSA’s Centre for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP). His contributions span global initiatives such as the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), with assignments in Vietnam, Ukraine, and Central Asia, where he advanced addiction treatment strategies.

Tara Kunkel, MSW

Tara Kunkel, the founder of Rulo Strategies, is an award-winning, nationally known expert in criminal justice, substance use disorders, and public health and how they intersect at the national and community levels. Tara’s training as a social worker, her hands-on experience as a probation officer, her work within all aspects of the court system, her leadership of a federal grant program, and a decade of independent consultant positions uniquely qualified her to open her business in 2020.

Before founding Rulo Strategies, Kunkel served as a Senior Drug Policy Advisor at the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance and led the implementation of the Comprehensive Opioid Abuse Program and grew it from a $27 million grant program in 2017 to $187 million in 2019.

A highly sought-after speaker, Tara has presented at over 50 national and state conferences. In 2016, she received the Virginia Community Criminal Justice Association Award for outstanding leadership and service in community corrections and pretrial services. In 2020, Kunkel received the Outstanding Dedication Award from the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance, for her work in combating the opioid epidemic.

Tisha Wiley, PhD

Tisha Wiley, Ph.D. is the Chief of the Services Research Branch and Associate Director for Criminal Justice at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Dr. Wiley currently leads the Services Research Branch. Under Dr. Wiley’s leadership, the Services Research Branch has doubled NIDA’s investments in health services research and launched dozens of major initiatives addressing complex problems in addiction health services research, including addressing workforce challenges, building a recovery science and harm reduction portfolios, and addressing complex issues at the intersection of chronic pain and OUD. Dr. Wiley also leads the Justice Community Overdose Innovation Network (JCOIN), which focused on transforming responses to the overdose crisis in the justice system.

In 2020, she received the prestigious Arthur S. Flemming award for her work in establishing JCOIN. Dr. Wiley began her career in public service as a Society for Research in Child Development Fellow and American Association for the Advancement of Science Policy (SRCD/AAAS) Fellow at the Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research at the National Institutes of Health. Before coming to the NIH, Tisha was the Assistant Director of Research at the Juvenile Protective Association, a non-profit social service agency in Chicago focused on child welfare. Dr. Wiley received her Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC).