The RECOVER Project Welcomes Mary Doherty as New Director
Greenfield, MA – September 8, 2017
Mary Doherty comes to the RECOVER Project Director’s role with a diverse range of work and life experiences, with recovery at the center of it all. For years she has balanced work, family and recovery, and it brings her great joy to share what she has learned with others on the journey. She is a problem solver and approaches life and work with a sense of adventure and wonder. She earned a Ph.D. in organismic and evolutionary biology as a single mom, which included taking road trips for hundreds of miles to collect samples from the coast of Maine with her young daughter often jumping in as a field assistant. As a scientist, she has collaborated on and taken the lead with large-scale research projects in Oceans, Estuaries and Rivers. Through these experiences, she was able to develop her project management skills, all while having the opportunity to work and live in places with the natural world at the center and building community with other recovering people.
Mary has also been a dedicated teacher. She earned her M.Ed. at the University of Massachusetts through the 180 Days in Springfield Project, and has taught in Holyoke and Sharon Public Schools, as well as at the college level and in Adult Basic Education. As an educator, she has been dedicated to creating academic spaces that are welcoming, inclusive, and encouraging of many means of access to achievement. Her own recovery practice has always been central to her work. It has allowed her to relate easily with diverse constituencies, to view her students from a holistic standpoint, and to help them identify and draw on the strengths they possess.
Mary is a community builder, and has been able to relocate and rebuild a supportive recovery community for herself in rural South Georgia, the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and in Memphis Tennessee, but she prefers Western Massachusetts as her home, and it has been so for the majority of her time in recovery. She is extremely excited to serve as the Director of the RECOVER Project, where she can apply her professional strengths and life experience to a cause she wholeheartedly believes in.
Mary can be reached at [email protected] as of September 5th or feel free to stop by 68 Federal Street to say hello!
To find out more about the RECOVER Project, go to www.recoverproject.org. The RECOVER Project is a program of The Western Massachusetts Training Consortium, funded by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, Bureau of Substance Abuse Services.