July 2026 CPS/CPPS Community of Practice
“Rural Realities: Making a Big Impact in Small Tribal Communities”
with Jessica Bigboy & Robert O’Claire
Jessica Bigboy is a Certified Peer Specialist and Certified Parent Peer Specialist, a proud Bad River Tribal Member, and the Recovery House Manager for Bad River’s Nenda Noojimod (“A Place of Healing”) Women’s Recovery House.
In her role, Jessica supports women in recovery by helping create a safe, culturally grounded, and supportive environment where individuals can continue their healing journey. She brings more than ten years of experience advocating for and empowering peers, along with lived experience, compassion, and a deep understanding of the strengths and needs within her community.
Jessica is a devoted wife and mother of three. Her work is guided by her commitment to recovery, community connection, cultural wellness, and walking alongside others as they reclaim their strength, resilience, and purpose.
Robert “Rob” O’Claire is a Certified Peer Specialist and Recovery Coach from the Bad River Reservation in rural northern Wisconsin. He is an enrolled Bad River Tribal Member, Anishinaabe, a father of two daughters, and is in long-term recovery.
Rob currently works for his Tribe in Behavioral Health, where he uses his lived experience, community knowledge, and professional role to support recovery, prevention, and behavioral health efforts in Indigenous communities. His work includes grant development, program planning, community engagement, and advocating for resources that help rural Tribal communities build the services, partnerships, and systems they need to better serve their people.
Rob is passionate about making sure Indigenous voices are included in decisions that impact their communities, especially in rural areas where resources are often limited and needs are too easily overlooked. His work is rooted in the belief that communities deserve equitable access to resources, culturally grounded services, and the opportunity to create solutions that reflect who they are. Rob is committed to creating spaces where people feel seen, supported, and connected in their recovery journey. He believes healing is strongest when it is rooted in culture, community, lived experience, and the voices of the people most impacted.
Peer support in rural Tribal communities often looks different than it does in larger systems. Services may be limited, transportation may be a barrier, relationships often overlap, and peer specialists may be supporting people they know personally while also navigating confidentiality, boundaries, burnout, and cultural responsibilities.
In this Community of Practice, Robert “Rob” O’Claire and Jessica Bigboy from the Bad River Tribe will share lived and professional experiences providing peer support, recovery support, and behavioral health services in a small, close-knit reservation community. Together, they will explore the realities of working in resource-limited Tribal settings, including the challenges peers face helping their indigenous peers navigate through systems that have historically harmed our people, and the strengths that come from culture, community connection, trust, and shared responsibility.
This session will invite reflection and discussion on how peer specialists can support recovery while honoring boundaries, relationships, and community identity. Participants will leave with practical insight into culturally grounded peer support, rural service challenges, and the creative ways Tribal communities continue to build healing, resilience, and recovery with the resources they have.
Feedback Survey/CEH Information:
We invite you to please fill out the evaluation survey link (click here) if you attended this community of practice gathering or if you watch the recording. The survey will close at 4:30pm on Thursday, July 30th. Certificates of Participation will be sent to those completing the evaluation form by 4:30pm on August 6th, 2026. No evaluation surveys will be accepted for CEH credit after the evaluation survey’s closing date/time.
This website is managed and maintained by staff at Access to Independence working on the Wisconsin Peer Specialist Employment Initiative. The words, views, and values presented herein are not necessarily representative of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
May 2026 CPS/CPPS Community of Practice
“To Be Still: Peer Support in the Moments People Almost Tell the Truth” with Dominique Christian
Dominique Q. Christian is a wellness advocate, peer support leader, trainer, and writer committed to reshaping how care is experienced within historically marginalized communities. With more than a decade of experience across mental health, substance use recovery, housing instability, and systems navigation, Dominique brings both lived experience and professional insight into every space.
As the founder of Sondercove Wellness, Dominique has built a practice rooted in cultural humility, autonomy, and the belief that people deserve to be seen beyond diagnoses, systems involvement, or survival strategies. Her work centers on creating spaces where individuals and families feel heard, respected, and supported in defining recovery, healing, and wellness on her own terms.
Dominique is recognized for facilitating impactful trainings on peer support, racial equity, trauma-informed engagement, and culturally responsive care for providers and organizations across Wisconsin and beyond. Her approach challenges deficit-based thinking while encouraging deeper reflection around power, language, resilience, and the realities many communities navigate daily.
Dominique’s work is deeply influenced by collective care traditions, community wisdom, and the legacy of Black advocacy and healing practices. Through writing, training, and direct engagement, she continues to push conversations forward around what meaningful, human-centered support can truly look like.
Whether speaking to providers, supporting families, or developing future peer support leaders, Dominique remains grounded in one core belief: people are the experts of their own lives, and care should honor that.
What happens in the moments people minimize themselves?
As peer specialists, we hear these phrases every day. Often, the most important part of the conversation is the part someone almost didn’t say.
To Be Still is a 1.5-hour interactive Community of Practice training designed for peer specialists who want to deepen the way they listen, connect, and respond in moments where pain, overwhelm, shame, and emotional exhaustion are sitting just beneath the surface.
This training moves away from clinical language and focuses instead on the real-life ways people communicate when they are struggling to externalize what they are carrying internally. Through guided reflection, collective discussion, intentional pauses, and honest conversation, participants will explore how peer support can create space for people to feel witnessed without pressure, fixing, or forced vulnerability.
Topics explored include:
This training invites participants to slow down long enough to notice what is often rushed past—in ourselves and in the people we support.
Designed for Wisconsin Peer Specialists and rooted in peer support values, mutuality, autonomy, and lived experience.
Feedback Survey/CEH Information:
We invite you to please fill out the evaluation survey link (click here) if you attended this community of practice gathering or if you watch the recording. The survey will close at 4:30pm on Thursday, June 4th. Certificates of Participation will be sent to those completing the evaluation form by 4:30pm on June 11th, 2026. No evaluation surveys will be accepted for CEH credit after the evaluation survey’s closing date/time.
This website is managed and maintained by staff at Access to Independence working on the Wisconsin Peer Specialist Employment Initiative. The words, views, and values presented herein are not necessarily representative of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
March 2026 CPS/CPPS Community of Practice
April Luderus is a Certified Peer Specialist, Certified Peer Specialist Trainer, and the founder and executive director of Alcami Project — pronounced like alchemy, because that’s exactly what it is. The organization supports women from marginalized communities in their recovery from substance use and mental health challenges, transforming what once felt like the heaviest parts of a life into something that holds others up. Among Alcami Project’s work is Grace House, a Level II peer-led recovery residence built on the social model of recovery, where stable housing, life skills, and peer connection form the foundation for long-term independence.
April brings her own lived experience in recovery into everything she does, alongside 13 years as a Special Education Teacher and Library Media Specialist with Milwaukee Public Schools and deep roots in peer services, program development, harm reduction, and recovery housing. She founded Alcami Project because she knows firsthand the gap between the systems people is handed and the support they actually need. April facilitates from that same honest place, believing that the people most impacted by a problem are often best positioned to help solve it.
Have you ever realized mid-conversation that you’d already decided who someone was before they finished telling you? This session is about that moment. Peer support is built on shared experience, but shared experience doesn’t mean the same experience. We’ll look at how intersecting identities, race, gender, parenting, housing, all of it, shape what people are offered and denied in recovery systems.
And then we’ll sit with the harder question: how do we honor all of that without letting it replace the actual person in front of us? Because knowing someone’s background and knowing someone are two very different things. Come ready to talk honestly about where we get this right and where we don’t.
Feedback Survey/CEH Information:
We invite you to please fill out the evaluation survey link (click here) if you attended this community of practice gathering or if you watch the recording. The survey will close at 4:30pm on Thursday, March 26th. Certificates of Participation will be sent to those completing the evaluation form by 4:30pm on April 2nd, 2026. No evaluation surveys will be accepted for CEH credit after the evaluation survey’s closing date/time.
This website is managed and maintained by staff at Access to Independence working on the Wisconsin Peer Specialist Employment Initiative. The words, views, and values presented herein are not necessarily representative of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
January 2026 CPS/CPPS Community of Practice
Pete Bullimore, chair of the National Paranoia Network, is testament to how powerful acceptance of and learning to work with voices and paranoia can be. Pete heard his first voice aged seven, “I heard a child’s voice telling me to keep going, that everything would be OK. It was reassuring, a bit like an imaginary friend,” he says. But as bad things happened in my life the voices increased in number, eventually turning sinister and aggressive. “They told me to set myself on fire, to slash myself and destroy myself, often 20 or 30 voices all shouting at me at once,” he says.
By his mid-twenties Pete had lost his business, his family, his home, everything. “The voices just encompassed my life; I curled up in a chair and didn’t wash or eat. “I was locked in a world of voices, paranoia and depression, and it was probably the most frightening time of my life,” he says.
Pete spent more than a decade after that on heavy medication, the voices never went away. He had to get out of the psychiatric system to recover. Once he was off the medication and he met people who shared his experiences at the Hearing Voices Network, he was able to stop being so afraid of the voices and he started to listen to them. His relationship with the voices changed and he learned the meaning of his voices and paranoia.
He now runs his own training and consultancies agencies the National Paranoia Network, Asylum Associates & the Sheffield Hearing Voices Network delivering training on hearing voices, childhood trauma, paranoia and how to use the Maastricht interview for hearing voices & problematic thoughts, beliefs and paranoia internationally. He is a guest lecturer at 21 Universities in the UK and Ireland. He has set up Maastricht Centre’s at the Radbone unit in Derby and the Hartington unit in Chesterfield in collaboration with Derby NHS trust; he has now launched a Maastricht Approach center in Bradford and a National Maastricht Center in Telford
“I wouldn’t want to get rid of my voices now, they’re part of me,” he says.
Join international speaker and trainer Peter Bullimore as he shares unique insights from lived experience into understanding and supporting individuals experiencing paranoia and unusual beliefs.
This presentation will explore:
With compassion and clarity, Peter will challenge common misconceptions and offer practical strategies to foster understanding, reduce fear, and build meaningful connections with those navigating paranoia and unusual beliefs.
Feedback Survey/CEH Information:
We invite you to please fill out the evaluation survey link (click here) if you attended this community of practice gathering or if you watch the recording. The survey will close at 4:30pm on Thursday, January 29th. Certificates of Participation will be sent to those completing the evaluation form by 4:30pm on February 5th, 2026. No evaluation surveys will be accepted for CEH credit after the evaluation survey’s closing date/time.
This website is managed and maintained by staff at Access to Independence working on the Wisconsin Peer Specialist Employment Initiative. The words, views, and values presented herein are not necessarily representative of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
September 2025 CPS & CPPS Supervisor Community of Practice
Recovery is not just a profession for me—it’s a guiding principle that shapes every aspect of my work. I am an accomplished peer specialist and training facilitator with more than 15 years of experience driving initiatives in advocacy, program development, and social services. Throughout my career, I have partnered with individuals navigating complex challenges, including substance use, mental health concerns, housing instability, and major life transitions, supporting them while they build stability, resilience, and renewed purpose.
Recognized for my ability to lead with clarity and compassion, I have successfully directed large-scale community initiatives, including a multi-year recovery and addiction awareness event that saw exponential growth in participation and visibility under my leadership. My professional credentials include a bachelor’s degree, certification as a peer specialist, peer specialist training facilitator, and opiate impacted family support specialist. I have held key roles across diverse service settings—from shelters and crisis services to targeted case management—consistently building systems and strategies that enhance service quality and reach.
I believe that every person holds the potential to build a life of meaning, and that our greatest work is to create pathways where that potential can flourish. For me, leadership is not about titles—it’s about building systems that empower, relationships that uplift, and opportunities that transform challenges into victories. My commitment is to ensure that the work I do continues to open doors, inspire hope, and strengthen the belief that no future is beyond reach.
Power is everywhere — shaping relationships, organizations, and systems. But often it operates through unspoken or shadow rules that can be hard to see, name, or navigate. This 90-minute interactive presentation for peer specialists will motivate participants to think more about power and how it shows up in our work.
Participants will:
• Examine different types of power — personal, positional, relational, resource, and systemic.
• Reflect on the unspoken and shadow rules of power.
• Explore real-world scenarios and practice identifying ethical uses of power.
• Leave with strategies to notice, name, and shift power dynamics in ways that support both staff and those we serve.
This session blends reflection, discussion, and applied practice, giving peer specialist supervisors tools to better navigate the complex realities of power in their role.
Feedback Survey/CEH Information:
We invite you to please fill out the evaluation survey link (click here) if you attended this community of practice gathering or if you watch the recording. The survey will close at 4:30pm on Thursday, October 9th. Certificates of Participation will be sent to those completing the evaluation form by 4:30pm on October 16th, 2025. No evaluation surveys will be accepted for CEH credit after the evaluation survey’s closing date/time.
This website is managed and maintained by staff at Access to Independence working on the Wisconsin Peer Specialist Employment Initiative. The words, views, and values presented herein are not necessarily representative of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
