“Whose Recovery Is This, Anyway? Intersectionality and the Culture of One” – March 2026 CPS/CPPS Community of Practice
March 2026 CPS/CPPS Community of Practice
“Whose Recovery Is This, Anyway? Intersectionality and the Culture of One”
with April Luderus
Thursday, March 12th, 2026 from 1:30 – 3:00 pm CT
Facilitator:
- April Luderus
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.
Description:
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.
