Brett MacDonald
CO-PRESIDENT
INDEPENDENT REPRESENTATION
With over a decade of experience running mass-market, online peer-to-peer fundraising initiatives for leading NFPs in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and Canada, Brett is the Managing Director of Ezy Raise, a fundraising platform built to help charitable organisations grow their fundraising events.
Brett co-founded the Dry July Foundation in 2008. Since then he has expanded the initiative to 4 countries, encouraged over 500,000 people to go dry and raised over $100m for people affected by cancer.
Jennifer Johannesen
Co-President / Secretary
independent Representation
Jennifer is a Senior Associate at Marque Lawyers in Sydney where she specializes in commercial and IP law, including franchising, advertising and competition law. She has also completed a secondment to Amnesty International. Jennifer is a board member of SMART Recovery Australia.
Brett Saarela
Vice President
SMART Recovery usa representation
Brett is a mental health professional who is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) by the State of New York. She received her BA from Carleton College and her Master of Social Work from Hunter College School of Social Work, City University of New York. She practiced for ten years as a psychotherapist in New York City (NYC) specialising in mental health and addiction treatment for older adults in psychiatric in-patient units and out-patient clinics. She has been actively involved in SMART Recovery in the United States since 2001 and was a founding member of the NYC Chapter. Brett has been board member of SMART Recovery USA since 2009, she became vice president in 2011. After relocating to London in 2014, Brett became a SMART Recovery UK trustee.
Tony Wales AM
Treasurer
SMART recovery australia representation
Employed as a qualified chartered accountant with the firm, KPMG, for 12 years, Tony formed his own accountancy practice in 1974, which he grew to employ 60 staff members. He joined Computershare Ltd and took a major interest in the company in 1980, becoming its finance controller through 1989, then executive finance director. Mr. Wales took the company public on the Australian Stock Exchange in 1994, then internationally in 1997. Tony joined the SMART Recovery Board USA in 2007 currently the Chair of SMART Recovery Australia.
Darren O’Brien
Chairman/SMART Recovery Ireland representation
Darren is the Chairperson of SMART Recovery Ireland CLG. An accredited counsellor with Addiction Counsellors of Ireland (ACI) holding a Hons degree in Counselling and Psychotherapy and a Masters in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Darren currently works within the addiction services and has vast experience within the area of Addiction Recovery. He is an active board member of several community and voluntary organisations.
Due to his own experiences Darren was one of the first to train as a peer facilitator and started the country’s first peer led meeting in Carrick on Shannon in 2014. As one of the founding directors of SMART Recovery Ireland CLG, Darren believes the potential for SMART Recovery in Ireland and worldwide had phenomenal potential and is looking forward to being part of its growth.
Bill Greer
DIRECTOR
SMART Recovery USA representation
William (Bill) Greer also serves as president of SMART Recovery USA. He has forty years of leadership and communications experience in the nonprofit sector, having served as an executive for the Food Marketing Institute, representing the global supermarket industry, and SmithBucklin, North America’s largest nonprofit association management firm. He has facilitated SMART meetings for people recovering from addiction, for family members and friends, and for inmates in correctional facilities (the InsideOut® program). He has played a leadership role in SMART branding and communications initiatives. Mr. Greer earned an MSJ from the U.S. Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
Shiv Sharma
DIRECTOR
UK SMART Recovery representation
Shiv is a Peer Trustee on the Board of Trustees for UK Smart Recovery. He first encountered SMART Recovery meetings in his hometown of Hounslow. He went on to become a Peer Meeting Facilitator and a volunteer in his local drug and alcohol service, which led to his employment as an Engagement and Recovery Worker. In his spare time Shiv helps out at the Outside Edge Theatre Company, which works with and for people with substance misuse issues.
Kim McCreanor
SMART Recovery International Executive Officer
Kim is an experienced Executive Manager with significant leadership and management capabilities developed over three decades of working in the community service sector. She has worked in some of the most remote areas of Australia as the CEO of AMRRIC in the Northern Territory, and as EO of KIFSA in the Kimberley Region of Western Australia. Prior to joining SMART Recovery International Kim completed a 12 month assignment with the Australian Volunteers for International Development program in Indonesia. Kim holds an Advanced Diploma Community Sector Management, Graduate Certificate of Management, Graduate Diploma Public Health and is working towards completing her Master of Public Health.Dr Charlie Orton
UK SMART Recovery Executive Director
Charlie left University with a Ph.D. in Human Toxicology in 2002 from the University of Liverpool. She studied the effects of maternal cigarette smoking during pregnancy on the placenta and baby. During this time she gained knowledge of addiction and the pathological effects of addictive substances. Since then she has led and managed large portfolios of clinical research in the public sector mainly in paediatrics. Working closely with children and their families for over 20 years has given her a deep appreciation of how complex and fragile life can be. In her most recent position working across health, education and social care Charlie led a programme of health innovations for vulnerable and isolated people living in the community with complex needsScott Beachley
SMART Recovery Australia board 2020, SMART Recovery International board in 2021 Finance, Audit, Risk and Remuneration committee member
Scott was appointed to the SMART Recovery Australia board in 2020, the SMART Recovery International board in 2021 as the Australian representative and sits on the Finance, Audit, Risk and Remuneration committees of both. He is an experienced General Counsel in telco, tech and media having held senior executive regional and global roles in major British, American and French multi-nationals over 25+ years leading legal, commercial, regulatory, government relations, compliance and privacy teams. He is managing partner of a consulting firm providing legal, strategy, risk and commercialization services to start-up, scale-up and for-purpose organizations and is currently an executive director of a health-tech transforming the treatment and care of neurodiversity. A passionate advocate for mental health and wellness Scott founded and led an award- winning digital platform connecting patients and therapists for optimized therapeutic engagement. For several years Scott was Executive Chair of Human Nature Adventure Therapy a for- purpose organization providing innovative and intensive therapeutic intervention and mentoring to traumatized and vulnerable young people. Scott is an experienced board committee leader and member including Finance, Audit and Risk, Remuneration, Revenue, Innovation, People and Culture Committees. He has led numerous board selection panels and appointed CEOs. Scott has a Bachelor of Laws, Bachelor of Commerce, is a graduate and fellow of the Governance Institute and a chartered company secretary, performance coach, yoga teacher and aspiring author.Jeff Flatt
SRI Board Member, Health Science & Academic Leadership/Independent Representation
Jeff has a history with various strands – sound engineering, health science, academic research, and educational leadership - combined with lived experience of addiction and ongoing recovery with its elements of self-directed change, support structuring, and reflexivity.
Jeff has volunteered for needle exchanges, sex worker collectives, and hepatitis C support groups and collaborates with people who have been stigmatised and marginalised because of lifestyle, health status, or choice of income stream. He looks forward to working with the SMART Recovery board and contributing to the secular, experiential, evidence-based approach emphasising advocacy, support, and destigmatisation.
Alan Maclean KC
Alan was educated at a state school in the West of Scotland and then at University College, Oxford, where he obtained a double First in PPE and at Harvard University, where he was a Kennedy Memorial Scholar.
Alan was called to the Bar, First in his year, in 1993 and took Silk, at his first attempt, in 2009.
Alan has a varied and busy practice, ranging across many aspects of commercial litigation and arbitration (in such fields as civil fraud, energy, sanctions, telecommunications and sports law) as well as public, regulatory and competition law.
In addition to his work in England and Wales, Alan has appeared as leading Counsel in Gibraltar, the BVI and before both the Cayman Island and Eastern Caribbean Courts of Appeal.
Alan was a member of the Attorney General’s Panel of Counsel until his appointment as Queen’s Counsel (1999 – 2009) and has acted for and against a vast array of different government departments and public authorities, including the Charity Commission.
