Board of Directors

Andy Besser has been actively involved in the field of addiction treatment for the past 10 years. After retiring from a 25-year career as a medical malpractice litigation attorney, Andy went back to school to earn a certification as an addiction counselor. Andy founded and operates a nonprofit intensive outpatient treatment program, and has volunteered as an addiction counselor for a Los Angeles based nonprofit addiction treatment center. He also is the Chief Financial Officer of the Burstein Company, a management and production company that represents actors, writers and directors of film, television, theatre and new media. In addition, he serves as a volunteer case evaluator for the California State Bar’s Lawyers Assistance Program, and he was appointed to a four-year term on the program’s Executive Oversight Committee. After graduating with a B.S. degree in Animal Behavior from Bucknell University, Andy earned his Juris Doctorate from Loyola Law School. He also received a certification in Drug, Alcohol and Addiction Counseling from UCLA. Andy has been actively involved in Alcoholics Anonymous over the past two decades. He first learned about CLARE Foundation more than 15 years ago when he spoke on an Alcoholics Anonymous panel. He also serves on the board of Beit T’Shuvah, a nonprofit organization devoted to addiction treatment. Andy and his wife, Joannie, are parents of two children, Jordan and Carly.

James C. Birch is the Founder and Chief Strategic Officer of Cloud Cover Music, a streaming music service for business locations. He successfully navigated the maze of industry and Internet licensing regulations to create an innovative business model, delivering legal music to stores using a proprietary software platform. The company is considered the industry leader for cloud-based music, serving enterprise clients.

Prior to working in the music industry, James worked for 25 years as a video-based corporate communications specialist for advertising agencies and major corporations. He earned a Bachelor’s degree from Occidental College and an MBA degree from Harvard Business School, specializing in Consumer Behavior.

James currently serves as Treasurer of the Board for CLARE|MATRIX. He and his wife, Gail, reside in Santa Monica Canyon.

Please provide bio for Odat…

Kevin Fahy is a native of Southern California who grew up the second oldest of five children in the city of Downey. Not long after high school, Kevin’s entrepreneurial spirit led him to Chicago, where he learned the trade of selling leather hides, spending three years perfecting his knowledge and skill-set.

In 1979, Kevin launched his own business, Fahy Leathers, and became a leading independent leather sales representative in Los Angeles. By 1986, he expanded his business to include importing and selling leather worldwide.

Bolstered by his appreciation for his own sobriety and a desire to help others attain theirs, he became a board member of the CLARE Foundation in 2005. He has been a part of many CLARE Foundation committees, focusing primarily on finance and facilities. Currently, Kevin diligently serves as the Chairman of the Board for CLARE|MATRIX.

Kevin resides in Pacific Palisades with his wife, Loree, and their three children, Erin and twins Ryan and Dylan.

Debora Feinberg serves on the CLARE|MATRIX board with a personal connection to recovery and a passion for volunteerism. Her previous volunteer activities include working for a suicide hotline and leading grief groups for adults and children for a local grief support agency.

A Los Angeles native, Debora attended United States International University in San Diego and Mills College in Oakland. She went on to pursue a professional career in advertising, product development and commercial real estate.

Debora and her husband reside in Pacific Palisades, where they reared their three sons.

Mark Freund is a Southern California native who graduated from UC San Diego, where he studied film and earned a B.A. degree in Communications. His love for science fiction movies and books led him to work as a visual effects artist and supervisor in the motion picture industry. He has worked on such films as Star Wars, The Matrix Reloaded, X-Men: The Last Stand, and nearly 100 other notable feature films. He is a member of the Visual Effects Society and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Now retired, Mark enjoys traveling by bicycle and giving back in meaningful ways. He has a longstanding involvement with Deaf West Theatre, and he continues working with the hearing impaired in recovery. He also regularly reads to children at local libraries.

Mark and his wife, Trice, are longtime supporters of CLARE Foundation. Mark has served on CLARE Foundation’s board committees since 2012, and he also spent more than a decade working as a volunteer for the Matrix Institute on Addictions.

Since its merger, CLARE|MATRIX has enabled Mark to continue his enthusiastic service for an organization with a mission of saving lives through recovery.

Dr. Christine Grella is Professor-in-Residence for the Semel Institute/Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA, and she also is the Director of the UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Programs. She received her doctorate in Social Psychology from UC Santa Cruz and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at UCLA.

Christine has more than 30 years of experience conducting research on substance use among youth and adults. Her research has examined service access, utilization and outcomes of participation in multiple service delivery systems, including substance use disorder treatment, mental health, child welfare, health services and criminal justice. She has led several longitudinal cohort studies, conducted more than a dozen evaluation studies of treatment interventions for individuals with substance use and/or mental health disorders, and conducted epidemiological studies using national survey data on treatment need and utilization.

Christine’s research has made significant contributions to the understanding of gender differences in treatment utilization and outcomes and the longitudinal trajectories and health outcomes of individuals with substance use disorders, particularly those with opioid use disorders. Christine is a reviewer for the National Institute of Health/National Institute on Drug Abuse, and she serves on several advisory boards for community organizations and foundations.

Shawn Hezar is the Chief Client Officer at Caliber Collision, a national leader in the $40 billion collision repair industry. Prior to joining Caliber, Shawn owned three successful collision centers in Southern California. Currently, he oversees Caliber’s sales strategy, strategic client value proposition, and cost containment objectives.

Shawn has demonstrated his support of CLARE Foundation since 1995, and he was honored at the organization’s annual Tribute Dinner in fall 2017. He is personally in recovery and has been sober for 33 years. His sister is also in recovery from crystal meth and has been sober since 2012.

Shawn is a graduate of the UCLA Anderson School of Management. He resides in the Brentwood area and has two daughters.

Stanley Janowiak is the Senior Vice President at Morgan Stanley & Co. He joined their team in November 2008 and is a partner with the Monroe Harbor Group at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management. Before his tenure at Morgan Stanley, he served in the Global Private Client Group of Merrill Lynch since 1995.

Prior to joining Merrill Lynch, he was an Account Executive for Rodman & Renshaw Capital Group in Chicago. Over the past 25 years, he has worked in investment consulting and private banking services.

Stanley holds a B.S. in Business Administration from DePaul University. He resides in Westlake Village with his wife, Jennifer, and their two children.

Dana Kelly, Jr. is a longtime supporter of CLARE|MATRIX, serving on the organization’s board as a Committee Chair and Officer. He considers it an honor to be a part of an organization that has successfully helped save thousands of lives through recovery.

For more than 20 years, Dana has worked as a film, television and voice-over actor who has also performed on the stages of Los Angeles and New York City. He is a veteran member of the Screen Actors Guild and Actors Equity Association. Before becoming an actor, Dana worked in Los Angeles as a western U.S. regional sales and marketing executive.

Dana holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from Dartmouth University, where he also served as a quarterback on two Ivy League Championship football teams and was voted into the university’s Winchester Sports Hall of Fame.

Dana lives in Los Angeles with his longtime partner, Jean. He has two daughters, Deidre and Shelagh, and a beloved grandson, Gavin.

Jeanne Obert is the Co-Founder and former Executive Director and Board Chair of the Matrix Institute on Addictions, which merged with CLARE Foundation in 2018 to become CLARE|MATRIX.

Jeanne is one of the developers of the Matrix Model of Intensive Outpatient Treatment and the Matrix Model for Teens and Young Adults. In addition, she oversaw the creation of supplements for the Matrix Manuals, specifically for women, American Indians and Alaskan Natives, criminal justice settings, and people with co-occurring disorders.

Over the course of the past 30 years, Matrix was closely affiliated with the UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Programs and was a site for the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Clinical Trials Network (CTN). She also collaborated with a team to create the second edition of the Hazelden Matrix materials. She worked within Matrix to develop a well-known intern program and created a system designed to disseminate the Model with fidelity, nationally and internationally. She trained professionals in the Matrix Model and in the use of Motivational Interviewing for more than 25 years, and she did clinical trainings throughout the U.S. and abroad, most extensively in South Africa, Thailand and Spain.

Jeanne is a retired licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and supervisor. She was a motivational interviewing trainer and an active member of the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers, serving as an expert trainer on a motivational enhancement study led by Yale University – part of the NIDA CTN. She has authored or co-authored more than 50 articles, book chapters and treatment manuals.

In addition to serving on CLARE|MATRIX’s board, Jeanne serves on the Board of Directors of the Integrated Recovery Network, which focuses on serving the homeless community. She also is an Elder and Stephen Minister for Bel Air Presbyterian Church. Jeanne and her husband, Tom, have five children and 10 grandchildren.

Abhilash Patel is an entrepreneur, venture investor, speaker, author and business advisor. He is the founder of RankLab, a digital marketing agency, and he co-founded Recovery Brands, a digital publishing company. In 2015, RankLab and Recovery Brands reached the Inc. 5000 List. That same year, he oversaw the successful acquisition of both companies by American Addiction Centers (NYSE: AAC), the largest acquisition in AAC’s history.

Abhilash graduated with a B.A. in Economics and Philosophy from Columbia University. He earned his MBA from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, working with both Ranklab and Recovery Brands while he completed his studies. Also during his time at Anderson School, Abhilash became an MDE fellow at the Price Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. He has been a frequent guest speaker and lecturer at Anderson School, both during and since receiving his MBA.

Abhilash is an enthusiastic venture investor and an advisor to multiple growing start-ups, including a venture capital fund in Santa Monica. He is actively involved with several Los Angeles charities, including CLARE|MATRIX and the Junior Achievement of Southern California. He also is a member of the Young Entrepreneurs Council.

Abhilash is a triathlete who loves spending time with his wife, Kelly, his two sons Bodhi and Archer, and their two dogs.

Dorothy Richards actively supports the CLARE|MATRIX All Women’s Expansion Project that delivers an adapted model of programming tailored for women that will be a powerful combination of treatment, behavioral support, wellness and self-care, research and training to increase the recovery of women and their families while inspiring the substance use and behavioral health sphere to implement critical best practices.

Dorothy began her service to CLARE|MATRIX in 1989 (then CLARE Foundation) as a board member, serving as their board chair from 1997-99. In 2005, Dorothy was a recipient of CLARE Foundation’s Spirit Award for her inspirational work in supporting the organization’s vision of saving lives through recovery. A decade later, CLARE Foundation introduced The Dorothy Richards Fund for Women in Recovery in honor of her commitment to serving women seeking recovery.

A native of New York, Dorothy spent many years working in the advertising industry for such major ad agencies as BBDO and Ogilvy, Benson & Mather. She later relocated to Los Angeles, where she eventually spent 21 years working in administration for Marymount High School.

Dorothy currently resides in Pacific Palisades and is the mother of two daughters, Arline and Nicole. She finds it rewarding to give, and she feels that her partnership with CLARE|MATRIX and fellow board members has been a blessing in her 40+ years of sobriety.

Dr. Jeffrey Wilkins is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and the American Society of Addiction Medicine. He is the Lincy/Heyward-Moynihan Inaugural Chair in Addiction Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (CSMC).

Jeffrey was the Director of Substance Abuse Services at the UCLA West Los Angeles Veterans Administration Medical Center and CSMC. He also founded an addiction psychiatry fellowship at CSMC that trained psychiatrists to become addiction specialists. In addition, he served as the Director of the American Board of Addiction Medicine that facilitated the certification of the new medical discipline of addiction medicine.

Jeffrey has provided training on the diagnosis and treatment of substance use disorders to approximately 300 UCLA medical students, psychiatry residents, psychology doctoral students and CSMC psychiatry residents. He has more than 100 academic publications, including 70 peer-reviewed publications. His most recent publication, Management of Substance Use and Substance Use Disorders in Adolescents, was published in 2019.

Jeffrey has served as the principal investigator and co-investigator of 10 clinical trials, including with the National Institute on Drug Abuse and 11 other clinical research grants, with total funding of approximately $11 million.

Jeffrey has a strong record of community service. He is currently the Director of the Board for the Brent Shapiro Foundation. He previously served as the Director of the Psychological Trauma Center for the Matrix Foundation and the Lincy Foundation.