Executive Director, Programs
Pam is passionate about helping families use evidence based best practices in order to help families find peace, stay regulated, create the conditions that support recovery and move their loved ones toward change. She believes that a healthy family gives their loved ones the best opportunity to activate recovery. Pam is a certified family recovery coach, peer recovery specialist, Invitation to Change and CRAFT practitioner and Arise trained interventionist.
Pam is the 2021 recipient of the Faces & Voices Vernon Johnson Award honoring her tenacious and outstanding national advocacy work, devoted to spreading the message of recovery and helping families understand addiction as a chronic medication condition and is a fierce advocate for the humane treatment of those suffering from substance use, the availability of harm reduction and the de-stigmatizing of those suffering from the disease of addiction.
In her spare time Pam loves the outdoors, biking, running or climbing 14er’s in Colorado but can also be found most days, reading in special chair. As a person of deep faith, family is most important to her. She has been married to her husband Paul 41 years and is the mother of 4 children and 10 grandchildren.
Executive Director of Operations
Everything Sarah learned from being a mom to children with substance use issues led her to work in the field of family recovery after a long career in the field of adult education. Having an eating disorder herself, and struggling a few times in her lifetime with cigarettes, Sarah has a strong compassion for those who struggle with substance use. She is a challenger of stigmatizing language and advocates for better health care and social treatment for those who suffer from substance use disorder.
Sarah is certain that in the summer of 2021, God put her in the path of Pam Lanhart, the founder of Thrive. It happened to be just the time when Pam was seeking to obtain for Thrive its own nonprofit status and just the time when Sarah (who has extensive nonprofit leadership experience) was seeking to work in the field of family recovery.
Sarah received a B.A.S. from the University of Minnesota Duluth in Psychology and Family Studies, and an M.Ed. from Penn State University in Adult Education. She recently completed the Peer Recovery Specialist Training.
