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Gina Thorne is a seasoned expert in behavioral health marketing and leadership. Gina shares her journey, highlighting her role as executive director of Treatment Professionals and Alumni Services (TPAS), an organization focused on enhancing alumni programs in the behavioral health sector.
Susan Kleiner: Hello and welcome to the Think Factory Wellness Women’s Roundtable, where we learn how women think big and grow their business. My name is Susan Kleiner. I’m a partner with Outside General Counsel Solutions, and I’m the host of today’s episode. I’m happy to have here with me today, Gina Thorne. Gina is a 15-year veteran in behavioral health marketing, business development, alumni program growth and leadership.
Susan Kleiner: She served as a leader of national and regional business development and marketing teams for small, medium and large addiction treatment programs. Interestingly, she’s the daughter of a Cuban political refugee who taught her that perseverance and a strong worth ethic yield value-driven results. She currently serves as executive director for treatment professionals and alumni services, TPAS, and has her own consulting company, Gina Thorne Consulting. She also co-launched the Colorado Professional Liaison Association. Welcome, Gina, to the podcast.
Gina Thorne: Good to be here, Susan. Thanks for having me.
Susan Kleiner: Yeah. So I’m really happy to have you here, because I think that the work that you do is terrific, and I’m happy for you to share it with our listeners. So could you tell me a little bit about what is the treatment professionals and alumni services TPAS?
Gina Thorne: Sure, so TPAS has been around for 14 years, and we started out with one person getting really curious about how do these alumni programs work in the behavioral health space. Our founder, co-founder, Laurie Obenauer, was voluntold, like most of our alumni coordinators that are in the field, to start an alumni program. And because she didn’t have the experience of putting one together, she started calling all of the more established programs in our country to find out what they were doing. And in that she connected with our other co-founder, Leonard Bade, who had been given instructions years ago by Betty Ford to go out and start building alumni programming. So really the concept of alumni programming started way back when Betty Ford saw the vision of its value and the fact that people stay and how do we continue to build that post-treatment. And so through Lori’s curiosity and Leonard’s experience, they both came together in 2009, 2010, and they built what we called our first collaborative. It was a way to bring together like-minded people who were doing work in the field of alumni engagement. And it’s still a work in progress. I think what we find now is that TPASS as an organization has become a subject matter expert around all things related to alumni. for not just the individuals that are doing the direct service, but also for the organizations that have chosen to make the investment in their alumni programs. And so when I talk about TPASS as an organization, we’re a membership-driven organization, usually by organizations who have some tie to behavioral health. And as a result of them being a member, they have access to services to help their alumni professionals be successful in their day-to-day job.
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