Board of Directors
Joanne Peterson
Founder, Executive Director
Joanne Peterson founded Learn to Cope in 2004, with a small group of parents, when her own son became addicted to opiates. Her son is in long-term recovery today. What started then, as a single peer-to-peer support group in Randolph, Massachusetts, has grown to include nearly 3,000 members registered nationally. There are chapters in Brockton, Gloucester, Lowell, and Salem. New chapters are planned for Quincy and at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, starting in Fall 2011.
While the cornerstone of Learn to Cope remains these weekly support meetings, the non-profit has become a national model for addiction treatment and prevention programming. Mrs. Peterson and the highly-credentialed Board of Directors are leaders in the field: advising towns on Overdose Prevention, organizing speakers for Awareness Presentations in schools throughout the region, advocating for improved access to treatment for adolescents, among many other education efforts.
Mrs. Peterson has testified at the Massachusetts State House, at the United States Congress, the FDA, and was one of only 19 to testify at the Purdue Pharma federal sentencing in 2007. Her work in the community has been recognized through numerous awards and by two official citations from the Massachusetts Senate and Governor Deval Patrick. She also serves on The Brandeis Center of Excellence Team’s Prescription Pill Monitoring Program.
Please take the time to learn about the extended Learn to Cope team below.
Maureen Boyle
Maureen Boyle, an award-winning writer, is the Director of the Journalism Program at Stonehill College. Before joining the college full-time, she was a reporter at newspapers throughout New England and was part of the reporting team at The Enterprise of Brockton which produced “Wasted Youth” and “Deadly Surge,” the acclaimed series on heroin addiction among teens and young adults in the region. She joined the Board after leaving daily journalism.
Koren Cappiello
Clerk
Koren Cappiello is the Director of Community and Social Services for the Office of the Mayor, in the City of Brockton. In her role, Ms. Cappiello oversees and manages over $2.5 million in city grants related to social services from homeless prevention and assistance to gang prevention, drug and alcohol prevention/resources and elder services. She also serves as the Mayor’s representative on numerous committees and coalitions, and collaborates with community partners to pursue additional grant funding.
Ms. Cappiello also oversees programs for youth including: Brockton After Dark, the annual Mayor’s Summer Jobs Program, manages the city’s pools, and supervises the AmeriCorps Promise Fellow assigned to the Mayor’s Office.
A graduate of Stonehill College, Ms. Cappiello also holds a master’s degree in Public Administration from John Jay College and is currently pursuing her Master’s in Social Work at Bridgewater State University. Ms. Cappiello is also a former Peace Corps volunteer having served in Cape Verde, West Africa for two and a half years. She is the former coordinator of the Brockton Mayor’s Opioid Overdose Prevention Coalition. In that capacity Ms. Cappiello coordinated and created a solid coalition and performed overdose awareness and prevention work throughout the community. She currently works part-time as a clinician at High Point Treatment Center, and she serves on the Area Board of the Department of Children and Families, as well as Learn to Cope.
Mary D'Eramo
Treasurer
As a mother of a college-aged young woman who fell into addiction to OxyContin then heroin, Mary attended the very first meeting of Learn to Cope with her husband. In the years that followed, Mrs. D'Eramo was active in the growing organization: establishing its non-profit status, working on the Fundraising Committee and the Family Overdose Prevention initiative. She also helped create an anti-drug coalition in her community, with outreach to the schools, a cable TV show, and community awareness meetings. Mrs. D'Eramo is a Certified Medical Assistant on the South Shore. She and her husband live in Abington with their children. Her daughter is in long-term recovery today.
Hillary Dubois
Advisory Board
Hillary Dubois is the present Coordinator of the Brockton Mayor’s Opioid Overdose Prevention Coalition. This position has Ms. Dubois working with various key stakeholders throughout the City of Brockton to educate the community including active opioid consumers, individuals in recovery, their loved ones, service providers and the community at large on the risks factors of an overdose as well the signs and symptoms, and ultimately how to save lives. The Coalition is funded by the MassCALL2 grant through the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s Bureau of Substance Abuse Services.
Prior to Ms. Dubois’ work with the Coalition, she worked with a variety of different populations, including adult males released from prison at a transitional housing unit in Dublin, Ireland, who all had substance abuse issues, with approximately half of the clients being addicted to heroin. Ms. Dubois then worked in various roles with at-risk adolescent girls, their families, and other collaterals in a group home and STARR program funded by the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families.
Ms. Dubois holds a Bachelor’s of Arts degree in Criminology from Stonehill College, as well as a Master’s of Science degree in Criminology from Northeastern University.
John F. Kelly, Ph.D.
Dr. John F. Kelly is an Associate Professor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Associate Director of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)-Harvard Center for Addiction Medicine, and Program Director of the MGH Addiction Recovery Management Service (ARMS). He serves as a consultant to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, the US Department of Education, and to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) as a scientific reviewer. He also serves as a Board Member on the Executive Committee of the American Psychological Association, Division on Addictions, and as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, and the journal, Addiction. Dr. Kelly has conducted research in many areas pertaining to substance use disorder treatment outcomes, recovery management, and the effects of continuing care. His recent research has focused on enhancing the continuum of care, the translation and implementation of evidence-based practice, addiction and criminal justice, addiction treatment theories and mechanisms of behavior change, and reducing stigma associated with addiction.
Carol Kowalski, RN, MSN, CADAC
Advisory Board
Carol Kowalski is the Site Director for High Point’s Meadowbrook Campus, a 184 bed in-patient addictions treatment center in Brockton for men, women and adolescents. She is a Certified Addictions Registered Nurse (CARN) and has worked in the field of addictions for over thirty years. She is currently a committee member of the Board of Registration in Nursing’s Substance Abuse Rehabilitation Program which monitors nurses in their recovery. She is also a member of the International Nurses Society on Addictions and the Brockton Mayor Opioid Overdose Prevention Coalition.
Lori Long
Lori Long is the Director of Community Relations at North Shore Medical Center in Salem, MA. In this role, which she has held for 13 years, Ms. Long oversees the Medical Center’s community benefit programming, and has been instrumental in assuring that substance abuse is one of the priorities addressed. When a community health needs assessment identified that family support for parents of young opiate addicts was one of the critical needs on the North Shore, she led the process of bringing Learn To Cope to Salem.
Prior to her community role, Ms. Long served for 20 years as an attorney in the health care and non-profit field, working for state government, a large Boston law firm, and then as general counsel to a hospital organization.
Marguerite Egan Roberts, RNC, MS, NP
Secretary
Marguerite Roberts is Director of the Family Resource Center in Behavioral Health at the MassGeneral for Children at North Shore Medical Center in Salem. She co-founded the Pediatric Behavioral Health Resource Center in 2003, for families and professionals, and helped to establish the North Shore chapter of Learn to Cope in 2007. Ms. Roberts coordinates that weekly group for parents.
Ms. Roberts has extensive experience in co-developing family education programs, including: Grief After Substance Passing North Shore, Sibshop Collaborative of the Northeast, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Teacher for Teens and Adults at the acclaimed North Shore Recovery High School and community; as well as a researcher on MBSR in Teens.
She has been Member of Clinical Advisory Board at MassGeneral for Children at NSMC, the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners, Board Member of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Greater North Shore, a Pediatric Health representative for Danvers CARES; and served on the drug prevention coalition, the Lynn Overdose Prevention Committee, and the Hamilton-Wenham Drug Prevention Coalition.