We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lanette Denton. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lanette below.

Lanette, appreciate you joining us today. Looking back on your career, have you ever worked with a great leader or boss? We’d love to hear about the experience and what you think made them such a great leader.

The best boss I ever had met me at my worst. I remember I was in sweats and a tee-shirt. I hadn’t showered in days. I had 2 major life events happening at the same time. I had a grand daughter that was having major surgery and I had a nephew that was in a bad motorcycle wreck that had been in a coma for 9 days at this point. I looked like complete hell when I got the call for an interview. She didn’t care she seen past all that I was going through and just seen me as a person and focused on the fact that I just showed up. She truly met me where I was at.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am a person in long term recovery from substance use disorder. I get to use my lived experience to help support and guide others on their journey or just meet folks where they are at in life. My life has came full circle today. I work in a recovery organization where I work with folks individually to help build a persons recovery capital, I specialize in harm reduction and get to help de stigmatize addiction and advocate for person first language My job even allows me to use my lived experience to go into the jail weekly and talk to folks and listen to them and validate and meet them where they are at.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

Stigma is something that I am really passionate about. I have a long history of substance use in my community. So it was very important for me to recover out loud and one of the things that I take the most pride in is practicing what I preach especially when no one is looking. Being a role model in the recovery community and playing a leadership role. I built a great support system and I use them often. Recovery is a we thing. I suit up and show up wherever I can and I am passionate about advocacy.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

My story of hope began in the jail. I was what they called a revolving door. I was tired and defeated and couldn’t see a way out of my addiction and then during one of my stints in jail on a probation violation I asked for recovery court. I wrote a letter to the judge begging him to give me a chance at this opportunity and if given I would give it my all. It was this or death. I believed that with my whole heart. It took him two weeks to decide but he finally decided and the recovery court judge also accepted and I was in. I gave it everything I had and today once a week, ten years later, I am in the jails in the very room that changed my life working with incarcerated individuals instilling hope that they can too turn their lives around.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Www.utahrecovers.org
• Facebook: Usaramoab