We recently connected with Sarah Anderson and have shared our conversation below.

Sarah, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s the best or worst investment you’ve made?

The best investment I’ve made is using my skills, talents, energy and time to try and help others. The reason for this is because any setbacks we experience are never a loss. Every conversation, every social media post, every workshop, grant application is never wasted even if the outcome is different than we hoped it would be. With every action we take we are already accomplishing what we started the Vic James Center for. We started this because we wanted to reduce stigma about substance use disorder and mental health. We have accomplished that. We started this because we wanted to create a space where people can learn about sobriety and how to live a full happy sober life. We have accomplished that too. What we are doing works. I have to remind myself of that. It’s easy to compare where we are at to where we want to be and feel discouraged, but what’s unique about the work we do, our financial/spiritual/mental/physical/energetic investment is that it’s never at a loss. We only gain from this kind of effort.

Sarah, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Sarah Anderson is the Founder and CEO of the Vic James Center. She has a Master’s degree in Biotechnology Enterprise and Entrepreneurship from Johns Hopkins and an undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota. For nearly 20 years, she has been sharpening her business acumen and demonstrating competency in robust leadership roles.

The Vic James Center offers known and evidence based mental health programs to serve individuals with substance use disorders. An evidence-based practice is an intervention or treatment protocol that has been researched, evaluated, and documented to be effective.

The Vic James Center’s programs draw upon innovative approaches, including models that have not launched at scale but show promising outcomes or that have been successful in other regions.

Vic James Center’s programs lessen the impact of life stress. We recognize the importance of building resilience and coping skills. We offer career counseling, fitness training, life coaching, college admission prep, music therapy, arts classes and other programs to instill confidence & reduce barriers to success.

We also have a strong focus on prevention and early intervention.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that 102,429 people died of a drug overdose in the 12-month period ending in July 2022.

According to SAMHSA’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), in 2021, 46.3 million people 12 or older met the criteria for having a substance use disorder (SUD), including 29.5 million people who were classified as having an alcohol use disorder and 24 million people who were classified as having a drug use disorder.

“For too many years, we have treated addiction as a moral failure—an approach that has left people without sufficient support, led to tragically high numbers of overdoses, and hurt families, friendships and entire communities.”
Vice Admiral Vivek Murthy, U.S. Surgeon General

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

My extensive corporate career has been instrumental in fueling the success of The Vic James Center. The skills I acquired working on cross-functional teams, managing tight deadlines, having difficult conversations, and many many more have bolstered the credibility and integrity of the programs and services we offer.

As a team, we established a clear vision and value proposition, understood market adoption drivers and barriers, and determined stakeholder interest and potential adoption of new market solutions and offerings. We developed thorough, in-depth knowledge of the market and prioritized market needs, requirements, analyzing competitive information and recommending program enhancements or developments, and potential use cases while identifying key market stakeholders. We acted as a business partner to Los Angeles County, State of California, City of Santa Monica and Community Based Organizations in West LA. We managed and developed a cross-functional team to guide and drive the development of a new and evolving innovative programs, ensuring alignment with business strategy and objectives, vision, and prioritized market needs. We fostered positive relationships with key opinion leaders (KOLs), physician customers, industry luminaries, and other partners to support therapeutic acceptance and expansion. We led VOC activities including but not limited to: physician advisory boards, customer education events, technology roadshows related to my program portfolio and leveraged our customer relationships to incorporate customer input into our business plans. We created marketing strategies, launch plans, program management, and are the subject matter expert that performs demonstrations for sales and clinician customers. We planned and executed quarterly activities with a sales force and collaborated across a dynamic and vast matrix to drive new sales initiatives, and provide ongoing customer support.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

The Vic James Center started with a small team of family members and long-time family friends. It has grown to include community leaders, activists, and other people who have experienced the challenges that mental health and substance use disorder bring up. Previous board members typically stay on as trusted advisors. There is still a lot of work to be done to reduce the stigma around mental health and substance use disorder. It profoundly impacts so many people across all backgrounds (race, religion, socioeconomic status, gender, etc.). We are always coming into contact with people who want to help, who want to make a difference, because they understand.

Unfortunately, the downside of that is that I have also come across a lot of judgement and adversity working in this space. There is still shame, blame, misunderstandings and fear around addiction. Many people still think it is a moral failure, that people who get addicted to drugs are bad. I agree addicts make bad decisions when in the grips of their disease, but so much pain is behind the desperation to get better it becomes debilitating. These drugs are powerful and incredibly destructive. It can turn a straight A student into a “drug addict” in no time at all.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.vicjamescenter.org
• Instagram: @vicjamescenter