Professor David Best is a senior academic researcher in the areas of addiction recovery, recovery capital and desistance from crime. He has held five professorial posts in England and Australia but is now primarily employed as a consultant in both the US and the UK. He is a founding member of the College of Lived Experience Recovery Organisations (CLERO) and the Inclusive Recovery Cities (IRC) movement. He is the author or editor of eight books (most recently “The Handbook of Recovery Capital” co-edited with Emily Hennessy) and of more than 250 peer-reviewed academic papers. Current work priorities are around developing new recovery capital measurement tools and developing a family recovery capital framework. He lives in the Peak District in England. 

Paul L. Cary, M.S., retired as director of the Toxicology and Drug Monitoring Laboratory at University of Missouri Health Care in Columbia Missouri in 2015. For forty years, Mr. Cary was actively involved in the management of a nationally-recognized toxicology laboratory that performed drug testing for treatment courts, hospitals, mental health facilities, attorneys, coroners and medical examiners, athletic programs, and public and private employers. He has authored numerous scientific publications and monographs, has served on a variety of clinical and technical advisory committees, taught at the university, was involved in drug testing research, and served as a consultant in toxicology-related matters. Mr. Cary has been a resource to treatment court teams throughout the nation and overseas and serves as visiting faculty for All Rise. 

Rob Hulls is the Director of the Centre for Innovative Justice at Australia’s RMIT University. Rob served as the Attorney-General and Deputy Premier of Victoria from 1999 to 2010. As Attorney-General, he instigated significant and lasting changes to Victoria’s legal system including setting up several specialist courts including the Drug Courts, as well as Australia’s first and only Neighbourhood Justice Centre. In October 2012, Rob returned to his alma mater to set up the Centre for Innovative Justice as a place to develop, drive, and expand the capacity of the justice system to meet and adapt to the needs of its diverse users.  

Brian L. Meyer, Ph.D., LCP, is a Clinical Psychologist and the Psychology Program Manager and Supervisory Psychologist for the Community-Based Outpatient Clinics at the Central Virginia VA Health Care System and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Virginia Commonwealth University. He obtained his A.B. from Harvard University in 1980 and his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology with a specialization in adolescents and families from Duke University in 1990. Dr. Meyer has worked in the child welfare and the child and adult mental health fields as a clinician, administrator, teacher, policy maker, program developer, expert witness, researcher, consultant, and trainer. He has been the Deputy Clinical Director of the New Mexico CYFD Protective Services Division; the Executive Director of the Albuquerque Child and Family Guidance Center; the Executive Director of the Virginia Treatment Center for Children; and the Interim Associate Chief of Mental Health Clinical Services, the Workplace Violence Prevention Coordinator, and the PTSD-SUD Specialist for over 11½ years at the Richmond VA Medical Center. In his current roles, Dr. Meyer oversees psychologists at six regional VA community clinics; helped implement mental health services at a new 450,000 sq. ft. VA Health Care Center, which became the largest in the nation when it opened in March, 2025; provides evidence-based treatments for Veterans who have problems with PTSD, substance abuse, depression, TBI, and other co-occurring conditions; trains psychology trainees; and develops and conducts research on treatments for PTSD, substance abuse, and co-morbid conditions. Dr. Meyer is also a nationally in-demand speaker who has given over 500 presentations and trainings on a wide range of content areas including the treatment of trauma and co-morbid conditions, substance abuse, complex trauma, the effects of trauma and substance abuse on families, Veterans’ mental health, mindfulness meditation, secondary traumatization and self-care, trauma-informed courts, and treatment courts. He is the Lead Subject Matter Expert on trauma for SAMHSA’s GAINS Center Learning Collaborative on Trauma-Informed Courts, with whom he also helped develop national guidelines for trauma-responsive courts. He is also the co-author of Transcending Self Therapy: Group Integrative Cognitive Behavioral Treatment Book for Facilitators (2019), a treatment manual for people with Substance Use Disorders, along with Dr. Jarrod Reisweber. He has been happily married to his wife Sharla for 38 years and has three adult children and two granddaughters, all of whom he adores.