Anita Bradley is the founder and Executive Director of the Northern Ohio Recovery Association (NORA). Anita is a graduate of Kent State and Cleveland State Universities. She earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice studies and a master’s degree from Cleveland State, respectively. Bradley founded the Northern Ohio Recovery Association in 2004 to prevent the use of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs utilizing a holistic healing and recovery approach. Her vision is to establish innovative care to support continued recovery in communities throughout Northeast Ohio. In December of 2014 the organization celebrated its ten-year anniversary.
Bradley has been in recovery for over 30 years and understands the importance and magnitude of blending personal and professional knowledge to promote the power and possibility of recovery. Ms. Bradley served on the Department of Health and Human Services Center for Substance Abuse Treatment from 2004-2010 under the Bush Administration. In 2014 she extended the expertise on substance abuse to the administration of President Barack Obama. Throughout an impressive career, more than two decades, Anita has served as a clinician and administrator; she specializes in community organizing, program planning and program development. April 2016, Bradley was honored by the White House as a “Champion of Change” for the many programs she has created in the Addiction Recovery field. Bradley has also been honored by National Faces and Voices of Recovery as the Joel Hernandez recipient in 2016. In 2016 Ms. Bradley was the Cavaliers Hometown Hero. She has also been nominated twice by Cleveland Smart Business for the Entrepreneur of the Year 2015 and Smart Business 50 award 2016. Most recently Ms. Bradley is being recognized in 2017 for Cleveland Heights Ohio Alumni Foundation (1983) Hall of Fame and UHCAN Ohio Health Care for All as an outstanding healthcare leader of Ohio.
The no non-sense but compassionate executive has extensive experience in planning, implementing and evaluating new and evolving substance abuse treatment programs, and has provided technical assistance to a multitude of other agencies. She has also monitored treatment agencies for program compliance, quality improvement, in addition to providing guidance and technical assistance to agencies to ensure success of ongoing programs. She has conducted numerous training sessions on substance abuse treatment for her peers.
Before founding NORA in 2004 Bradley was the Executive Director of Compass House, Inc. located in Loran, Ohio. There she lent her skills, talent and management style to the county’s largest residential treatment center. With oversight of a 4.7 million dollar budget her responsibilities included oversight of a 70-member staff, more than 100 volunteers. During her tenure, she was successful in garnering funding and cultivating a statewide network, statewide trainings and relationships within in the service system; writing and administering grants; enforcing service standards and policies in addition to monitoring agency performance of the Board of Trustee and agency funding partners. Ms. Bradley has won over $35 million dollars in Federal Funds.
She continues to promote and ensure a continuum of recovery by sustaining a peer recovery model that is both paramount and essential to on-going sobriety.
Ms. Bradley is the recipient of local leadership and volunteer service awards in the substance abuse profession. She was the inspirational catalyst who organized a public Recovery Month event called the Recovery Motorcycle Ride, which has stimulated the planning of other yearly recovery and substance abuse prevention events. In addition to her many professional accolades, Anita remains loyal to her roots, initiating several AA groups, in Northeast Ohio, which continue.
Anita Bradley is a tremendous voice and advocate for women and faithfully demonstrates that advocacy is the critical link between treatment, recovery, and the rest of the world. Similarly, she continues “Building Recovery into Diverse Globally Effective Systems,” or BRIDGES of HOPE, to offer culturally relevant consumer choices, presented with dignity and respect to youth, adults, and families in communities throughout Ohio.