Carlos A. Larrauri is a nurse practitioner who recently graduated with a law degree from the University of Michigan. He has served on the Board of Directors for the National Alliance on Mental Illness. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia at 23 years of age. Today, Mr. Larrauri aspires to interface clinical practice, health policy and research, to reduce health inequities for people living with mental illness.

Ashley Smith is a non-fiction author, speaker, peer counselor, and mother. She courageously fights the stigma of mental illness with her name attached to her lived experience. She is celebrating a decade in recovery.

Sarah Marzen holds a physics bachelor’s degree from Caltech, a physics PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT. Today, she works as a physics professor and researcher at the W. M. Keck Science Department at the Claremont Colleges.

Darrell’s life didn’t grind to a halt when he was diagnosed. The year after his hospitalization, he went back to college to study computer programming. He finished his degree two years later, and successfully worked as a computer programmer for the next eighteen years.

Rhea holds a BA in sociology from Columbia and a Master’s in Disability Studies from the City University of New York, where she graduated in May 2022. Currently, she does research on OCD and early psychosis at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and looks forward to applying to PhD programs.