Jeffrey Santo

Executive Director, Recovery Innovations for
Pursuing Peer Leadership and Empowerment, Inc (RIPPLE)

In 2013 Jeff started to attend meetings within the advocacy community. In his first year, he began meeting people and learning about the history of mental health movements in Connecticut. He also took his first class, Mental Health First Aid in May of that same year. He started working with groups like Advocacy Unlimited, Keep the Promise Coalition, and his local Catchment Area Council. A short time later, a group of peers began to form a group of their own, and even though it did not have a name, the idea started to grow. Our goal was to “harness our voices, insights, and leadership, and those of our fellow service recipients, to inform and implement changes in mental health and addiction services.”

In late December of 2015, this group held a meeting, and after putting a long list of meaningful words related to this group’s mission, it finally had a name. Jeff sometimes jokes about being dyslexic, but it allows him to see words within a jumble of letters. Taking the first letter of every word subbmitted, he asked, “How would you folks feel about calling ourselves RIPPLE?”

Shortly after this meeting, a board of directors was informally formed, and Jeff was penciled in as the webmaster of Recovery Innovations for Pursuing Peer Leadership and Empowerment. Over the next two years, Jeff would contunie to attend meetings, take classes offered by community organizations and speak publicly about mental health-related topics around the state.

In 2017 one of RIPPLE’s co-founders opted to leave Connecticut and cut ties with the group. At that time, Jeff was asked to serve and elected to the board as its president. Shortly after, he decided that this was the type of work he wanted to do for the rest of his career. Jeff took KPT’s Essentials of Legislative Advocacy and Legislative Leadership trainings.

The KTP classes helped him prepare for his first testimony in front of the Public Health Committee on November 13, 2017, which took place at the Connecticut Legislative Office Building. He rounded out the year by submitting his application to Advocacy Unlimited’s Recovery University to become a Recovery Support Specialist on December 6, 2017.