The Founding Team
Stay Clean is a cloud-based clinical treatment and recovery community for people suffering from substance use disorder (addiction) and codependents. We offer the highest quality clinical treatment with licensed and certified alcohol and drug counselors and with certified peer specialists. Our founding team understands recovery from their collective, personal experience of over 100 years. They have worked in the field of substance use disorder and health care including direct experience as clinicians and EMTs
Michael Coleman, President and Founder
Mike had had enough. One more run in the middle of the night. Leaving the fire house again, an EMT with narcan in the truck, one more victim and their family. These calls were all about heart attacks twenty years ago, now they were one overdose after the next. Arriving after the damage was done was good, he supposed, but far better to help prevent these tragedies. Mike went home that morning to his wife, “I have to do something.” Mike was intimately familiar with one case of addiction and recovery. He knew inpatient treatment but it was not realistic for a twenty year veteran of the public service to access that kind of capital. He went to do research on the internet when it occurred to him – every day we do more in “the cloud” so why not awareness, treatment, recovery community. 27 million alcoholics and addicts and only 12% find their way to treatment. That was the problem to be solved. And Stay Clean was born. Today, Stay Clean has outpatient treatment in the cloud, on a confidential telemedicine platform, with the very best and experienced addiction counselors. Mike has retired from the fire house and commits his time to doing what he can to avoid those over doses. He remains the spirit of the company and an advocate for treatment for all.
Kevin Pangburn, Chief Clinical Officer
The “war on drugs” started out and probably still is well intentioned. Eliminate the growers and the chemists, eliminate the suppliers; seemed reasonable. Sadly, that “war on drugs” became a “war on drug users” and today we spend $24 billion to incarcerate 1.2 million non-violent offenders, in fact people with an AMA defined disease, and disproportionately impacting people of color. During this time the number of people with substance use disorder has not declined and level I narcotics have become more lethal. Kevin Pangburn is the antidote. He and colleagues in the Kentucky Department of corrections developed a 6,000 bed substance use disorder treatment program inside Kentucky Corrections where inmates can receive the education and treatment they should have received in the first instance. Thirty years in family and addictions therapy Kevin met Mike Coleman and shared a vision that everyone on that awful addictions curve and their loved ones could find treatment, and a community of brothers and sisters who shared their experience, strength and hope. Kevin has identified and deployed sophisticated assessment for substance use disorder and codependency and protocols for outpatient treatment in the cloud. Now he has assembled and leads a team of certified, highly experienced clinicians who together are developing the future of treatment.
Gene Gilchrist Ph.D. Chief Executive Officer
Somebody has to turn on the lights in the morning, make the coffee, and unlock the front door. “Yeah, but the guy has a Ph.D.”. “Sure, but he might still figure out which switch works which lights. Besides, you want to do that stuff”? Gene takes care of all that stuff for us.
James Norton, Chief Business Development Officer
Chip’s career took off in Los Angeles, shaping entertainment packaging in the emergence of the Internet age, including the evolution of digital media and graphic applications in the retail industry. When Chip met Mike Coleman and the Stay Clean team, he quickly saw the opportunity to apply his knowledge and energy to tackle a rapidly-increasing cause of death in the nation: addictions to alcohol, drugs, and nicotine. Chip has taken the lead on developing the confidential clinical network and the recovery community, and aligning them with the Web presence you see here. As the leading business development member of the team, he works with employers, professional organizations, and treatment centers to create access to treatment where it has not before existed. His goal is to lower the barrier between addicts and the treatment they deserve, bringing each person who reaches out through Stay Clean one step closer to recovery.
