Executive Staff
Steve McGrew
Chief Executive Officer
Scott Anderson
Chief Clinical Officer / Clinical Director
John Hood
Executive Vice President
Amanda Mathes
Director of Finance & Operations
Webster Bailey
Executive Director of Marketing and Business Development
Travis Pyle
Director of Medical Services
Dr. Lane Cook
Chief of Psychiatric Services
Dr. Fred "Kip" Wenger ABAM, FACOEP, FACEP
Chief of Medical Services & Medical Director
Business Development & Outreach
Dr. Janet Hicks
Director of Professionals Program
Jill Burbidge
Railroad Program Director
Brian O'Hearn
Aviation Program Coordinator
Becky Paris
Care Coordinator for Regional Outreach Team
Misty Pearson
Regional Outreach Manager Knoxville Region
Employee Spotlights
Stepping Stone therapist Denicia Lowe keeps what she has by giving it away
On the other side of her addiction, Denicia Lowe remembers the staggering beauty of her childhood. Now a therapist at Stepping Stone to Recovery, Denicia was born in the East Tennessee community of Harriman, but her parents moved the family to the East African country of Kenya for missionary work when she was 6. There,…
Retiring Fitness Coordinator Tracey Graves reflects on building a program from scratch
Five laps around the upper parking lot of the Cornerstone campus makes up a mile. Tracey Graves, the long-time Fitness Coordinator at Cornerstone of Recovery who retires this week, knows that well. In the beginning of her 13-year tenure with the drug and alcohol treatment facility, it was one of many methods of her ingenuity…
Meet the Family! As Cornerstone’s Executive Assistant, Beth Akers finds her purpose
Beth Akers never suffered from a drug or alcohol problem, and she was never a patient at Cornerstone of Recovery, but she found herself here just the same. As she wraps up her final week of employment as the executive assistant — mostly to Cornerstone CEO Steve McGrew, but also to the company’s Leadership Team…
MEET THE FAMILY: From clerk to HR director, Jennifer Dacus helped Cornerstone grow
It seems like a lifetime ago that Jennifer Dacus, Director of Human Resources at Cornerstone of Recovery, started spending her Friday afternoons shredding paper. Back then, her last name was Amburgey. Cornerstone had only occupied a new 46-bed facility on Topside Road in Blount County’s Louisville community for a year (a facility that’s now home…
MEET THE FAMILY: Cornerstone’s financials are in good hands with Jamie Free
It didn’t take Jamie Free long to figure out that Cornerstone of Recovery is a different kind of business. The East Tennessee girl, who grew up in Knoxville’s Halls community, was a few weeks into her job as Controller for the drug and alcohol treatment center — a position from which she’s stepping down on…
The welcome wagon: Justin Poole is one of the first faces Cornerstone patients see
In 2001, Justin Poole had to get out of East Tennessee. Maybe he needed rehab, maybe he didn’t, but one thing the Reception Manager at Cornerstone of Recovery is certain of: If he had stayed in Sevier County, he was likely headed toward the same bitter ends it talks about in recovery literature. “I was…
MEET THE FAMILY: Admissions Counselor Susie Silcox seizes life on the other side of addiction
It’s serendipitous, the way that Susie Silcox spends her days on the phone as an Admissions Counselor for Cornerstone of Recovery, a drug and alcohol treatment center near Knoxville, Tennessee. Each day, she takes calls from potential patients facing what they believe is the worst day of their lives. Their drug and alcohol use has…
MEET THE FAMILY: Cindy Shinn serves the Cornerstone community behind the scenes
Chances are, if you’re reading this on a device, you have no idea what goes on below or behind the screen. All you know is that your phone or your laptop or your tablet works, and you’re grateful it does. Take it apart and remove one piece … one random screw or circuit or board…
Cornerstone’s Howard Bowlin reflects on (almost!) 41 years of sobriety
The final six months of 1979 were some of the darkest of Howard Bowlin’s life. Today, the spiritual advisor, military veteran and retired Episcopal priest recalls them with the stoicism of a man who’s spent 40 years working a one-day-at-a-time program of acceptance and change. At Cornerstone of Recovery, the drug and alcohol treatment center…
Program coordinator Nancy Dabbs reflects on two decades of Cornerstone service
For 20 years, minus a couple while she was employed elsewhere, Nancy Dabbs has had a ringside seat to it all at Cornerstone of Recovery. On Dec. 30, she’ll leave the Cornerstone campus for the final time, headed west to a new position as treatment supervisor of Drug Court Four, a unit of the Residential…
Employee profile: As a man once broken by addiction, Curtis Trotter now helps put others back together
It’s a marvelous thing, watching Curtis T. work his magic. To be fair to his peers in the clinical side of Cornerstone of Recovery, where Curtis Trotter (as he’s officially known) works as a counselor in the Newcomers Program, it’s not magic so much as it’s his personal style. His sense of humor in the…
A recovering addict who helps others recover: Meet Cornerstone’s Tony Davis
Now that he’s a recovering addict, Tony Davis — a.k.a. Tony D., as he’s known fondly around the drug and alcohol treatment center Cornerstone of Recovery — doesn’t talk much about his days in the darkness of addiction, back in Greenville, South Carolina. Suffice it to say it wasn’t pleasant — “I used every day,…
National Recovery Month spotlight: Sean Doesburg learns to love again
EDITOR’S NOTE: As part of National Recovery Month, we’re spotlighting employees of Cornerstone of Recovery who found a way out of addiction and alcoholism at our facility, and have returned as employees who now do the same for those who follow in their footsteps. Somewhere along the way, Sean Doesburg forgot how to love himself.…
Employee profile: For Greg Meade, suffering may be unavoidable, but misery is optional
The fundamental teachings of Buddhism are known as the Four Noble Truths, and the very first is one with which Greg Meade is intimately familiar. “The first Noble Truth,” writes Dr. Rick Hanson, “is that life contains inevitable, unavoidable suffering” — from acute distress like the diagnosis of a life-changing disease to the emotional distress…
National Recovery Month spotlight: Recovering alcohol Daniel Burtch leads others toward the light
EDITOR’S NOTE: As part of National Recovery Month, we’re spotlighting employees of Cornerstone of Recovery who found a way out of addiction and alcoholism at our facility, and have returned as employees who now do the same for those who follow in their footsteps. As a grateful recovering alcoholic, Daniel Burtch finds it both ironic…
National Recovery Month spotlight: Seth Charles find his calling as a counselor in recovery
As a counselor in recovery, Seth Charles knows all too well the depths to which addiction can take someone. At his worst, he was living in a foreclosed home with his 4-year-old daughter and her mother, running an extension cord from his car to provide enough power for a fan and a TV, stealing cable…
National Recovery Month spotlight: Chris Brewster learns a lesson about love
EDITOR’S NOTE: As part of National Recovery Month, we’re spotlighting employees of Cornerstone of Recovery who found a way out of addiction and alcoholism at our facility, and have returned as employees who now do the same for those who follow in their footsteps. The first time Chris Brewster got drunk, he made a deal…
MEET THE FAMILY! Cornerstone Program Director Anne Young reflects on 35 years of sobriety
Labor Day weekend 1985 was the last hurrah for Anne Young, the Director of Residential Programs at Cornerstone of Recovery. She remembers vividly driving up to a hotel in the mountain resort town of Gatlinburg, where her cousin tended bar. The liquor was plentiful that weekend, and the mission was succinct: finish it off. “They…