Identifying Potential serves as the parent organization and umbrella for work rooted in human development, strategic consulting, and systems growth. Steady Resilience is a connected, but distinct, platform that will increasingly focus on trauma, PTSD, and complex PTSD as my education and supervised training progress toward advanced clinical practice focused on trauma. For now, Steady Resilience is a place where individuals can learn about mental health in general, with an emphasis on trauma informed education, personal growth, and practical pathways of resilience that may support their unique journeys.

 

As Founder and CEO of Identifying Potential LLC, I look forward to helping build stronger bridges across the worlds that shape recovery, including lived experience, clinical practice, care coordination, leadership, and the tools organizations rely on to do good work. My consulting work focuses on strengthening collaboration across teams, improving workflows, and aligning people, processes, and technology through practical communication, training, and implementation support. My background includes enterprise technology consulting and stakeholder engagement across healthcare, government related environments, and recovery oriented systems.

 

Together, these platforms form an integrated framework with two lanes. Steady Resilience centers individual learning and growth, especially for people impacted by trauma. Identifying Potential expands the mission into leadership, systems development, and institutional strategy, including workflow optimization, stakeholder engagement, training, and thoughtful use of technology that supports real world care. This work is rooted in a simple belief: resilience is not rare, potential is not reserved, and systems can evolve to better reflect the strength already present within the people they serve. I will be back with new content, deeper collaboration, and a focus on identifying potential at a grassroots level, creating change through community, communication, and contribution. Resilience is not the absence of pain or setbacks. Resilience is persistence, staying steady in love and compassion as life ebbs and flows.

 

Steady Resilience is an educational platform. It does not provide clinical services and it is not a substitute for professional mental health care.

 

I also want to share genuine gratitude. This work reflects not only individual effort, but collective commitment. Special thanks to Danette Veahman, a visionary and advocate who inspires so many and inspired me to focus on Identifying Potential; Angela Elliston, CPS, Recovery Specialist and Community Wellness Team member, whose systems knowledge, steady hope, and ability to hold joy in the middle of hard realities has been a guiding light for me; and Sheila Rankin, CPS, whose lived experience and courage helped me learn that mutual respect matters, even when communication styles are different, and that shedding self judgment is part of authentic leadership in recovery advocacy.

 

I am also grateful to Community Care Behavioral Health Organization for the support, training, and real human touch they bring to this community, and for the opportunities to learn from them and build real relationships with people doing the work. Thank you to Allegheny County Coalition for Recovery (ACCR) for its unique ability to bring everyone to the table, ask the right questions, keep searching for answers, and help create solutions together. Appreciation to the Peer Support and Advocacy Network for professional development, continuing education units, and a commitment to creating opportunities for growth for anyone who wants to be part of the solution. Gratitude as well to UPMC, AGH, and the Allegheny County Department of Human Services Office of Behavioral Health, and to the countless professionals and peers who create opportunities to connect, learn, grow, and witness both the depth of community need and the strength of those rising to meet the challenge. Special appreciation to Dr. Chrissy Whiting Madison, PhD, CRC, CPRP, whose work reminds us that small, intentional shifts can create meaningful, lasting change, and whose courage to believe in me, especially when I struggled to hold that belief in myself, helped shape how I show up with steadiness, optimism, and purpose.

 

With gratitude,

John A. Ellis

February 16, 2026