Advisory Council
Recovery is too big to solve alone.
Cope Compass is built with clinicians and recovery experts who have spent decades doing this work. They hold us to the standard the people who rely on us deserve, and they keep the mission honest.
Founding advisors
Daniel Hochman
Clinical Advisor
MD
I'm a board-certified psychiatrist and addiction specialist, and the founder of Self Recovery, a psychology-based addiction recovery program. I hold academic appointments as Affiliate Faculty at the University of Texas Dell Medical School and Clinical Associate Professor at the Texas A&M School of Medicine, and I've treated addiction across private rehabs, outpatient clinics, VA programs, and the Department of Defense. My work centers on the mechanisms of addiction and on building treatment that meets people as individuals, not as diagnoses. What drew me to Cope Compass is the moment conventional treatment cannot reach: the brief, private window when an urge strikes between sessions. Detecting that moment from everyday signals and delivering personalized support inside it is exactly the individualized, learning-based direction I believe behavioral health has to move toward. That is why I am advising this work.
Gambling is the only addiction that offers hope. That is what makes it hard to stop.
Billy Hoffman
Peer Advisor
CPRS · CSAC-A
I started gambling at fifteen. Lottery tickets, poker, the horse track, and the backroom machines nobody wants to talk about. By thirty I had been married and divorced twice and could not tell you how much I had lost. Twenty-five years in recovery now, I work as a Certified Peer Recovery Specialist and spend most of my days with men who are in the spot I used to be. Gambling is the only addiction that offers hope. That is what makes it hard to stop. Peer support is one of the few things that breaks through that hope with something stronger. That is why I am on the Cope Compass Council.
What we build toward
The Council's charter.
Mission
Cope Compass exists to make real-time recovery support reachable for anyone, anywhere, at the moment they need it. The Advisory Council exists to make sure that support is clinically sound, grounded in lived experience, and worthy of the people who rely on it.
Vision
A recovery system that meets people in the moment, not only in the appointment. The Council guides Cope Compass toward that future: recovery treated as connective infrastructure, not a single app.
Principles
- Lived experience and clinical expertise carry equal weight. Both are required to get recovery right.
- Recovery support should never shame. Nothing resets, and progress is never erased.
- We build for the person in crisis at 2am, not for the demo. If it does not serve them, it does not ship.
- Honesty over polish. The Council tells us when we are wrong, and we change course.
How the Council works
Council membership means your name, your credentials, and your perspective help shape Cope Compass, and they tell people in recovery that real experts stand behind it. Members give occasional guidance on a launch, a feature, or a question of clinical accuracy, when they have the time and the interest.
What it does not mean: there is no quota, and no obligation to review everything we ship. Formal review work, when we need it, is a separate paid arrangement. The Council is here to steer and to vouch, not to do unpaid clinical labor.
Open positions
The seats we're recruiting for.
Certified gambling counselor
A clinician credentialed specifically in gambling disorder (ICGC-II or NCGC), to keep our gambling-specific guidance precise.
Gambling-disorder researcher
An academic who studies gambling disorder, to keep what we build grounded in current evidence and able to cite it.
Family support specialist
A counselor or advocate who works with the partners, parents, and children affected by a loved one's gambling, so we build for the whole family, not just the individual.
Know someone who belongs on the Council?
Clinicians, gambling-recovery specialists, and people with deep lived experience of this work. Send us a note. We are building the Council deliberately, not in a rush.
Nominate someone