About Chelsea
I never set out to become a leader in responding to addiction and overdose. Before I became an accidental activist, I was a digital marketing and advertising professional with a budding career and no particular interest in drug policy — until 2008, when my little brother Alex died of an accidental overdose, and the life I’d planned quietly ended alongside his.
What I did next became Live4Lali. In 2009, alongside my parents, we turned our grief into a grassroots organization built on a clear premise: that nobody is disposable, everyone deserves dignity and compassion, and that keeping people alive is the prerequisite for everything else. Under my leadership, Live4Lali grew into one of the country’s leading harm reduction and recovery providers — and the largest in the Midwest - putting naloxone (the overdose reversal medication) into the hands of people who need it, meeting people where they are without shame, and reaching the families the system had written off (or taken advantage of).
From there, the work only got bigger. I co-founded the Lake County Opioid Initiative and the Illinois Harm Reduction and Recovery Coalition, advised lawmakers at the local, state, and federal levels, and helped write and pass more than two dozen state and federal laws. In 2022, I was appointed to the Illinois Opioid Remediation Advisory Board, where I am privileged to help steward $500+ million in unregulated funds to abate the opioid crisis.
I have delivered keynotes, developed educational programs for professionals, individuals, and families, and built coalitions to take on the tangled roots of the public health crises we face — poverty, housing, criminal justice, access to care — and have testified, organized, and even put my own name on the ballot in a run for state representative. My advocacy has been featured on the TODAY Show, in the Chicago Tribune, on Fox News, on TheFix, and in countless other outlets. If there's a lever in the system I haven’t attempted to pull, I haven't found it yet.
My range comes from understanding social change in three ways at once. As an organizer, a policy strategist, and a clinician. I earned my BA in Integrated Marketing Communications from Roosevelt University, where I was a Fellow with the Illinois Consortium on Drug Policy, and my Master of Science in Social Administration from Case Western Reserve University. A Licensed Clinical Social Worker and trauma specialist, I support clients in private practice and serve as the Lead Therapist & Director of Outreach and Visibility at Wolf Pack Therapy, blending frontline clinical care with the big-picture movement-building that's become my trademark. Organizing people for a common cause to impact social change is my specialty.
Now I’m writing the book I wished someone had handed me on day one: part memoir, part field guide — a roadmap for every ordinary person with a cause they can’t stop thinking about. Whether it’s trying to dismantle a broken system or tackle a challenge closer to home, like implementing a local referendum to expand mental healthcare or finding a freaking doctor who actually gets you.
A few things my résumé won't tell you:
I am in an era where I choose boldness and bravery over comfort and conformity.
I am a devoted — some would say militant — cheese enthusiast.
And above every title, credential, and hard-won law, I am, all day and every day, a mom of two who still believes, stubbornly and out loud, that a more humane world is worth raising hell for.