Heights Mentoring
About Heights Mentoring
A private, clinician-informed recovery and mental health mentoring practice serving Houston and The Heights, built to walk beside you in the real world where recovery is actually lived.
Clinician-Informed • Private & Confidential • In-Person, Virtual & In-Home • Houston & The Heights
Our Mission
Concierge recovery support, built on clinical judgment
Heights Mentoring exists to make sure no one walks the hardest stretches of recovery alone. We pair the judgment of licensed clinicians with the presence of a trusted guide, private, personal, and always in your corner.
Rooted in clinical experience
Heights Mentoring was founded by clinicians who saw the same gap again and again: people leaving treatment with insight but no one to help them live it. Everything we do is informed by that clinical experience, applied in the real world where recovery is actually tested.
Concierge, one-on-one care
This is not a program you fit into; it is support built entirely around you. Small caseloads, senior people, and genuine availability mean concierge-level attention and a relationship that truly knows your story, not a number in a system.
A sister to clinical care
We are the non-clinical companion to clinical treatment, a sister practice to Heights Behavioral Health. We do not replace therapy, psychiatry, or programs; we make them work better by carrying the support into daily life and coordinating the whole picture.
WHO WE ARE
Clinician-founded, concierge, and relentlessly real-world
Heights Mentoring exists because insight alone does not keep people well. Founded by clinicians and built as a private, concierge practice, we bring the judgment of clinical care into the daily life where recovery is actually lived, working alongside your treatment, never in place of it.
What Sets Us Apart
Why families choose Heights Mentoring
Licensed Clinical Leadership
Standards set and enforced by licensed clinicians, not by a marketing team.
Private and Discreet
Private-pay by design, so there is no insurance file and no diagnosis attached to this service.
Real-World Help
Presence in the hours between appointments, which is where recovery is actually tested.
Full Care Coordination
One point of contact across therapists, psychiatrists, programs, and family.
The Whole Family
Support built for the people around the person, not only the person in treatment.
A Complete Continuum
From early sobriety through aftercare and the long second year.
Non-Clinical, on Purpose
We respect clinical treatment and work alongside it. We never replace it.
Local and Present
A trusted presence in Houston and The Heights, in person when it matters.
Heights Mentoring exists to make sure no one walks the hardest stretches of recovery alone.
OUR LEADERSHIP
The four people accountable for your care
Heights Mentoring is small on purpose. Between them, these four decide who your mentor is, what that mentor is trained to do, where the boundary of non-clinical support sits, and what happens on the day something goes wrong. None of it is delegated to a call center, and none of them are difficult to reach.
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER • CO-OWNER
Joni Ogle
LCSW (Licensed Clinical Social Worker) · CSAT (Certified Sex Addiction Therapist, IITAP) · 37+ years in practice
Joni founded Heights Mentoring because she kept watching people leave good treatment with nowhere to put it. She earned her undergraduate degree in social work at the University of Missouri and her Master of Social Work at the University of Houston. Thirty-seven years of practice has been spent on the cases that do not resolve neatly: co-occurring mental health and substance use, high-functioning addiction nobody has named out loud yet, and young adults stalled between treatment and an actual life.
CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER • CO-OWNER
Zoe Pulido
BS Health Sciences, Clinical Operations and Healthcare Management · MS Health Sciences, Health Care Quality with a concentration in Ethics, George Washington University
Most families buy a promise and hope the delivery matches. Zoe is why it does. Her graduate work at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences was in health care quality and ethics, which is the discipline of making a service behave the same way on its worst day as on its best one. She builds the programs behind mentoring and holds oversight of how they run, so what is promised at the first call is what is still happening in month four.
DIRECTOR OF MENTORING
Beckie Ellis
Pursuing LCDC (Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor) certification · 3 years as a recovery advocate and mentor before this role
Beckie spent roughly three years working directly as a recovery advocate and mentor before she stepped into leading the team. She selects the mentors, trains them, supervises them operationally, and matches each client to a specific person rather than the next available one. What drives her work is continuity: the gap between structured care and an ordinary Tuesday is where people are lost, and closing it takes connection and accountability rather than a schedule. She is a mother of two daughters and writes for a recovery-focused blog.
CHIEF CLINICAL OFFICER
Deborah Darnell-Drake
LCSW-S (Licensed Clinical Social Worker-Supervisor) · ACSW (Academy of Certified Social Workers) · LMFT (Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist) · five decades in the field
Debbie has spent five decades in mental health and substance use disorder work. She holds a BA in Sociology from Northwestern College and an MSW from the Jane Addams College of Social Work at the University of Illinois, completed specialized substance use training at East Louisiana State Hospital in the 1970s, and has taught at the LSU School of Social Work. At Heights Mentoring she leads clinical quality, reviews what we publish, advises on where a case belongs, and defines the exact point at which mentoring hands off to licensed care. She also facilitates a weekly meeting for family, friends and loved ones.
Heights Mentoring is a private-pay, non-clinical recovery and mental health mentoring practice. It is not treatment and it does not replace therapy, psychiatry, detox, or any level of outpatient or inpatient care. Licensed clinicians set the standards mentoring works to and define when a case belongs with a clinician. With your authorization, we coordinate alongside your existing care team.
Where Mentoring Fits
Non-clinical support that works with your care
Heights Mentoring is a private, non-clinical recovery support practice. We do not diagnose or provide therapy, psychiatry, or medical care. When those are the right next step, we coordinate with licensed providers and our sister clinical practice, Heights Behavioral Health, so nothing falls through the cracks.
How It Works
How support begins
01
A private conversation
Confidential and without pressure. We listen first and help you name what is really happening.
02
A support plan
Built around your patterns, your triggers, and the shape of your week.
03
Real-world support
Consistent presence between appointments and after treatment, where recovery is actually tested.
04
Coordinated care
We work alongside your clinical team when one exists, or help you build one through Heights Behavioral Health.
WHAT OWNER-LED MEANS HERE
Small on Purpose, and Answerable to You
Plenty of practices say they are personal. The test is whether the person who set the standard is still close enough to enforce it.
Deliberately Small Caseloads
Mentors carry few clients so that presence is real rather than scheduled. If your mentor is stretched, the model has already failed you.
Senior People, Not Trainees
The people in your life are experienced and vetted, and they are supervised by licensed clinical leadership. Nobody learns on your family.
One Phone Call to the Top
If something is not right, the owners are reachable. That is the practical difference between a boutique practice and a call center with a nice website.
Meet the people behind the practice on our team page, or read our philosophy.
Start with one private conversation
A private, judgment-free conversation is the first step. We will help you find footing, whatever the last few months have looked like.
Get to Know Us
Explore Heights Mentoring
Our Team
Meet the owners and clinicians who lead every engagement personally. Small by design, senior by standard, and accountable to you by name.
Editorial & Medical Review
How everything we publish is written, clinically reviewed, and kept honest. The standard behind every page and article on this site.
Frequently Asked Questions
Straight answers on how mentoring works, what it costs, how privacy is protected, and how to begin. The questions everyone asks, answered plainly.
Alumni
The relationship does not end when mentoring does. A community, an open door, and people who still know your name years later.
Recovery Resources
Carefully curated crisis lines, meetings, treatment options, and family resources for Houston and beyond. Help we genuinely trust.
Contact Us
One private, judgment-free conversation is how everything starts. Call, write, or visit, and reach a person whose name you will know.
Related Reading
Learn more about Heights Mentoring
Questions
About Heights Mentoring, answered
Who owns Heights Mentoring?
Joni Ogle, LCSW, CSAT and Zoe Pulido. Joni is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Certified Sex Addiction Therapist with more than thirty-seven years in the field and founded Heights Mentoring. Owner-led means the person who set the standard is still close enough to enforce it.
How is this related to Heights Behavioral Health?
Heights Mentoring is the non-clinical arm. Heights Behavioral Health provides the licensed clinical care: assessment, therapy, psychiatry and programming. Mentoring provides the structure and presence around it. Sharing ownership means the handoff between the two actually works instead of being a referral into a void.
Why private-pay rather than insurance?
Two reasons. Insurance does not reimburse non-clinical recovery support in any meaningful way, and private-pay keeps this service off an insurance file entirely, with no claim and no diagnosis code attached. For a large share of our clients that discretion is the point rather than a side effect.
How big is the team?
Deliberately small. Mentors carry few clients so presence is real rather than scheduled, and hiring is slow. If your mentor is stretched across a dozen clients, the model has already failed you regardless of how good the website looks.
What are your mentors trained in?
Relapse prevention planning, motivational interviewing, crisis de-escalation, boundary setting, trigger and craving management, and documentation and communication with clinical teams. All are background screened and supervised, with clinical standards set by licensed clinicians at Heights Behavioral Health.
Do you pay or receive referral fees?
No. We do not pay for referrals and we do not accept payment to send people anywhere. When we recommend a program or a clinician it is because we think it fits, and when we think somebody else is the better answer we say so.
Where are you located?
1009 Yale Street, Unit A, Houston, Texas 77008, in Houston Heights. Most of the work happens where clients live; the offices are for consultations, family meetings and neutral-ground sessions. See where and how we work.
