Clinician-led, owner-operated, and built around one belief: recovery support should be designed for the person, not the other way around.
OUR TEAM • HOUSTON & THE HEIGHTS
Meet the Heights Mentoring Team
Clinician-Informed • Private & Confidential • In-Person, Virtual & In-Home • Houston & The Heights
IN THEIR WORDS
From the Owners
“Care should be built around the person, not the other way around. My job is to make sure every mentor we send out carries that standard into someone’s real life.”
JONI OGLE, LCSW, CSAT • CEO
“The support we promise has to be the support people actually feel. That is what I protect every day, from the first call to the last check-in.”
ZOE PULIDO • COO
EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP
Two owners, and you will know both by name
Heights Mentoring is owner-led on purpose. Joni and Zoe set the standard, decide how the practice runs, and stay close enough to the work that you can reach either of them by name.
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. That experience is the standard every mentor here is held to.
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.
DIRECTORS
The people who run it day to day
Directors own the parts of this you actually feel: who your mentor is, how that mentor is trained, who answers your first call, and whether the schedule and the logistics hold up in a real week.
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.
DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS
Adam Schievelbein
LCDC-I (Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor Intern) · Full LCDC licensure expected November 2026 · 5 years in the field
Adam runs the operational systems behind the program: the schedules, the handoffs, and the hundred small processes that decide whether a client’s week actually works. He judges every one of them through the eyes of someone who was once a client himself. Before this field he spent years in active addiction, and he brings that history to a particular group: chronic relapsers, and the husbands and fathers carrying the weight of providing while quietly holding something they do not know how to say out loud. He is a member of the Texas Association of Addiction Professionals and NAADAC, a father of five, and a Longhorns fan who will tell you so.
DIRECTOR OF ADMISSIONS
Jeff Gurney
Introduction coming soon.
DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND OUTREACH
Alex Koby
Introduction coming soon.
DIRECTOR OF HUMAN RESOURCES
Clarice Lawton
Introduction coming soon.
OWNER-LED, ALWAYS
You will always know exactly who is walking beside you
Heights Mentoring is not a staffing agency or a call center. It is a small, owner-led practice where the people on this page set the standards, choose the mentors, and stay personally close to every client. When you call, you reach someone whose name you know, and that is exactly how we intend to keep it.
HOW THE PRACTICE IS STAFFED
Every Part of This Has a Person Attached to It
Boutique does not mean improvised. These are the functions that make concierge recovery support work, and the people accountable for each one.
OWNERSHIP
Joni Ogle and Zoe Pulido
The owners are in the work, not above it. Standards are set at the top and enforced there, and if something is not right the people who can fix it are reachable by name.
CLINICAL OVERSIGHT
Debbie Darnell-Drake, LCSW-S
Licensed clinical leadership reviews our standards, supervises quality, and reviews what we publish. Mentoring stays non-clinical. The guardrails around it do not.
MENTORING
Beckie Ellis, Director of Mentoring
Beckie owns mentor selection, training and supervision, and she personally matches each client rather than assigning whoever is free. If a match is not working, she changes it.
ADMISSIONS
First conversation and placement
The people who answer the phone are trained to listen first and place accurately, including telling you when the right answer is a different provider. No scripts and no sales targets.
MENTORS AND COMPANIONS
Vetted, trained, supervised
Background screened before any client contact, trained in relapse prevention, motivational interviewing, crisis de-escalation and boundary setting, and matched to the client rather than assigned by availability.
CARE COORDINATION AND WELLNESS
Case management and daily living
One point of contact across therapists, psychiatrists, programs, schools and family. Our culinary lead supports clients learning to feed themselves properly again, because routine is part of recovery.
We hire slowly and deliberately. If you are a certified peer specialist, recovery coach or companion in Houston and this is how you want to work, write to mentoring@heightsbehavioralhealth.com.
WHO WRITES AND REVIEWS THIS SITE
Clinical Leadership and Editorial Oversight
Every service page and every article here is written or clinically reviewed by a licensed professional whose name is on it. These are the two people accountable for what you read.
WRITTEN BY
Joni Ogle, LCSW, CSAT
Licensed Clinical Social Worker · Certified Sex Addiction Therapist
Joni writes the service and clinical explainer content on this site. Thirty-seven years of practice sits behind every claim we make about what recovery actually asks of a person, and her name is on the pages that need that authority.
CLINICALLY REVIEWED BY
Debbie Darnell-Drake, LCSW-S, ACSW, LMFT
Licensed Clinical Social Worker-Supervisor · Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist
Debbie reviews the mental health, family systems and dual diagnosis content published here before it goes live. As an LCSW-S she supervises other clinicians, and that is the same lens she brings to this site: is this accurate, is it responsible, and would you want a family member reading it.
Read how we source and review everything we publish in our editorial and medical review guidelines.
WHAT OUR TEAM DELIVERS
What Concierge Recovery Support Looks Like
Private, clinician-informed support delivered the way you actually live, on your schedule, in your setting, and with complete discretion.
RECOVERY MENTORING
One-on-One, Between the Appointments
A private mentor who turns treatment goals into daily routines: accountability check-ins, relapse-prevention planning, and real-time support during the moments that actually test recovery. Delivered in person, in-home, or virtually, with discreet coordination alongside your therapist or physician.
INTERVENTION SUPPORT
Calm, Private, and Fully Planned
Clinician-informed intervention planning for families ready for a change. We prepare the family, coach language and boundaries, guide the conversation itself, and coordinate a seamless handoff to the right level of care, handling the logistics with discretion for high-visibility families.
SOBER COMPANIONING
Trusted Presence, When It Matters Most
Consistent, discreet companionship through the highest-risk windows: the first weeks after treatment, travel, business trips, court dates, and medical procedures. Coverage scales from daily hours to around-the-clock support, is travel-ready across the country, and is handled with strict discretion and clear privacy expectations.
IN PLAIN TERMS
What Heights Mentoring Is, and How We Help
Heights Mentoring is a private, non-clinical recovery mentoring practice based at 1009 Yale Street, Unit A in The Heights. We provide one-on-one mentoring, sober coaching, and companion support that turns treatment into real-world routines, accountability, and steady momentum. See how we help.
When clinical treatment is the right next step, we coordinate with your care team and our sister clinical practice, Heights Behavioral Health, so nothing falls through the cracks.
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.
RECOVERY THAT FITS YOUR LIFE
Support Designed Around Your Real Life
Discreet, clinician-informed mentoring across Houston and The Heights, and virtually nationwide. Call for a confidential, no-obligation conversation.
FREQUENTLY ASKED
Questions about our team
Who will actually be working with me or my family?
A mentor matched to the situation rather than assigned by whoever is free. Matching considers the presenting issue, the personality fit, and practical things like schedule and location. If the match is wrong, say so and we change it. That is a normal request, not a complaint.
What training and certification do mentors hold?
The relevant Texas peer credentials are Recovery Support Peer Specialist and Mental Health Peer Specialist, certified through the state process. Alongside that, mentors are trained in relapse prevention planning, motivational interviewing, crisis de-escalation, boundary setting, and communicating with clinical teams. Ask us directly which certifications a specific mentor holds and we will tell you.
Who supervises the work?
Day to day, mentors are supervised operationally by Heights Mentoring, and Beckie Ellis, our Director of Mentoring, owns that. Separately, the standards mentors work to, the boundaries of the role, and the point at which a mentor stops and hands off are set and reviewed by the licensed clinical leadership at Heights Mentoring, including Chief Clinical Officer Deborah Darnell-Drake, LCSW-S (Licensed Clinical Social Worker-Supervisor). That is oversight of the standard, not a clinical supervisory relationship with you. Mentoring stays non-clinical.
Are mentors background checked?
Yes, every one, before any client contact. Given that this work happens inside people’s homes and around their families, that is a floor rather than a selling point, and any provider who cannot answer this question in one sentence should worry you.
Do mentors have lived experience of recovery?
Many do, and it matters, but it is not a substitute for training. Lived experience without skills produces well-meaning advice; skills without lived experience can miss what is really happening. We look for both, and we do not treat someone’s own story as a qualification on its own.
Can we meet the mentor before committing?
Yes, and we encourage it. An introductory meeting costs nothing and tells you more than any biography. For adolescents in particular, that first meeting is often the thing the whole engagement turns on.
Are you hiring?
We hire slowly and deliberately. If you are a certified peer specialist, recovery coach or companion in Houston and this is how you want to work, write to mentoring@heightsbehavioralhealth.com.
READY WHEN YOU ARE
Talk With the People Who Lead the Work.
One honest conversation is the best way to know if we are the right fit.
If this is an emergency, call 911. If you or someone you love is in a mental health crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, available 24/7. Heights Mentoring is a non-clinical recovery mentoring practice and is not emergency or crisis care.
