Sadé Heart of the Hawk Ali

Sadé is the retired Deputy Commissioner of Philadelphia’s Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services.

She is now the President of First Nations, LLC, a behavioral health training and consulting organization in Delaware.

For the past four years, she was a Senior Associate with Altarum in Washington, DC, providing training and technical assistance to Tribal Governments and other providers engaged in SAMHSA’s Access to Recovery (ATR) initiative.

Ms. Ali holds faculty positions at Brown University, Temple University’s College of Health Professions and Drexel University’s School of Public Health. Ms. Ali has traveled the US and Canada extensively providing culturally appropriate recovery management and resilience-promoting training in both the mental health and addictions fields.

She has published her thesis, other scholarly articles, and a textbook on culturally appropriate recovery/resilience services, the ending of health disparities through enhanced access to care, and the impact of inter-generational trauma on the Indigenous peoples of North America. She is one of the co-authors of the Philadelphia Behavioral Health Transformation Practice Guidelines for Recovery and Resilience Oriented Treatment, a framework for the fields of mental health and addictions treatment services that is used worldwide. She recently published Social Healing Words-Using Language to Promote Recovery and Resilience for Individuals, Families and Communities. Ms. Ali has been in recovery and the field of behavioral health services for over 47 years.

Ms. Ali holds a Bachelor of Arts in Counseling Psychology and a Master of Arts in Clinical Psychology. She is First Nations Mi’kmaq from the Sturgeon Clan, the Elder and Medicine Keeper of the East Coast Two Spirit Society and a lifetime member of SAIGE (Society of American Indian Government Employees).