Danny Kochanowski (he/they) is a politicized trauma healer, peer supporter, community organizer, and person with lived experience. He began peer support work in 2015 with the Wildflower Alliance, working in psychiatric hospitals, peer-run community drop in spaces, and a peer-run respite home. He continued this work in Maine in 2017, managing a drop-in center for two years before moving to a broader leadership role, focusing on multidisciplinary peer support integration with a focus on fidelity. During this time, he supported peer supporters and program managers alike on multidisciplinary case management teams and inpatient units, and championed department-wide efforts on antiracism, gender-affirming care, pay equity, and labor justice. Danny is a co-author of the manual for peer support integration that is the foundation for the training offered through PTI. They received their MSW in 2020 with a focus on the intersection of policy work and micro level trauma healing. They currently work at a group practice in Seattle from an eclectic perspective of Internal Family Systems, abolitionist theory, and harm reduction philosophies. Danny has a passion for supporting services and community systems that center individual autonomy, and ensure those with lived experience have substantive inclusion in programmatic and policy decisions.
