Yanika Lewis has a career history in Behavioral Health. She started her career as a therapeutic recreation specialist at River Park Hospital in Huntington, WV serving the acute adolescent and pediatric units in 2012. Once she moved back to her hometown of Charles Town, WV, she continued working with adolescents on juvenile probation. She helped restructure the Jefferson County Youth Reporting Center (YRC) community diversion program as the lead Correctional Counselor alongside the program director. Working with the underserved and “forgotten” children is a passion of hers. In her efforts to help these children find their way out of the correctional system and grow into young adults, she was awarded YRC Employee of Year in 2015. This covered the entire state of West Virginia.
She then became a certified alcohol and drug counselor (CADC) in the state of Virginia. She worked with many people who use drugs, leading adult intensive outpatient and release prevention groups. She continued to do individual counseling sessions and treatment plans with adolescents suffering from SUD. Eventually, this path led her to JBS International as a Technical Assistance Manager for RCORP-TA. Her passion to help other people will always remain, but she's now moved into a Project Management/Quality Assurance role on this project to make sure the team is helping grantees fill the gaps and needs in their communities.