Celebrating Our 2025 Awards of Excellence Winners

The National Council for Mental Wellbeing is about members, and NatCon25 was about celebrating our members and the people who work at those organizations.

People like Topher Hansen, Virna Little, Anthony Kohl and Miracle Akortha (pictured).

Those four wonderful members of the National Council were our 2025 Awards of Excellence recipients, and I was honored to recognize their achievements during NatCon25 in Philadelphia.

If you weren’t able to attend NatCon, you may not know about the great things these four people have achieved throughout their stellar careers, so I want to share their stories with you.

I’ll start with Hansen and Little, who each received our Lifetime Achievement Award.

Topher Hansen is the president and CEO of CenterPointe, a behavioral health organization in Lincoln, Nebraska. He began his career as a volunteer at the Drug Crisis Center in 1975 and has been instrumental in shaping Nebraska’s behavioral health policies. Hansen, who plans to retire in July, has served as the CEO at CenterPointe since 2000 and has served three terms as president of the Nebraska Association of Behavioral Health Organizations. Hansen also has served on the National Council Board of Directors.

“When you called me to tell me I had been selected to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award, it was shocking. First, it implies I’ve lived a lifetime, because you only get one of these, right? Truly it was shocking, as I didn’t know I had been nominated, so it really came out of nowhere. It is momentous when any organization gives this kind of recognition, but this comes from the premier organization in the mental health and substance use space,” Hansen said. “This means the world to me. My biggest driver is still the passion in my heart that I found 50 years ago, but this is icing on the cake.”

Dr. Virna Little is the cofounder and advisor of Concert Health and the cofounder and COO of Zero Overdose. With extensive experience integrating primary care and behavioral health, Dr. Little has previously led the Center for Innovation in Mental Health at the City University of New York and served as sr. vice president of a large Federally Qualified Health Center network. She is also a key figure on national committees and provides expert consultation on depression care and the Collaborative Care Model.

“Advocating for policy changes has been a key focus of my career,” Dr. Little said. Her efforts have contributed to the implementation of the Collaborative Care Model across 34 states, where thousands of health care providers have integrated behavioral health services into primary care.

The next two spectacular recipients were Kohl and Akortha, who each received our Peer Specialist of the Year Award.

Anthony Kohl, a New York state certified peer, has drawn on his personal experience to guide and support people on their recovery journeys. Based in the Bronx, New York, he has dedicated over a decade to peer work and holds certifications as a recovery coach, certified recovery peer advocate and certified peer specialist. He was the first individual in New York state to serve as a veterans-supported recovery peer.

“This recognition is amazing,” Kohl said. “It has opened doors and opportunities I didn’t know existed. I have been meeting new people and telling my story. I have made many new contacts. I am still on cloud nine.”

Kohl also said the recognition helps raise awareness about the need for more peer support specialists.

“The more peer support specialists there are, the more accurate information that is shared. It lowers the barrier to care. Information helps more people, and certified peers help connect people to services that work and resources that help, because they have used them,” he said.

Miracle Akortha, a peer support supervisor at the Center for Health Care Services in San Antonio, Texas, has more than 12 years of experience in the field. Since June 2023, she has led a team that uses lived experience to provide recovery assistance to individuals facing mental health and substance use challenges. Akortha holds certifications as a peer support supervisor, mental health peer support specialist and certified family partner.

“As a peer support supervisor, I share my story in what I call motivating sound bites,” she said. “This allows me to relate with my staff and encourage them through the challenges that they may be having. I too started at what is regarded as entry level, and I too still have frustrations within the same unit I work in. Change is a slow burn, and I have utilized my lived experience both professionally and personally.”

The staff at National Council member organizations don’t do their work for the recognition, so it feels good to give them the credit they deserve.

“When we sign on to live in a community, we sign up to pitch in together to make it work for everyone,” Hansen said. “Some will need a little more, and stuff happens that requires unexpected assistance, but communities step up to those causes. If each of us adopts the ethic to ‘leave your campground better than how you found it,’ we’ll all find help when we need it. Our world is very complex, and pieces of it add to the mental health and substance use problems we see, but so too does the beauty of the world help us find health and wellbeing.”

Congratulations to all our 2025 Awards of Excellence winners. I am honored to support your work.