Mary Kay is an Alabama native, having been in nursing since 1973. She has a BA degree in Community Health Education and a Masters in Public Health. She entered the field of addiction medicine in 1988 in Macon, Georgia and began doing health professional peer support groups there. When she moved back to Alabama, she worked in everything from nursing administration for adult and adolescent CD to psych. Most of the time she has been able to work with health professional treatment in some capacity - from marketing and education to group work and clinical program direction/design. She spent three years as a casemanager for the ANNA program, which is a non-disciplinary program for chemically dependent nurses in Alabama. Mary Kay is also active in the Survivors of Incest Anonymous fellowship, and she attends a group weekly. She has a home group and a sponsor in AA, and feels very strongly about service work, independent of her professional work. Mary Kay is single and she has three children, ages 20, 18 and 15. She believes there is a need for INA and says she is grateful to have found this fellowship.

Barbara became a nurse at the age of 44 years old. She has worked primarily in addictions. She states she started getting sober in 1989 and has not found a reason to pick up again since going to her first meeting. Barbara is active in a recovering nurses' group in the Albany area and is the Chairperson for the Professional Assistance Program for the NYS education department. Barbara is willing to help anyone with getting to meetings, etc.

Pat earned a Diploma in nursing in 1955. She worked in the operating room for several years and took time off to have three sons. They are now all grown up and married. After beginning a recovery from dependence on alcohol and tranquilizers, Pat returned to school and earned a Masters Degree in Social Work. She worked in the field of addictive disease, both in program design and administration and as a clinician. Pat remained active in nursing through her work in trying to help other addicted nurses. She helped design and implement the Kansas Nurses Assistance Program which has been operating since 1983. At the national level she was Chairperson for the National Nurses Society on Addictions Impaired Nurse Committee. (All of these names have changed!) It was through that position that she began having contact with other recovering nurses across the country and, in 1988, she and other nurses began INA. Pat has been retired for almost three years and divides her time between her home in Lawrence, Kansas and the beautiful mountains of Estes Park, Colorado.