Introducing the RCU Team

Amanda Toal, Training Director, and Trainer 

Amanda joined Recovery Coach University in January 2023 as an Apprentice Trainer and quickly advanced through her ASAP-NYCB Trainer Registry apprenticeship. By September 2023 she stepped fully into her Trainer role and has continued to expand her impact at RCU. Today, Amanda serves as Training Director, supporting facilitator development, quality assurance, and the continued evolution of RCU’s training programs and participant experience.

A New York–based peer professional, advocate, and “warrior woman in recovery,” Amanda brings a powerful blend of lived experience, professional skill, and deep compassion to every training she delivers. She is rooted in the belief that “we not only recover — we soar,” and she strives to help future peer professionals discover their own strengths and voices.

Amanda holds credentials as a Certified Addiction Recovery Coach (CARC), Recovery Coach Professional (RCP), Recovery Coach Facilitator Professional (RCPF), and is a FOR-NY Best Practice Trainer. Outside of RCU, she is an entrepreneur, digital media specialist, and international best-selling author dedicated to amplifying recovery stories and building stronger community supports.

When she’s not facilitating or designing curriculum, Amanda volunteers with local organizations and leads her private practice, where she offers individual, family, and professional recovery coaching rooted in compassion, empowerment, and person-centered care.

Amanda Toal, AAS, CARC, RCP, RCPF

Amanda was such an amazing trainer, her unique teaching really grasped my attention. She was able to connect with each and everyone of us and would pair us w the perfect groups in our breakout sessions. I didn't know what to expect when this course first started but I look forward to working in more sessions with RCU!!

 

- A RCU Participant, 2026 

Erin Pownall Burns, Trainer

Erin joined the RCU Trainer Team in 2021, when RCU needed to expand its Trainer “bench” to accommodate the growing virtual training practice, post-COVID. She is an enthusiastic, hands-on, highly engaging trainer with a lengthy list of lived experiences and expertise credentials that combined make her an asset to the RCU Team and to all who train with her.

Erin is also a community activist and self-proclaimed enthusiast. She runs a series of micro businesses that all focus on community wellness, collaborative artistic expression, and social entrepreneurship. She attended FLCC for human services and went on to Brockport to study substance use disorder and then social work on the graduate level. Though she considers herself a lifelong learner, Erin is primarily a do-er. You can find her speaking, working, training, and being relentless both behind the scenes and in rooms like this.

Erin PownallBurns, MSW, CARC, RCP, RCPF

“Erin cultivates a really great atmosphere that allows us to speak freely and ask questions; this was a great training, thanks so much!”

— K Pineiro, CAPE Dutchess County, Oct. 2023

Justin McNeal, Trainer

A person in long-term recovery, Justin is a Nationally Certified Peer Recovery Specialist and a Certified Peer Support Specialist. Justin is passionate about harm reduction / safe use and eradicating the biases that hurt people who use drugs. He advocates for access to harm reduction services and treating people with respect, compassion and dignity. Justin trained with Jim Wuelfing and Dean LeMire, both pioneers in the Harm Reduction Movement. Justin is a member of the ASAP-NYCB Trainer Registry and is approved to facilitate Harm Reduction Pathway training for Recovery Coach University.

Justin McNeal, NCPRSS, CPRS-FE, CPS

 “Justin was a great facilitator, this course was very helpful”— RCU Participant, August 2025

Lori is a Recovery Coach practitioner; she is a NYCB Certified Addiction Recovery Coach (CARC), a Family Recovery Coach, a Recovery Coach Trainer, and a parent in long term recovery from the effects of loving and living with an adult child who suffered from Opioid Use Disorder (OUD).  Lori lost her son Jonathan to fentanyl poisoning in 2021.

Lori founded Recovery Coach University in 2016 as a result of her personal experience of watching her son suffer from the stigma, persecution and discriminatory practices in treating one with Substance Use Disorder. The practices were so different from other health care conditions and help was very difficult to find. Help for families was practically nonexistent. RCU was one of the first Training Organizations in NYS to focus exclusively on training people and family members with “lived experience” and a desire to help others become educated and skilled in effective and compassionate care based on sound coaching principles and client-centered skills.

She is a designated ‘Best Practice Trainer’ by FOR-NY; NYCB PWI authorized Trainer; ASAP-NYCB approved Trainer, and Trainer Registry Governance Committee Member. She is an approved OASAS professional development Trainer and approved by CCAR to train all CCAR Programs (RCPF). One of Lori’s proudest accomplishments is her membership in the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers (MINT), achieved in 2020.

Lori has coached families and individuals since early 2014, speaks publicly regularly, and advocates across NYS and nationally for improved access to prevention, treatment, harm reduction and community recovery supports. Her mission is to eradicate the stigma and shame of addiction in families, to empower families to achieve their own recovery, to advocate for vitally needed community recovery supports and to help educate the public on harm reduction. She passionately advocates for progressive strategies for addressing and ending the opioid epidemic including by declaring a Public Health Emergency in NYS. Her professional career includes 25 years of executive and management coaching, training, and experiential learning design.

Lori Drescher, Founder, Recovery Coach University (RCU); CARC, RCP, RCPF, Member-MINT (Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers)

RCU has a way of teaching that hits both the heart and the mind, and I’m really grateful I got to be a part of it. This training is going to be a huge asset in how I show up for the people I serve.”— RCU Participant, November, 2025

Rae Kehirl, Trainer

Rae began their journey in the recovery community in October 2019 as a Certified Recovery Peer Advocate (CRPA), where they walked alongside individuals seeking recovery and created safe spaces for healing. In this role, Rae helped bring peer services to a recovery high school, led outreach initiatives, facilitated an LGBTQ+ peer support group, and encouraged wellness through community hikes. They also invested deeply in professional growth by attending national conferences and trainings.

These experiences laid the foundation for Rae’s expanded work as a Recovery Coach Professional/Facilitator (RCP/f) and Certified Addiction Recovery Coach (CARC). Their passion for recovery has taken them beyond local work—most recently serving as an international speaker in India with NAADAC, where they shared knowledge and exchanged ideas on global approaches to recovery.

As a person in sustained recovery, Rae knows firsthand the power of connection, accountability, and safe community. This lived and professional experience is the heart of their private practice, The Journeyers Recovery Coaching & Wellness, where Rae provides compassionate, strengths-based coaching for individuals in recovery, those seeking a path forward, and helping professionals who give so much of themselves to others.

Rae Kehirl, CRPA, CARC, RCP, RCPF

 “Teacher was great and the materials shared were clear and useful. ”— RCU Participant, July, 2025