Rick Heizer

Executive Director, Owner

Evoke Therapy Programs

TBD

Steering Committee Member

The Basics

Company Name: Evoke Therapy Programs
Location: Bend, OR and Santa Clara, UT
Founded: 2004
Full-Time Employees: 140
Products: Wilderness Therapy
Social: Website Instagram Facebook
Claim to Fame: Clinical Sophistication

The Culture

Demographics: 52% Male, 48% Female, 2% Transgender //  92% White, 1% Black, 2% Latinx, 2% Asian-American, 2% Biracial
The best thing about working at Evoke is: our culture of camaraderie, tight knit community with a lot of support, and our employees’ and leaderships’ willingness to learn and grow, and do something new, even when it’s uncomfortable.
When we’re not working, we’re: adventuring, climbing, biking, hiking, paddling, and learning.
What we’re reading: Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome by Dr. Joy Degruy
What we’re listening to: Drama of the Gifted Child, Invisibilia, and our own podcasts :)

If they made a movie about our workplace, it would be called:   Twister, because it’s one of Lindsey’s top two movies, and it’s like our workplace because we’re always driving around in big trucks, finding new ways to get in front of storms, understand them, and help individuals and families learn how to better prepare and confront them.
Inclusion in the outdoors matters because:  Wilderness therapy has a profound impact on people’s lives and we want to provide this resource for a greater population. One of the safest spaces we use is the wilderness because it does not judge, manipulate, discriminate, etc. It is where we all came from and bringing ourselves back to being grounded to the wilderness is crucial for understanding ourselves and what it means to be human without the additional baggage the front country puts on us. Inclusion in the outdoors, and through our eyes, wilderness therapy, matters because the lands we use has significant roots to people of color, Native Americans, Africans, etc. And we believe the therapeutic grounding that happens in the outdoors and through our program is a sacred experience that needs to honors this history.

Five years down the line, it’s our hope that: We will be fully covered by insurance and serving a greater range of socio-economic clients, have a greater diversity of field staff, therapists and managers, and as a community become more aware of how the impact of anti-racism work is important to how we work with clients of color and from different racial backgrounds. We strive to see greater authentic interracial relationships built in the field of mental health.