A successful career built on serving community

LIVING A LIFE AMBITION: Thanks to exposure to the medical profession when she was young, Deborah M. O’Brien has been focused on helping others all her adult life, especially now as vice president and chief operating officer of The Providence Center. / PBN PHOTO/FRANK MULLIN
LIVING A LIFE AMBITION: Thanks to exposure to the medical profession when she was young, Deborah M. O’Brien has been focused on helping others all her adult life, especially now as vice president and chief operating officer of The Providence Center. / PBN PHOTO/FRANK MULLIN

Deborah M. O’Brien had the good luck of knowing her career choice very early in life.
“My mother was a medical assistant in a pediatrician’s office, and while I was in high school I began working there, too,” she said. “The two doctors – they were brothers –encouraged me to become a nurse. I enjoyed the patient contact, and they were also involved in research, which I found fascinating.”
Today, she’s vice president and chief operations officer at The Providence Center, a nonprofit that provides mental health and addiction-treatment programs all over Rhode Island. Her colleagues there credit her with developing innovative programs, while at the same time maintaining a high level of program quality.
“She has provided day-to-day leadership at an organization that has grown steadily for the past five years to become the largest community mental health center in the state,” said Dale Klatzker, the nonprofit’s president and CEO. “She has developed collaborations with a wide variety of community partners, including Providence Community Health Center, Thundermist Health Center, the Care New England System and various state agencies.”
O’Brien is a lifelong Rhode Islander. After graduating from Lincoln High School, she enrolled in the University of Rhode Island nursing program. During her college years she worked weekends as a nursing assistant at Rhode Island Hospital, and after graduation she became a nurse there.
She later returned to URI for a special program created by the state to help people in that field develop leadership skills. In 1996 she earned a master’s degree in public administration from the university.
She moved into the mental health care field while working at Rhode Island Hospital. “I noticed people felt comfortable in talking to me and confiding things,” she said.
She later moved to South Shore Mental Health Center in Charlestown, where she served as psychiatric-services supervisor and eventually as program manager for the emergency and assessment service team. During her tenure there, the center received its first-ever accreditation from the Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. She helped organize a Professional Staff Organization – a requirement for accreditation – and served as president.
At South Shore, O’Brien also implemented a centralized intake system. It meant clients could call the center, answer a set of questions, make an appointment, and then quickly get in a program. Previous to that, a client might not be aware of all the services available, and some staff members might not have all the client’s information. “It helped increase efficiency,” O’Brien said. “And it helps the client, too.”
In 1995, she moved to The Providence Center, which offers both residential and out-patient programs. She worked there first as director of quality improvement and eventually moved up to her current position. At the center, she worked on another first-ever accreditation process.
O’Brien has helped The Providence Center adopt a whole new treatment approach. The center has made client-centered, recovery-focused care the cornerstone of its clinical philosophy. It marked an about-face from the old-school approach, which viewed those struggling with mental health and addiction issues as victims of disease who would likely never recover, and who were therefore unable to direct their own care.
“It means we believe in treating the whole person, and we believe people can recover from addiction and mental illness,” she said. “The anchor community-recovery centers we’ve created, like the one in Pawtucket, are a good example of this approach. They offer Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings, use of computers, coaching for job interviews and other things, and with a mostly volunteer staff and a few employees.”
The shift meant O’Brien and her staff had to provide training programs for The Providence Center’s 600-plus employees. They also helped put together new brochures, a website, and articles for the employee e-newsletter. As a result of that effort, the center now operates three recovery community centers and Rhode Island’s first high school for students recovering from substance abuse.
Outside the office, O’Brien is an active volunteer. She helps with fundraising efforts for the URI alumni scholarship fund, working with a group that plans the annual Big Chill winter event. And for the past six years she has served on the school’s alumni board, an advisory committee, representing the URI College of Nursing. In addition, she’s been an advocate for plans to build a nursing-education facility in Providence’s Knowledge District, to be run jointly by URI and Rhode Island College.
O’Brien credits her success to many people. “I have a boss here who makes me love coming to work every day, and a lot of great co-workers,” she said. “And my parents raised me to believe I could do anything.”

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