Meet the Team
Our Team is so Excited to Serve the Community!
Each member of The Collective brings unique experience, compassion, and a genuine heart for helping others. We hope you have the opportunity to meet them individually, learn more about their work, and experience the care they bring to our community every day.
Together, we are building a place rooted in people, connection, and service.
Steve Norris
Co-Founder & CEO, Certified Peer Recovery Coach
Steve Norris is the founder of The Recovery Collective, the consulting practice where many of CRC’s program models were first built and proven. His work spans recovery support services, homelessness response, eviction prevention, and community health across Pontiac and Oakland County.
With more than 10 years of frontline experience in the recovery and homelessness field, Steve brings a rare combination of lived, direct-service perspective and systems-level expertise. He serves as a contractor to Oakland County Health and Human Services, supporting the county’s homelessness systems review, and administers Safe Tonight Shelter, CRC’s seasonal emergency shelter program. In its most recent winter season, Safe Tonight served 156 guests and supported 58 transitional housing placements.
Steve is a Certified Peer Recovery Coach and Certified Housing Resource Specialist, a facilitator with the Oakland County Task Force on Poverty & Homelessness, and a longtime partner to county government, community foundations, and faith-based organizations across the region. His approach is grounded in a simple conviction: people closest to the problem, equipped with real resources and real accountability, are the ones who solve it.
Pete Stenger
Co-Founder & CFO, Certified Peer Recovery Coach
Pete builds things that last: companies, systems, and clear pathways for people who want
to lead with purpose. A serial entrepreneur and CPA, he fuses financial strategy with
operational know-how, branding insight, and technical expertise. He’s spent years helping founders and organizations turn raw ideas into real, functioning operations.
His work spans both for-profit and nonprofit formation, governance, and legacy planning, as well as the hands-on realities of business: financial planning, brand identity, IT infrastructure, and the operational engines that keep organizations moving. Pete sees the whole ecosystem of numbers, systems, and people, and knows how to turn it into something strong and sustainable.
Pete’s professional work is deeply informed by his lived experience. With over a decade of sobriety, he is committed to helping others find stability, purpose, and spiritual growth. He volunteers with several recovery and community organizations, offering mentorship, support, and practical guidance to individuals rebuilding their lives. This long-term service
shapes the compassion, clarity, and grounded leadership he brings to every project.
Whether he’s drafting bylaws, designing grantmaking policies, supporting someone in recovery, or helping a founder articulate their brand, Pete’s mission is simple: build
structures that empower leaders today and the next generation tomorrow.
Katie Walker
Co-Founder & COO
A servant leader with more than 25 years of experience, Katie offers deep expertise in operations, crisis and risk management, environmental health and safety (EHS), asset protection, investigations, and organizational leadership across both established enterprises and high-growth startups. She is known for designing and delivering enterprise-wide strategies that safeguard people, assets, and brand integrity while enhancing profitability and operational performance.
Katie has an innate ability to elevate individuals and teams beyond perceived limitations. Her passion for guiding people and organizations through growth, development, success, and failure has been a constant thread throughout both her personal and professional journey, embracing each moment as a catalyst for transformation.
Across her career, Katie has developed safety, security, and risk frameworks from the ground up within national logistics, supply chain, and retail environments. Her approach has accelerated expansion, strengthened organizational resilience, and produced measurable results through proactive risk mitigation rooted in a people-first, purpose-driven mindset. She collaborates seamlessly with executive leaders, cross-functional partners, external agencies, and clients building trust through authenticity, clarity, and decisive action.
Beyond her professional achievements, Katie is deeply committed to service and purpose-centered leadership. Since entering recovery over a decade ago, she has devoted her life to uplifting others, championing second chances, and supporting vulnerable communities. This lived experience has shaped her philosophy, enabling her to connect purpose with impact in meaningful ways.
Today, Katie brings her passion and mission to life through her work with The Collective Group where lived experience, service, and leadership converge. She believes that being part of something greater than oneself is both humbling and empowering. She encourages others to grow with open minds, forge their own paths, take bold action, drive meaningful change, and lead from a place of authenticity, grounded truth, and compassion.
Jonathon Cash
Co-Founder & CMO
Jonathon’s journey began in the world of dance, where he learned how discipline, expression, and collaboration bring people together. Teaching and performing shaped his ability to read an audience, tell a story, and move people to act, the same instincts that define a strong marketing leader.
His career carried him from performing aboard cruise ships to managing a dance company and recruiting for the visual and performing arts. Alongside this, he built a foundation in hospitality that sharpened his skills in customer experience, operations, and people-centered service. He later expanded into digital creativity, developing expertise in website creation, digital marketing, and photography, helping individuals and small businesses build meaningful online identities and tell their stories with clarity.
What sets Jonathon apart is the integration of creative insight, operational experience, and community-focused leadership. He is strategic yet artistic, structured yet empathetic, pairing bold creative vision with the discipline to execute and scale.
These are the qualities that make Jonathon the right choice as our Chief Marketing Officer. He understands audiences because he has spent his career connecting with them, on stage, in hospitality, and online. As CMO, that same philosophy will shape how The Collective Group tells its story, builds its brand, and deepens its relationships with the communities it serves.
Mario Azzi, Esq.
Housing Stability Attourney & In-House Counsel
Mario brings more than a decade of experience fighting to keep families in their homes. As Supervising Attorney for the Metro Eviction Prevention Team at Lakeshore Legal Aid, he and his team provided eviction prevention services in over 2,500 cases a year across Oakland, Wayne, and Macomb counties. He helped pioneer eviction diversion programs, built a biweekly housing clinic right here in Pontiac, and served as counsel in a landmark case that restored over $54 million in wrongfully withheld food assistance to more than 17,000 Michigan residents.
Now he is bringing that experience home to the Collective, where he will lead our housing stability and eviction prevention work from our Community Resource Center.
Housing is the foundation of recovery, stability, and hope. With Mario on our team, we are one step closer to making sure no one in our community faces the loss of their home alone.
Welcome, Mario. We are honored to build this with you.
Thomas Hunter
Lead Peer Recovery Coach
Thomas brings compassion, lived experience, and a genuine commitment to walking alongside individuals as they build a recovery pathway that works for them. His approach is rooted in dignity, connection, and the belief that every person deserves to feel supported, heard, and hopeful.
We are grateful to have Thomas joining our mission and helping us continue to build a stronger recovery community in Pontiac.
April Boucké, MT-BC
Baord-Certified Music Therapist
April is a Board-Certified Music Therapist who creates spaces where people can reconnect with themselves, and with one another through music. She brings clinical experience across behavioral health, special education, and community settings, along with a strengths-based, trauma-informed approach grounded in a simple belief: every person has an innate capacity for growth, healing, and authentic connection.
Whether she’s leading therapeutic drumming, songwriting, lyric discussion, or relaxation experiences, April uses music intentionally to support emotional regulation, self-expression, resilience, and meaningful engagement.
For April, recovery isn’t just about overcoming challenges, it’s about rediscovering identity, purpose, creativity, and connection. Music isn’t simply something we enjoy; it’s a powerful therapeutic tool that fosters hope, belonging, and lasting personal growth.
We’re honored to have her heart, her skill, and her rhythm on this team. Welcome, April!