JAMI BARNEY

Ashley Addiction Treatment

Jami Barney has built her career at the intersection of rigorous data and the human experience of recovery. As research manager at Ashley Addiction Treatment, she led the organization’s research expansion, embedding evidence into daily clinical practice to strengthen patient outcomes and move the field toward precision medicine.

Strategic partnerships formed a central part of that broader effort, establishing Ashley as a national leader. Barney designs the infrastructure that brings precision medicine into behavioral health, equipping clinicians to deliver treatment tailored to the individual patient. Equally important to her is making recovery progress visible to the patients themselves. She points to this as her greatest reward: seeing someone’s hope and motivation return as the organization’s data lets them measure their own progress in concrete terms.

Her influence reaches well beyond the organization that employs her. Each year, Barney mentors for the National Institute on Drug Abuse Entrepreneurial Fellowship Program, guiding cohorts of 10 to 15 innovators across entrepreneurship, science and medicine as they develop new approaches to substance use disorder. Her role centers around testing whether a concept — be it a novel medication or a digital platform — holds up clinically and can realistically be implemented in practice. That work of linking invention to usable care helps prepare future leaders in behavioral health and recovery services.

A deep personal attachment to the community she serves informs that commitment alongside her professional mission. Maryland shaped both her work and her sense of purpose, and she carries an obligation to repay it by improving how substance use disorder is understood and treated. Mentorship, collaboration and partnerships that widen access to evidence-based care are how she meets that obligation, working alongside students, clinicians and national research initiatives to translate scientific findings into meaningful outcomes for individuals and a stronger recovery ecosystem across the state and beyond.

Rigor paired with heart is what sets her apart from her peers. Barney moves easily between engineering the analytic systems behind clinical decisions and sitting with the deeply human realities of recovery, keeping the work anchored in the lives it affects rather than in reports and datasets alone.