About the recovering human

Hi, I'm Rebecca Grey.

I spent more than 20 years climbing the corporate ladder, from a customer service job at 16 to a Vice President of DEI and ESG, the person responsible for a company's commitments on diversity and sustainability. I did everything "right." On paper, I'd made it and was contributing to a better world. But it never delivered the fulfillment or impact the American Dream and "conscious" capitalism had promised.

At first, I used alcohol to cope but hit my rock bottom. In 2021, I took medical leave and entered treatment. Recovery gave me tools that changed everything: how to sit with discomfort, regulate through chaos, and hold the line on my values. It also showed me that work had become its own kind of addiction, and that staying well meant building a healthier relationship with it.

For a while, aligning my career with my values and applying recovery tools to work was enough. Then in 2025 the ground shifted. As commitments to DEI and civil rights were rolled back amid growing economic uncertainty and sociopolitical instability, I realized that my individual recovery was not enough, and that efforts to lead change from inside corporate America were incomplete.

I saw that my participation was quietly reinforcing the systems I was trying to reform. I had spent years working to change who was represented within systems of power. I was only beginning to question why that power was so concentrated in the first place, and how ownership of capital becomes political, cultural, and institutional influence. Recovery had given me the capacity to face that without looking away. It also gave me a much clearer sense of where to aim what I knew.

I stepped away to build The Recovering Human, a space that bridges individual healing and collective change. My goal is to help others who are questioning the systems around them sit with what they're seeing, free themselves mentally and emotionally, and build the knowledge to take action. Not to cope better inside what exists, but to build something else.

I don't have all the answers. But I believe that as a collective equipped with the right capacities and knowledge, we do.

My Credentials

• Five years of personal recovery.

• Certified coach, trained in person-centered theory, reflective inquiry, and evidence-based tools from positive psychology.

• Two decades in corporate America, leading culture, DEI, and social-impact initiatives at an executive level.

• Trusted partner to C-suite leaders in Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 companies navigating high-stakes decisions under pressure.

• Former journalist.