08/24/2025
We are pleased to announce our new Director of Business development, Brian Collaer. Brian has been working in the mental health field since 2017 and has experience in the young adult, acute psychiatric, adolescent, and general populations. He has held most non-clinical positions within the behavioral health context, from overnight staff through various leadership/director-level roles. He is passionate about the relationships we build in our work—with our clients, their loved ones, and with each other. He has an undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Utah and is currently working toward an MBA at Washington University in St Louis. He considers working in the field of mental health to be a vocation, rather than a “job,” and Brian is glad to be joining a team of compassionate, like-minded professionals at Acqua Recovery.
Brian has been continuously sober since March of 2016, is an active member of the recovery community, and spends much of his spare time mentoring others who want what we have and are willing to work for it. He considers this to be an avocation, which he does both for fun and for free—fully separate and distinct from his professional endeavors. He believes that gratitude is an action, rather than a feeling; that we show our gratitude best through love and service to our fellows.
Brian is happily married to his wife Emily, who is in every way his better. They have a daughter who manages to be both opinionated and sensitive at the tender age of 1 (a mystery her parents have yet to unravel). They have two idiot dogs whom they love very much. In his spare time, he futzes around with vintage Gibson guitars, collects pretentious LPs, and reads either literary fiction (e.g. Melville, Hemingway, Dostoevsky) or esoteric spiritual claptrap (Merton, de Mello, Jung). His wife helpfully suggests that he is “insufferable” to talk to about such things.
