Adam Wehler
Adam Wehler joins Sustained as Co-Founder and Co-Director, bringing both professional experience and a personal commitment to mental health and wellness. As a certified Mental Health First Aider (Adult & Youth) and co-chair of ILTA’s Mental Health and Wellness group, Adam believes that with the right tools, anyone can help someone through a mental health crisis.
Adam’s passion for mental health advocacy is rooted in his own journey, having faced periods of extreme loneliness and suicidal thoughts. These experiences have given him first-hand understanding of the challenges many people face. Through therapy and his own personal work, it reinforced his belief that anyone can get better with access to the correct support and caring individuals.
With more than two decades in high-pressure law firm environments, Adam has seen how essential mental wellness is to both personal and professional success. He has developed and led initiatives focused on mental health, resilience, and reducing stigma within legal and professional communities. Adam regularly collaborates with industry leaders, HR teams, wellness committees, and broader organizations to promote open conversations and provide actionable resources.
Adam is dedicated to creating environments where people feel seen, supported, and empowered—and to making mental wellness a priority for everyone.
Alicia Hawley
Alicia Hawley is an Innovation Award-winning Big Law litigator who specializes in eDiscovery and Artificial Intelligence and the Co-Founder and Co-Director of Sustained. She has also lived with depression and anxiety since she was 11 and has been in remission from the disease of alcohol addiction since 2018.
Before Alicia got sober, she knew that once she did, she would commit to working hard to help take the stigma out of mental health and addiction in the workplace, particularly the legal industry. With substance abuse rates six times higher than the general population but with a perceived heightened stigma and shame associated with those struggles, lawyers and legal professionals are ripe for mental health and wellbeing awareness, advocacy, and resources. ​
​
Drawing on her personal experience, Alicia speaks regularly at conferences and directly to law firms and corporations about navigating the high pressure and stressful legal industry, prioritizing mental health and wellness, and her journey through alcohol addiction, depression and anxiety, and now sobriety. ​
​
Creating and building Sustained is the realization of a decades-long dream to provide professionals with a safe space to share and resources to prioritize mental health and well-being, and to perhaps even create a wellness movement where professionals are able to have high levels of job performance without sacrificing their mental health and well-being.​
​
Dealing with mental health issues can be very isolating and lonely –- you are not alone.