Greg Johnson
Board President
Executive Chairman of the Board Director Franklin Resources, Inc. San Mateo, California, United States Greg Johnson is Executive Chairman and Chairman of the Board of Franklin Resources, Inc.
Mr. Johnson was elected Co-CEO of Franklin Resources in 2004 and served as the company’s CEO beginning in 2005 until February 2020. Under his tenure as CEO, Franklin Templeton became one of the most globally recognized firms in the asset management industry. In 2020, Mr. Johnson became Executive Chairman. Mr. Johnson earned a B.S. in accounting and business administration in 1983 from Washington and Lee University, and his Certified Public Accountant (CPA) certificate in 1985. He is a board member and past chairman of the Investment Company Institute’s Board of Governors.
William Ward Carey
Founder & Board of Directors Vice President
Ward is a native New Yorker living in California for the past 25 years. Ward has spent his working career helping growth companies succeed and investors profit at the same time. Married with three boys in high school Ward got sober in his early twenties and attributes everything he has in his life today to sober living. Helping people recover from addiction is one of the most important aspects of recovery and something Ward enjoys the most about his life.
Bucky Isaacson
Founder and Board Advisor
Bucky is a partner and co-founder of CTAExpo LLC. As President and Founder of Future Funding Consultants and Commodity Investment Consultants, he has been actively engaged in the Financial and Alternative Industry since 1975.
He was the first recipient of The Donchian Award for his contributions to the Managed Futures Industry. He has published articles or been written up in numerous publications. These include the Wall Street Journal, Money Magazine, Barrons, Emerging Markets and Who’s Who In The World.
In his role as a consultant or advisor, Bucky has worked with several international companies. These include Beechtree Capital Management, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Attalus Capital, Brim Investment Management, Mitsubishi Futures, Sunclear Energy, HRJ Capital, ICD, Interalliance USA, AC Private Equity Partners and Woori Investment and Securities.
Marcelle Costello
Board Secretary
Marcelle Costello is interested in the risk factors for the disease of Addiction, the language used around Addiction, and how the public discourse on Addiction compares with that of other diseases including Cancer, Heart Disease, Asthma, and Type 2 Diabetes. She is researching a theory about how communication of Addiction risk factors might be approached through Actuarial Science and synthesized into a private, informational app.
Marcelle believes understanding her family’s risk factors for Addiction greatly informed her decisions about how hard to fight the disease when its symptoms showed up in her home. Like some forms of Cancer, early detection can be a gift of time and she “did not take a wait and see attitude but instead chose and all-out assault, seeking every doctor, expert and resource I could – just like we’d received a diagnosis of an aggressive Cancer. Understanding Addiction is a disease with risk factors — and not some sort of moral failing — is the imperative first step.”
Marcelle is working with AES Scientific Advisory Board Member, Dr. Carlton Erickson on the second edition of his book The Science of Addiction: From Neurobiology to Treatment, to be published in March 2018. Marcelle has a B.A. in English and a B.A. in Media Studies from the University of California, Berkeley.
Bert Bower
Board Treasurer
Bert Bower is the founder and CEO of Teachers’ Curriculum Institute (TCI), a K-12 publishing company created by teachers, for teachers. TCI creates classroom experiences that allow students of all abilities and learning styles to succeed. Bert has experienced the classroom from all angles. Beginning as a classroom aide, he then taught social studies for eight years, and finally earned a PhD in Curriculum and Teacher Education from Stanford University.
David Sheff
Board Member
David Sheff is the author of Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction, Clean, The Buddhist on Death Row and other books. David is the founder of the Beautiful Boy Fund, devoted to supporting quality, evidence-based treatment for substance-use disorders and research to further the field of addiction medicine. Beautiful Boy, a number-one New York Times bestseller, was based on his article, “My Addicted Son,” which appeared in the New York Times Magazine and won a special award from the American Psychological Association for “outstanding contribution to the understanding of addiction.” In 2009, David was named to the Time 100, Time Magazine’s list of the World’s Most Influential People. A feature film adaptation of “Beautiful Boy” was produced by Amazon Studios and Plan B Entertainment and starred Steve Carell and Timothee Chalamet.
David has been a featured speaker about substance-use disorders and mental illness at the United Nations and many high schools and colleges, addiction and mental-health conferences and community events throughout the United States and Canada. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley. He lives with his family in Northern California.
Charles R. Johnson
Board Member
Charles R. Johnson, Wealth Director, is responsible for developing investment and trust relationships with families and organizations. He works closely with the Trust and Tax planning group to help clients determine optimal asset allocation and transfer strategies. Before joining Fiduciary Trust, he worked for Rockefeller Capital Management, an independent financial services firm offering global family office, asset management, and strategic advisory services to ultra high net worth families, institutions, and corporations.
Elena Chartoff, PH.D.
Board Member
Elena H. Chartoff, PhD, is an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of the Neurobiology of Motivated Behavior Laboratory at McLean Hospital. She is interested in the neurobiological mechanisms that connect depression and anxiety with drug addiction. The work in her laboratory has broad implications for understanding basic brain mechanisms that control mood and motivated behavior.
Dr. Chartoff’s Neurobiology of Motivated Behavior Laboratory, founded in 2009, investigates the molecular, biochemical, and cellular mechanisms underlying drug dependence and withdrawal using animal behavioral models with high relevance to the human condition. The lab includes both females and males in their studies because there is striking evidence, both clinically and preclinically, for sex differences in every facet of the addiction cycle.
Dr. Chartoff is interested in how chronic exposure to drugs of abuse changes the brain at molecular and cellular levels such that drug withdrawal elicits a protracted constellation of negative affective signs. These include depressive- and anxiety-like signs as well as an increased sensitivity to stress and drug-associated cues, all of which work in concert to increase the likelihood of relapse. The lab concentrates on specific brain systems because their neural circuits are essential for affect and motivated behavior and become “hijacked” by repeated drug exposure.
The research focuses on the molecular and behavioral correlates of stress-like and depressive-like states that contribute to the acquisition and maintenance of addictive behavior as well as to craving and relapse during periods of withdrawal. The mesolimbic dopamine system and the extended amygdala play important roles in both the rewarding and aversive effects of drugs of abuse. Within this context, there are two primary lines of research in the lab, sex differences in addiction and the role of kappa-opioid receptors in cocaine withdrawal.
Scientific Advisory Board
Dr. Carlton K. Erickson
Director of the Addiction Science Research and Education Center in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Texas at Austin. Book author of The Science of Addiction: From Neurobiology to Treatment
Dr. Erickson is the associate dean for research and Graduate Studies, distinguished professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology, and director of the Addiction Science Research and Education Center in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Texas at Austin. His many publications include The Science of Addiction: From Neurobiology to Treatment.
Dr. Kevin McCauley
Director of Program Services at New Roads Treatment Center and Writer/Director at Pleasure Unwoven (DVD)
Kevin McCauley is a graduate of the Medical College of Pennsylvania. After completion of medical school, he joined the Navy and became a Naval Flight Surgeon. After earning his wings at Pensacola, Florida he was assigned to a Marine helicopter squadron (The Red Lions). Later he was transferred to Marine F/A-18 Hornet squadron (Sharpshooters). While working as a flight surgeon he treated pilots with alcohol and drug problems. As a physician, he advocates strongly for the rights of addicts as patients.
Dr. Laura Roberts
Serves as Chairman and the Katharine Dexter McCormick and Stanley McCormick Memorial Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
Dr. Roberts is an internationally recognized scholar in bioethics, psychiatry, medicine, and medical education, and is identified as a foremost psychiatric ethicist in the United States.
Read More ⧉
In Loving Memory of
Our Founders
Charles E. Johnson
Addiction Education Society Founder
Addiction Education Society was founded by Chuck Johnson in 2014. He envisioned a non-profit organization that would advance the knowledge that addiction is a disease and provide information and resources on issues relating to substance addiction to adolescences.
“Knowing what I know now about the disease, I really wish I could reach back in time 45 long years ago and talk to myself in a way I could than understand and internalize, because when I was young, I though I knew everything, I thought I was invisible. “
Chuck’s passion for a future free from addiction led AES to develop two very popular prevention curricula. As of today, AES has educated over 16,000 students throughout the peninsula, in 21 schools, and over 125 teachers trained. Addiction Education Society is proud to be a part of Chuck Johnson’s profound legacy to this world.
𐠒 Charles passed away on September 21, 2021.
Dr. Alexander Stalcup
Neuroscience of Addiction Program Founder
Dr. Alexander Stalcup, a graduate of UCSF Medical School & Whittier College, was the key contributor to the Neuroscience of Addiction program, the first and flagship curriculum of the Addiction Education Society. He was a national expert on drug abuse & addiction, board certified in pediatrics and addiction medicine, a pioneer in the medical model of addiction, and helped thousands of people and their families overcome addiction. We owe a great deal to the knowledge and expertise that Dr. Stalcup brought to AES, but it was his kind-heartedness and willingness to work with the students that made him such a fine example of human nature.
𐠒 Dr. Stalcup passed away in summer of 2022.
All of us at Addiction Education Society mourn the passing of our beloved founders; we unite in hopes of building a better world by honoring their work and legacy.