IPS: Annual Meeting

Stop by the table outside the main ballroom to let the organizers know you've arrived for the day and make your name tag.

Food and beverages will not be provided by the organizers of this meeting. Meeting attendees should plan to bring their own snacks and beverages or purchase them on-site at dining areas in the Memorial Student Union.

Wisconsin IPS is a collaboration of the Department of Health Services, the Department of Workforce Development, and UW-Madison.

Leadership from the Department of Health Services and Department of Workforce Development will welcome meeting attendees with IPS updates from both agencies.

Gynger Steele
Administrator
Division of Care and Treatment Services
Department of Health Services

Gynger Steele provides overall direction to the 13 work units of the Division of Care and Treatment Services, including the Bureau of Prevention Treatment and Recovery, which supports the application of the IPS model and many other community services.

Meredith Dressel
Administrator
Division of Vocational Rehabilitation
Department of Workforce Development

Meredith Dressel oversees the division that serves as Wisconsin's lead agency for providing employment services for individuals with disabilities.

Advocating for dignity
Speaker: Helen Boyd

Helen Boyd will use her unique lens as an advocate, speaker, and professor to help the audience explore what “zero exclusion” means. How can we honor and include people from all backgrounds, even the ones we don’t understand? How do we bridge gaps between people we work with and people in the community? How do we get comfortable walking alongside people on their unique journeys, through both challenges and triumphs? The goal is to help the audience embrace a better understanding of identity and strengthen our work with the people we support.

Participants will:

• Deepen understanding and application of the principle of “zero exclusion.”
• Learn about and appreciate the broader and often invisible spectrum of human identity.
• Understand how to advocate for full inclusion of all people.

Helen Boyd is a lecturer in gender studies at Lawrence University. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in English and master’s in writing from City College of New York. She is a prolific writer with many essays published in anthologies, journals, and magazines and is the author of two books. Both portray an honest account of her relationship with a transgender partner.

Food and beverages will not be provided by the organizers of this meeting. Meeting attendees should plan to bring their own snacks and beverages or purchase them on-site at dining areas in the Memorial Student Union.

Join the IPS Wisconsin team in recognizing the recipients of the 2026 IPS awards.

Awards will be handed out in five categories.

Know an individual or organization who should be recognized? Nominate them. Submit an award nomination. The deadline to submit a nomination is August 28, 2026.

IPS Employer Award
This award recognizes an employer working with an IPS site committed to collaboration with IPS, inclusion, and recovery in the workplace.

BEES (Be an Expert Employment Specialist) Award
This award recognizes an IPS employment specialist committed to the principles of IPS, engaging with job seekers, collaborating with other professionals, and advocating for employment and education goals.

IPS Collaboration Award
This award recognizes collaboration among vocational agencies, the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation (DVR), and county treatment teams demonstrating commitment to team integration, zero exclusion, and supporting the employment and education goals of shared job seekers.

Trailblazer Award
This award recognizes a vocational or behavioral health agency committed to making a significant change or transformation that led to improving the quality of services supporting the education and employment goals of job seekers.

IPS Champion Award
This award recognizes an individual committed to the principles of IPS and demonstrating a focus on quality improvement and implementation of IPS. This award is for a person in a leadership role who champions IPS in their agency.

Food and beverages will not be provided by the organizers of this meeting. Meeting attendees should plan to bring their own snacks and beverages or purchase them on-site at dining areas in the Memorial Student Union.

Select one of these sessions to attend.

1A - Speak to the speaker
Speaker: Helen Boyd

This session is an informal conversation with the keynote speaker on the intersection of identity and employment and the role of the support system.

Participants will:

• Gain clarity on components of the keynote.
• Apply lessons from the keynote to personal practice as service providers.

Helen Boyd is a lecturer in gender studies at Lawrence University. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in English and master’s in writing from City College of New York. She is a prolific writer with many essays published in anthologies, journals, and magazines and is the author of two books. Both portray an honest account of her relationship with a transgender partner.

1B - Leveraging Job Seeker Networks
Speaker: Andrzej Walz-Chojnacki

This session focuses on how to capitalize on the connections job seekers have in their community and strategies for expanding networks when necessary.

Participants will:

• Understand the rationale for using a job seeker's network.
• Be able to assess job seeker's existing network.
• Learn how to expand network connections.

Andrzej Walz-Chojnacki has experience conducting community-based assessments; providing on-the-job supports, job development, benefits counseling, quality assurance and improvement; and providing training. He promotes services and policies designed to expand and improve competitive, integrated employment as the supported employment program and policy analyst for the Department of Workforce Development's Division of Vocational Rehabilitation.

1C - Framework for the realities of IPS work
Speaker: Jen Park-Mroch, Ph.D.

This session is built for the realities of IPS work: long-term relationships, community-based support, and job seekers who sometimes hit a crisis. Through small-group scenarios, pair-shares, and real dilemmas from the field, participants will sharpen a simple framework for responding when someone is in distress and trade practical strategies for holding boundaries that protect both your job seekers' recovery and your own sustainability. Come ready to share, problem-solve, and walk out with one commitment you can use tomorrow. Bring your experience; you're the curriculum.

Participants will:

• Learn how to respond when a client may be in a mental health crisis.
• Name what is and is not the employment specialist's role in a crisis and hand off well.
• Identify the boundary flashpoints that show up in community-based IPS work.
• Practice language for holding a boundary in a way that supports recovery and protects their own sustainability.
• Leave with one concrete boundary commitment.

Jen Park-Mroch Ph.D. is the project director for the Great Lakes ROTA-RC and the primary investigator for the Recovery Friendly Workplaces initiative in Marinette County. She works for the UW-Madison, Division of Extension Health & Well-Being Institute as a health and well-being state specialist.

Stop by the table outside the main ballroom to let the organizers know you've arrived for the day and make your name tag.

Food and beverages will not be provided by the organizers of this meeting. Meeting attendees should plan to bring their own snacks and beverages or purchase them on-site at dining areas in the Memorial Student Union.

This is time for the leaders of the staff who directly work on applying and supporting the IPS model in Wisconsin to share updates.

Sarah Johnson
Manager
Prevention Intervention and Recovery Services Section
Bureau of Prevention Treatment and Recovery
Division of Care and Treatment Services
Wisconsin Department of Health Services

Karla Opatz
Manager
Program Development Section
Bureau of Management Services
Division of Vocational Rehabilitation
Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development

A panel of IPS providers, including an employment specialist, a Division of Vocational Rehabilitation counselor or specialist, a clinical team member discuss and take questions on how they work in tandem to best support employment goals while meeting program specific requirements.

Food and beverages will not be provided by the organizers of this meeting. Meeting attendees should plan to bring their own snacks and beverages or purchase them on-site at dining areas in the Memorial Student Union.

Select one of these sessions to attend.

2A - Integrating Crisis Planning into Individual Placement and Support (IPS): Supporting Recovery and Employment Goals
Speaker: Brianne Zaborowske

This session explores how IPS practitioners can incorporate proactive, person-centered crisis planning into employment services to promote recovery, support symptom stability, and sustain employment.

Participants will:

• Examine the purpose of crisis planning and how it aligns with the recovery-oriented principles of IPS and supports sustained employment outcomes.
• Explore approaches for adapting and integrating crisis plans into the work setting and how it can be used to support individuals at work.
• Strengthen skills for coordinating with interdisciplinary teams to provide consistent and applicable crisis support to persons in all aspects of their life, including work.

Brianne Zaborowske is a licensed clinical social worker. She is the lead crisis services coordinator for the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. She has over 20 years of experience in the broader field of behavioral health having practiced in outpatient, community based, and inpatient settings, including more than a dozen years working crisis services.

2B - REALiving®
Speaker: Gina Krueger

This session is an overview of REALiving®, a company dedicated to helping individuals and organizations be their best. REALiving offers services and tools that foster personal and professional growth.

Participants will:

• Understand why being true to themselves and others is the foundation for meaningful connections, personal fulfillment, and professional success.
• Acquire knowledge of the skills, confidence, and support they need to be well and thrive.

Gina Krueger is the director of REALiving®. She is passionate about helping people learn how to be their best while bringing a great sense of humor to sessions to help enhance learning.

2C - Best practices for cross system collaboration
Speakers: Sara Ruckman and Andrzej Walz-Chojnacki

This session focuses on best practices for collaboration between vocational rehabilitation, mental health treatment teams, and IPS sites. As time allows, topics of conversation may include referral, supports after hire, reporting and funding. Participants should come with their experiences working with vocational rehabilitation, curiosity about how agencies collaborate with vocational rehabilitation, and suggestions for improved collaboration.

Participants will:

• Learn how to center job seeker preferences
• Learn communication strategies to apply in their work.
• Learn how to navigate discrepancies in their work.

Sara Ruckman is a vocational rehabilitation counselor with the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development covering Clark, Chippewa, and Eau Claire counties. She has worked in vocational rehabilitation for four years. Previously, she worked as a career counselor, a program and services director, and a provider relations specialist.

Andrzej Walz-Chojnacki has experience conducting community-based assessments; providing on-the-job supports, job development, benefits counseling, quality assurance and improvement; and providing training. He promotes services and policies designed to expand and improve competitive, integrated employment as the supported employment program and policy analyst for the Department of Workforce Development's Division of Vocational Rehabilitation.

Lunch will not be provided by the meeting organizers.

There are dining options in the Memorial Student Union.

Visit Explore Menomonie: Food and Drink for information on restaurants in Menomonie.

1:30 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.: IPS Wisconsin data presentations

2:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.: Open floor to provide feedback on IPS in Wisconsin

Food and beverages will not be provided by the organizers of this meeting. Meeting attendees should plan to bring their own snacks and beverages or purchase them on-site at dining areas in the Memorial Student Union.

Select one of these sessions to attend.

3A - Rowing with OARS: taking your communication skills to the next level
Speaker: Scott Caldwell

This session is on OARS communication skills. Person-centered OARS communication skills (asking open questions, offering affirmation of specific strengths, careful listening with reflection, and summarizing before transition to next topic) are increasing becoming part of everyday employment conversations in IPS. Although seemingly simple, OARS communication skills represent a fairly complex skill-set that is not particularly easy to do well in practice and, thus, requires ongoing learning, practice, and application to get good at.

Participants will:

• Recognize and build upon what you already know and do with OARS skills.
• Engage experiential practice activities to deepen use of OARS skills.
• Get excited about continuing to learn and apply OARS skills in your everyday employment conversations and develop a simple plan for next steps.

Scott Caldwell first learned OARS communication skills as part of motivational interviewing in clinical services 25 years ago. Since coming to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, he has featured learning OARS communication skills in hundreds of trainings involving thousands of practitioners across human services systems and settings.

3B - Extending a hand: engaging individuals experiencing homelessness with employment services
Speaker: Jen Patridge

This session is designed as an introduction to engagement strategies and best practices for employment specialists and human services professionals working with people who are experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness.

Participants will:

• Learn strategies for assertive engagement through a trauma-informed lens.
• Identify and address barriers to employment.

Jen Patridge is a licensed clinical social worker who has worked in psychosocial rehabilitation programs for almost a decade as a case manager and clinical supervisor. She was a a job coach and employment case manager early in her career. She works with the Wisconsin Department of Health Services as a coordinator for Community Recovery Services (CRS) and Community Support Programs (CSP). She also is a contract administrator for the Projects for Assistance in Transition from Homelessness (PATH) and SSI/SSDI, Outreach, Access, and Recovery (SOAR) grants. She highly values employment as an integral component of an individual’s recovery. She is an avid knitter and enjoys learning new skills in the fiber arts world such as spinning and weaving.

3C - To be announced

The topic and speaker for this session will be shared soon.