Cale Burke

Cale G. Burke is a Senior Project Manager at Ohio University’s Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Service. As a member of the Social Enterprise Ecosystem Program, he is responsible for coaching and supporting entrepreneurs in recovery from Substance Use Disorder. Additionally, Cale is tasked with providing technical support and assisting expanding the Recovery Community Organization (RCO) network in South East Ohio. A self-proclaimed person in long term recovery, as well as the founder of an Athens based RCO, Cale is uniquely positioned to help recovery-based enterprises. Previously Cale had a 17-year career in IT sales and founded an IT security general contracting firm in Columbus, Ohio.

As a nontraditional student Cale earned an AA in Business as well as a BA in Communication from the University of Cincinnati in 2002. He went on to continue his education at Franklin University, earning a Master of Science in Communication and Marketing in 2006. More than a decade later he entered the inaugural cohort of the accelerated Master of Public Administration program at Ohio University’s Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Service and completed his MPA in 2021. During his internship, Cale established a 501c3 that evolved into the before mentioned RCO, the SouthEast Ohio Hope Center.

Cale’s community volunteerism goes back more than a decade. From 2005 until it was absorbed into a larger agency in 2012, Cale was an advisory board member for Syntaxis Youth Homes. From 2015 to 2019 he volunteered as Head of Security for a homeless outreach organization on Columbus’s Hilltop, Joran’s Crossing Resource Center. Currently, Cale serves as the Peer Mentor for the Athens’s County Veteran Drug Court. He is a Desert Storm Veteran having served in the US Navy from 1987-1991.

Cale’s focus for his dissertation will be the impact of Peer Based Recovery Support Services (PBRSS) on the recovery continuum of care. He chose the Health Communication field for his doctoral program due to the lack of published, long term study of Peer Support Services.