Jason Renaud
Jason Renaud is a well-known public speaker and writer on recovery from alcoholism and the experience of people with mental illness, and is an active advocate for people who have fallen through the public safety net. Renaud has over 38 years of open recovery.
He is the board secretary of the Mental Health Association of Portland and coordinates enduring projects for the organization; the Law & Mental Health Conference, the premiere online educational event dedicated to the intersection of law and mental illness; the Mental Health Alliance which advises Federal and state courts and government agencies in relation to mental illness and addiction; the Oregon Housing Conference, the Alternative Mobile Service Association, a new trade association which connects city and county leaders creating alternatives to police. His recent trainings and lectures include extreme risk protection orders, and the history of alcoholism in Oregon.
Renaud spent fifteen years as an executive team member of the national nonprofit healthcare advocate Compassion & Choices, working on multi-million dollar fundraising campaigns, successful state ballot measures, legislative, public relations and legal battles, and development of both the medical and pharmaceutical practice of aid in dying. As executive director of their Oregon affiliate, he coordinated in-home patient care for Oregon’s aid in dying services and was at the bedside for over forty deaths.
Renaud has held several managerial positions, including executive positions for the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, the Washington State Department of Corrections, The Oregonian newspaper, Central City Concern, where he managed its alcohol and drug free housing, and Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare, where he was both communications director and the ACT Team coordinator – at the same time.
In 2010 Renaud ran for Portland City Council on a police reform platform. In 2014 he produced the award-winning documentary film Alien Boy: The Life and Death of James Chasse. He has been an amicus curiae to US DOJ v City of Portland since 2018. In 2022 he co-authored “From Asylum to Community – Mental Health Care in Oregon” from the 1950s to 2000 for the Oregon Historical Quarterly.
Recently Renaud has served on Oregon’s Addiction and Mental Health Planning and Advisory Council, the Oregon Task Force on Alcohol Pricing and Addiction Services, the Lone Fir Cemetery Foundation Board, Multnomah County’s Transforming Justice Steering Committee, Portland’s Police Accountability Commission, and on the TRANSFORM911 Project at the University of Chicago Health Lab.
Contact Jason Renaud
info @ mentalhealthportland.org
503-367-6128 – PO Box 3641 Portland, Oregon 97208
www.linkedin.com/in/jasonrenaud – Twitter @renaud_pdx