Episode 8: Meet Christina Simos - Your Healing Is Our Liberation: From Friendly House Client to CEO of America's Oldest Women's Recovery Program in Los Angeles

Twenty years ago, Christina Simos walked into Friendly House Los Angeles not wanting to live. Today, she runs it.Christina is the CEO of the oldest women's alcohol and drug recovery program in the country. But before she was a CEO, she was a girl from the Queens projects who wanted to be Beyonce. She was an MTV VJ finalist. She was talking to the VP of Sony Records when she found out she was pregnant. She was a woman who crossed an invisible line with cocaine and couldn't find her way back. Until Friendly House found her.In this episode, Christina tells the whole story: the music dreams, the rock bottom, the 12 days at Cedars-Sinai, and the moment a woman named Peggy Albrecht looked into her soul and said "Welcome home." She talks about working her way from client to tech to director to CEO, inheriting a board of all white men at a women's recovery organization, and spending five years fighting to decolonize treatment and make space for every woman who shows up at the door.This is a conversation about healing, yes. But it is also about systems, courage, and what it means to build something that was never built for you.Friendly House 75th Anniversary Gala: October 17, 2026 at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.To donate or get involved: [email protected] along: @design2manifest | www.design2manifest.com