Peer Support Specialist - Denver

Denver Area: Experience Peer Offering Support: Contractor

Culinary Hospitality Outreach and Wellness

Title: Experience Peer Offering Support (ExPOS)

Start Date: Flexible

Benefits: Contract position (20 hours per month cap), $30/hour, includes Employee Assistance Program, training, continuing education opportunities (not college)

Deadline: Application review and interview cycles begin on 11/28

HOW TO APPLY

Please submit your resume and written responses to the following questions (maximum of 3 pages total):

• What is most compelling to you about CHOW or our approach?
• Why do you believe you would be successful in this role?
• Why are you the right person to advocate and support folks in the food/beverage/hospitality community? What is your superpower? You may be good at many things, but what are you truly great at?
• What kind of workplace do you thrive in? What kind of workplace do you struggle in?

Please submit your application to admin@chowco.org

Applications will be considered on 12/1. Position starts in late Dec with room for flexibility.

The Mission for this Position

Note: this position is a great fit for someone who loves working with people just as much as they love the operational side being on a team and is driven by a sense of purpose to create a more stronger community. The programs we have a CHOW are Group Meetings, Education and Resource Brokering. This person should have strong self-awareness and the confidence to communicate when they need to step back from leading a meeting in order to protect their well-being. As well as being able to read a room and protect the meeting space for all attendees.

CHOW is seeking a compassionate Certified Peer Supporter to walk alongside and support our community members. In this role, you’ll attend CHOW group meetings, offer guidance through peer connection, and respond to crises when needed. You should have, or be willing to develop, knowledge of local and national resources to help connect individuals with the support they need.

CHOW is seeking a compassionate Peer Support Specialist to connect with and guide members of the hospitality community. A minimum of one year of experience in the food, beverage, or hospitality industry is required, as this role depends on understanding the unique pressures, pace, and culture of the field. The ideal candidate is empathetic, grounded, and an exceptional listener who brings lived experience with mental health, substance use, or trauma and uses that experience to build trust and hope within the community. This person approaches every interaction with cultural humility and a trauma-informed mindset, recognizing the diverse backgrounds and lived experiences of those we serve. Dependability, professionalism, and confidentiality are essential, as our members rely on consistency and safety in every interaction. Successful peer supporters can identify warning signs, offer appropriate emotional support, and know when to seek guidance or connect participants with additional resources. Most importantly, they believe in the power of community, shared experience, and mutual support as pathways to wellness and recovery.

Through your work, you will have a direct and significant impact on the wellbeing of the food, beverage, and hospitality community.

Position Narrative

Overview

Your time will initially consist of learning the systems, processes, and tools we use within our programming. You will then facilitate CHOW group meetings as per the agreed schedule with the goal of listening to and supporting the community and ensuring that we are meeting their needs. You will work closely with our Philanthropy and Outreach teams to expand our reach and help with fundraising.

In addition to facilitating the meetings you will be responsible for collecting data, submitting reports, time sheets, expense forms, outreach, attending events, advocacy, and fundraising.

Hiring Process, What to Expect

The positions will be posted until the set deadline. At that point it will take CHOW about a week to read the answers to questions and review. From there the first of 2 rounds of interviews will happen. Each interview will take 15-90 minutes. This process will take CHOW 2-3 weeks. Those you receive an interview will get an email to set up another interview or notice that we are passing. You will need to attend 6 CHOW meetings to become an ExPOS. We suggest that you before your interview if you can to see if you like what we’re doing.

Onboarding and Learning

We will provide a significant amount of onboarding and training, however, you will be expected to drive your own learning process. We are committed to consistent innovation and improvement of CHOW’s programming and, as someone who will be helping our community, you’ll play a significant role in how this body of work evolves. Onboarding will be very focused allowing you to fully understand the span of work in one area that will allow you to seamlessly use those transferable skills across programs.

Your Starting Point

Our programming is already highly structured that we are continually working on; you will not be creating a program from scratch and you won’t be doing it all on your own. We have systems in place and we are also not rigidly attached to our approach. We are looking for someone who is both eager to understand the intricacies of what has/hasn’t worked about our approach and to push the quality of our work far beyond its current version. Our best case scenario is that after several years CHOWs programming will look different because of your contributions and our collaborative focus on creating the best experience possible for the leaders we work with. We are committed to everyone on our team contributing where they feel the most fulfillment and have the strongest abilities - as a result, once you feel ready, you will have the ability to shape the direction your position will evolve into.

Position Responsibilities

Responsibilities:

• Attend weekly CHOW meetings (virtual or in-person) and one additional CHOW meeting each month that is not your own.
• Allow an additional 30 minutes after each meeting to provide individual support to members as needed.
• Accurately document meeting attendance, participant engagement, and key themes or feedback.
• Maintain confidentiality and follow CHOW’s safety and reporting protocols.
• Identify warning signs and respond appropriately to members in crisis, connecting them with emergency or clinical resources when needed.
• Stay informed about local and national recovery and wellness resources (Crisis Lines, Unite Us, Harm Reduction programs, etc.).
• Use lived experience with mental health, substance use, or trauma to foster authentic connection and hope.
• Apply a trauma-informed and culturally humble approach to all peer interactions.
• Uphold firm ethical and professional boundaries while modeling self-care and wellness.
• Collaborate with the CHOW team to ensure consistent communication, shared learning, and quality peer support delivery.
• Learn and use health information technology systems
• Participate in regular supervision, team meetings, and ongoing training (QPR, CCAR, JEDI, or other peer education programs).
• Contribute to fundraising and outreach efforts (goal of $5,000 annually) through event participation or partnership development.
• Support the setup and facilitation of CHOW outreach events, Green Rooms, and community presentations.
• Help the organization by contributing to projects and initiatives that align with CHOW’s mission of community, access, support, and wellness.

Requirements

• Lives in Denver Metro
• High school diploma or GED (required).
• CPFS or NCPS certification (preferred).
• At least two years of experience in the food, beverage, or hospitality industry.
• Open-minded and supportive of all pathways to recovery.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with experience facilitating group meetings.
• Highly compassionate, empathetic, and attentive to detail.
• Strong interpersonal and active listening skills; able to build rapport quickly and respectfully.
• Familiarity or willingness to learn recovery models (e.g., 12-step, SMART Recovery, Refuge Recovery, or other community-based supports).
• Proficiency or willingness to learn Google Suite, Microsoft Office, and Zoom products.
• Reliable transportation, valid driver’s license, and ability to lift up to 30 lbs.
• Commitment to ongoing professional growth, continuous learning, and personal accountability.
• Bilingual candidates fluent in Spanish are eligible for a higher hourly rate.

Other Important Stuff

CHOW overview

Vision (our imagined future)

To lift each other up so we don’t lose anyone else to suicide, addiction, or struggles surrounding mental health.

Mission (what we’re building)

CHOW’s mission is to support wellness within the hospitality industry and to improve the lives of our community through shared stories, skills, and resources.

CHOW’s Core Values

Community

CHOW’s community welcomes and supports any individual who would like to be a part of our shared culture and mission.

Access

CHOW’s intention is to provide opportunities for resources, education and events to anyone in our community.

Support

CHOW’s goal is to lower barriers so everyone can receive the care they need.

Wellness

CHOW believes in thriving, not just surviving.

We believe that our story can be someone else’s road map. We share our stories, skills and resources to create a more resilient f/b/h community.

Our Approach

We believe that the best way to support our community is through us helping us. We know the trials and the joys of this industry. We think we can offer meetings and education to help stay sane in the chaos. We want to lower the barrier to accessing mental health and substance use help without lowering the bar of what care looks like. If we consider wellness a bridge, CHOW is the first few steps and the connector for the rest of the bridge.

We do not give advice, we listen and offer support the way a person would like to receive it.

Group Meetings - Purpose

Free protected space to explore emotions and substance use. A starting point.

Amuse Course - Purpose

Educates folks on mental health, mental illness, substance use disorder.

Resource Brokering - Purpose

Bridge the gap in care connecting our community to what they need most.

1:1s - Purpose

Meeting with folks individually to listen and offer support

Collaboration & Self Drive

CHOW is highly collaborative. You will work especially closely with our team members on the programmatic aspects of this position. You will also be closely supported in improving your effectiveness. If you find it difficult to openly and constantly explore and improve upon your own professional areas of growth, CHOW is not the right place for you. Positional hierarchy and the “I have more experience doing X” argument hold no water on our team: the best ideas with the most rigorous justification must always rise to the top. If you are already great at what you do and are looking to continue your journey of self-improvement with other smart people, CHOW may be just what you’re looking for.

Humane

The “collaboration & self-drive” section above might sound a little intense, but the reason this works for us is that we actually care about the people we work with. A recognition of people’s humanity is often missing from many workplaces, and we’ve worked hard from the beginning to try to change that. With a few obvious exceptions, you can wear what you want, take as much vacation as you want, eat during meetings, decide your own schedule, and so on. We also spend a non-trivial amount of time just catching up on how we’re all doing in life. We believe that we are at our best when we can express our authentic selves through our work. It’ll never be perfect (we don’t want to romanticize it), but we work hard to create a place where we can be ourselves accomplish great work.

Our goal is to create a workplace that no one ever wants to leave, but where those who must leave, do. That being said, valuing the humanity of those on our team doesn’t mean accepting poor results just to protect the people we work with and care about. It means being clear and honest about the quality of each other's work, actively using our own expertise to strengthen our teammates’ performance, and helping those who are not a good fit for CHOW find a better one.

Identity, Race, & Racism

If you are unwilling to openly examine your understanding of identity (as a concept), race (as a concept) and racism (as a practice), and how these relate to the world around us, you will not be a good fit at CHOW. This is true regardless of your own racial/ethnic identity, and regardless of how much time you’ve already spent doing this important work. This does notmean that we will try to force our own system of beliefs or perspectives on you, but it does mean that we will examine aspects of these issues (and others) at a fundamental level - and how this all relates to our professional areas of responsibility. We primarily do this through long, deep conversations that help us grow our individual and group understanding of issues of race and racism. We do this because we believe that (1) these conversations in and of themselves are important to building trust in a racially/ethnically diverse workplace and (2) the depth to which any of us understand these issues limits or bolsters our ability to take productive action.

This is also true of other social issues, but we specifically identify identity, race and racism as an area of focus in this document because we’ve found it to be a particularly important non-negotiable to CHOW's team and culture.

CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT: A pre-employment criminal background check may be conducted as part of the selection process, unless credentialed by State of CO. Special Conditions of Employment: Effective September 20, 2021, this position will require documented proof of full COVID-19 vaccination. Employees will be required to provide attestation to their status with proof of vaccination upon hire.

This is a 1099 Contract position. Nothing contained in this document shall be construed to create a relationship of employment between CONTRACTOR and CHOW. CONTRACTOR acknowledges that they are not entitled to workers compensation or unemployment insurance benefits under CHOW policies.

ABOUT CHOW: From servers and bartenders to dishwashers and chefs, each person working in a restaurant gives their all to make guests feel welcome, cared for and nourished. Our mission is to return the favor. To care for the people who take such good care of us. To provide a place for restaurant staff to feel supported, heard and appreciated. To facilitate gatherings where we can build meaningful connections with folks who “get it.” By offering peer-to-peer support, CHOW supports wellness within the hospitality community and improves the lives of our community through shared stories, skills, and resources.

As an equal opportunity employer, CHOW is committed to recruitment, retaining, and promoting employees who are reflective of the hospitality industry’s diversity. CHOW selects regardless of their race, color, gender identity, religion, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, physical abilities, age, sexual orientation, veteran status, or criminal history.

Don’t meet every single requirement? Studies have shown that women and people of color are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification. At CHOW we are dedicated to building a diverse and inclusive workplace, so if you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyways. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.*We embrace employees and candidates from these underrepresented groups and encourage them to apply. We know through experience that different ideas, perspectives and backgrounds create a stronger and more creative work environment that delivers better results in serving our hospitality community.

*(adapted from Tegus’s job description)

Job Types: Part-time, Contract

Pay: $30.00 per hour

Expected hours: 5 per week

Benefits:

• Employee assistance program
• Flexible schedule

People with a criminal record are encouraged to apply

Work Location: Hybrid remote in Arvada, CO 80002

Salary : $5,000