Peter Evers to leave Riverbend for Massachusetts job

Ethan Dewitt for The Concord Monitor

After six years, Peter Evers will be stepping aside as CEO of Riverbend Community Mental Health by the end of February, taking up a leadership post at a similar organization in Brockton, Mass.

Evers said this week he had accepted a job as CEO of Brockton Area Multi Services Inc., which also provides behavioral health residential treatment, in order to be closer to his adult children in Boston.

The move comes after “a really tough decision” made several months ago, Evers said, but “one of those things where you have to consider family and future.”

  “I’ve absolutely loved my six and a half years that I’ve been here, and Riverbend will continue to be a force in our community,” he said.

First arriving at Riverbend in 2013, Evers has overseen a broad expansion of the behavioral health nonprofit, as funding sources in the state have opened up and staffing has increased.

The facility has added more than 150 positions in the past five years, Evers said – “which is pretty good when you consider we have a workforce shortage.” It has expanded physically, recently acquiring an additional property to house a new recovery center, which opened this year.

And it’s grown its presence in the city and the region, facilitating Concord’s participation in the state’s hub-and-spoke “doorway” opioid treatment program, expanding mobile crisis units to bring professionals to people’s homes, and building a pipeline to Concord Hospital for acute psychiatric treatment in the emergency department.

Evers has had a particular role in the latter relationship; he serves as vice president of behavioral health at Concord Hospital and will be stepping down from there as well. His successor will assume both roles, he said.

His role extended to the State House too, where he and the organization often argued for higher mental health reimbursement rates and for consideration of behavioral health concerns in legislation and budgets.

Leslie Walker, the chairwoman of the board for Riverbend, praised Evers’ public presence Monday.

“I think he has elevated Riverbend’s profile within the greater Concord area tremendously,” Walker said. Evers was always interested in promoting the center and behavioral health awareness in any way he could, she said, whether by attending events, testifying on legislation, or appearing on the radio.

“His outreach has been exceptional and I think Riverbend has become a household name,” she said.

Riverbend is presently in the process of searching for a replacement CEO; an advertisement for the post was listed online Nov 13. The listing asks for a Masters-level candidate with 10 years experience in behavioral health and five years in executive management.

But Walker said the search, which is national, has already attracted “a lot of good candidates.”

For his part, Evers said he had confidence in his successor. But nothing that he started has been left unfinished, he added.

“I have very mixed feelings,” Evers said. “I absolutely love it here. Riverbend is in a really strong position in terms of its leadership now, and actually there’s a search going now, so I think it’ll be a pretty good transition.”

(Ethan DeWitt can be reached at [email protected], 369-3307, or on Twitter at @edewittNH.)