Sadé Heart of the Hawk Ali

Sadé Heart of the Hawk Ali is a survivor of multiple suicide attempts. She is the retired deputy commissioner of Philadelphia’s Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services and has been in the recovery and behavioral health services field for 51 years.

Ali is now the tribal lead and a senior project associate with the Zero Suicide Institute. She served on the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s Center for Substance Abuse Treatment National Advisory Council for over four years. She holds faculty positions at Brown University, Temple University’s College of Health Professions and Social Work, and Drexel University’s School of Public Health. Ali speaks widely on Two Spirit history and culture, intergenerational, historical, and modern-day trauma and healing in indigenous communities, and culturally appropriate recovery management and resilience-promoting service delivery in behavioral health. 

Ali has authored multiple publications, including Philadelphia Behavioral Health Transformation Practice Guidelines for Recovery and Resilience Oriented Treatment, a framework for the fields of mental health and substance use treatment services that is used worldwide. Most recently, she published Best and Promising Practices for the Implementation of Zero Suicide in Indian Country, a toolkit that indigenizes the Zero Suicide framework and for which she won the 2020 Innovations in Public Health Award from the National Indian Health Board. 

Ali holds a Bachelor of Arts in Counseling Psychology and a Master of Arts in Clinical Psychology and is finishing her doctorate in clinical psychology. She is Mi’kmaq First Nation from the Sturgeon Clan and the founding elder and medicine keeper of the New England States Two Spirit Society.