About the Author

Alfred Brissette Jr. is a Certified Peer Specialist and Certified Recovery Coach who lives in Rhode Island. He is the creator of the I.D.E.N.T.I.T.Y. framework, an eight-phase model of adult identity reconstruction built from his own lived experience and tested over years of peer support and recovery coaching practice.

Alfred holds a bachelor's degree in organizational and community development. He has brought his advocacy work to the Rhode Island State House, and other agencies, testifying on prison reform and housing policy for justice-involved individuals.

Alfred has spoken on several panels for Brown University on reentry, recidivism, and inmate health, and has sat on panels for Roger Williams University on recidivism and reentry. He has also given lectures at Brown University's School of Public Health focused on incarceration, health, and criminal justice. He has also sat on speaking panels for The Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights. In 2016, he was a participant speaker at the Annual Rhode Island Health Equity Summit, and that same year he received a State Citation from the State of Rhode Island recognizing his work as a Recovery Coach.

He is the author of IdentiNova Framework and IdentiNova Built Not Broken, and he publishes under his own imprint. And is working toward publication in peer-reviewed journals.

Why I built IdentiNova: I built this framework because I lived every phase of it before I had a name for any of it. There wasn’t a map for the work I did to change who I was to who I am, and I needed to understand why I was able to make sustainable change while others weren’t able to do so. Understanding the steps I took, I started to research, and it all made sense. The convergence of the work I had done with the research allowed me to identify and build the map, test it in the room with real people doing the real work, and turn it into something anyone can use to rebuild who they are.

Alfred's ORCID iD:

0009-0005-0953-5268.