Dr. Kitty Harris

Dr. Kitty Harris is Professor Emeritus at Texas Tech University.  She is the CEO of No Life Wasted, a research, education and addiction recovery consulting company.  Dr. Harris developed RecoverOnlinea comprehensive online treatment program for alcohol and substance use disorders.

She is a noted public speaker at national conferences, workshops and seminars on topics including adolescence; substance abuse prevention; addiction and recovery; and communication, civility and leadership. Dr. Harris currently holds an LCDC (Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor) license.

Dr. Harris is the author of Women and Recovery-Finding Hope, published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and co-editor of Substance Abuse Recovery in College, published by Springer.

She served for twelve years as the Director of the Center for the Study of Addiction and Recovery (CSAR) at Texas Tech University. Under her leadership, the CSAR gained national attention, appearing in the Wall Street Journal, on the NBC Today Show, CNN, and featured in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, and The New York Times. For six years, she was also Associate Dean of the College of Human Sciences at Texas Tech University.

Dr. Harris has been the recipient of numerous awards. In 2007, she won the America Honors Recovery Award for her efforts in working with college students in recovery. She received the Distinguished Service Award in 2008 from the Texas Tech University Alumni Association. In 2012, Dr. Harris was the first recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award presented by the Association of Recovery in Higher Education (ARHE), and was named Woman of Excellence in Education by the Lubbock YWCA. She has also been named a Distinguished Alumna of the Texas Tech College of Human Sciences in 2001 and was named to the Texas Women’s Hall of Fame, Office of the Governor of Texas in 1993.

She serves on the Advisory Board of the Margaret Talkington School for Young Women Leaders, a public single-gender college preparatory school for girls in the Lubbock ISD; President of the Young Women Leaders Foundation and the Advisory Board of Lubbock National Bank. Previously Dr. Harris served on the Board of Directors of Lubbock National Bank and the Commerce National Bank of Austin and College Station, Texas. She was the vice president of the Board of Directors of the J.T. and Margaret Talkington Charitable Foundation.

From 2012-2014, Dr. Harris served as a Women’s Initiative Fellowship Mentor through the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas, Texas.  The Women’s Initiative Fellowship is a program to develop leadership and networking skills for women in Egypt. Dr. Harris was asked to mentor one of the Egyptian Fellows, a Dentist from Cairo, Egypt.

WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING

“Kitty Harris knows that “women who drink too much” will remain blind to hope unless they recognize themselves in the stories of those who have achieved a life in recovery . . . She supports women in recovery who choose to live their second chance in a qualitatively different life.”

– Dorie Evensen, Ph.D.
Professor, Penn State University