Practitioner

Job Details Job Location:
Santa Fe LOVE - Santa Fe , NM Salary Range:
Undisclosed Description

Position: Practitioner, LOVE

Term:
Full-time, hourly

Pay: $19/hour + health insurance, paid time off, and other benefits

Location:

Santa Fe, NM

Reports To:

Supervisor, LOVE

Direct Reports:
None

Updated:
June 2, 2025

Organization Description:

Urban Alchemy hires individuals who were once incarcerated and trains them to transform people and places through love and respect. We provide services that heal communities challenged by the intersection of extreme poverty, mental illness, addiction, and homelessness. When individuals are suffering in our public spaces, Urban Alchemy offers solutions. When a neighborhood, street, or intersection earns a reputation as a place to avoid, we turn it around.

Urban Alchemy staff, known as Practitioners, create a peaceful and supportive presence, helping our communities rebuild a sense of pride one person at a time. Urban Alchemy is a nonprofit organization founded in 2018. We quickly grew from a small program in San Francisco to a thriving social enterprise with over 1,300 staff. We currently operate in California, Alabama, Oregon, and Texas, and are actively expanding our national presence, with recent growth into Georgia and New Mexico.

Over 95% of Urban Alchemy employees, including leadership, experienced incarceration and/or homelessness. For more information visit our website.

Position Summary:

The Practitioner is part of Urban Alchemy’s Community Outreach and Engagement initiative designated as the LOVE (LeadingOutreach withValuedEngagements) team. The Practitioner establishes positive relationships with community members in target areas. Community members range from residents of the area, business owners and their patrons, and members of the unhoused community. These relationships are critical to leverage effective communication and de-escalation. The Practitioner must possess highly attenuated emotional intelligence to accurately assess individuals they are responding to, understand and regulate their own emotions and triggers, and quickly develop a strategy to respond to the crisis in a calm and warm manner that deescalates the situation and results in satisfactory resolution of the presenting issue.

Position Duties and Responsibilities:

Position Specific:

• Provide culturally responsive, trauma-informed, gender-responsive, harm reduction, and person-centered mental health and substance use crisis assessment, intervention, and de-escalation.
• Engage with individuals in distress to assess the cause of their distress, determine strategies that will be useful in decreasing distress, support individuals to resolve any identified issues, de-escalate potential or existing conflicts and/or heightened emotions, and support individuals to connect to supportive services, as appropriate.
• Show competency in use of Narcan for opioid overdose reversal.
• Work collaboratively with other team members and the person in crisis to quickly assess the needs of the individual experiencing mental health crisis; and create a response plan.
• Practice self-awareness and cultural humility as member of a diverse team; be conscientious and sensitive to power and other interpersonal dynamics with team members and with members of the unhoused community.
• Ability to engage and connect with individuals in crisis, a strong ability to remain calm and attentive during crises, as well as to work through several separate crises during a single shift.
• Demonstrate a high level of resilience and self-care as part of maintaining wellness in a high crisis and first responder position.
• Know and adhere to Urban Alchemy’s critical incident policies, including reporting requirements.

General:

• Will treat all Urban Alchemy guests, staff and stakeholders with compassion and respect.
• Use emotional intelligence to effectively engage and connect with others.
• Adhere to established procedures to provide a safe working environment including complying with OSHA, state, and local regulations as well as Urban Alchemy’s policies.
• Attend orientation and any additional training required by Urban Alchemy or our funders.
• Must wear an Urban Alchemy…