Vanessa Matthews is the director of the Treatment Court Institute, a division of All Rise. Prior to her current role, she was a police officer with Oklahoma City from 1990 to 2012, working with the Oklahoma County Drug Court from 1998 to 2009. She was instrumental in the development of the program, including policy manual development, budgeting, and staff training. Her training presentations and curriculum development include recognizing the signs of mental illness, identifying a subject under the influence of drugs, effectively communicating with consumers, strengths-based interviewing, team building, drug testing, program planning and development, grant writing, community supervision, cultural proficiency for consumers served, ethics and confidentiality in treatment programs, psychopharmacology of drugs for first responders, and community resource identification and development.

In 2014, Vanessa was appointed by the governor of Oklahoma to serve on the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board. In 2015, she was reappointed to a four-year term and elected chair of the organization. She joined the staff of All Rise in 2016. She has an associate degree from Oklahoma State University in applied police science and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Central Oklahoma in criminal justice. In July 2020, she was elected to serve on the board of directors for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). In 2023, she was selected to serve as part of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) mental health workgroup.