Helping others live their best lives: Farnham’s new executive director looks to continue legacy of his predecessors
By Stefan Yablonski
Being named executive director of Farnham Family Services comes with a sense of duty as a servant leader to help carry the torch into the future. Having been with Farnham for 13 years, the new executive director has come to care deeply about the work that the organization does.
“I feel that we have a commitment to the community we serve, as the sole provider of comprehensive substance use disorder prevention, treatment, recovery and harm reduction services,” Christopher Baszto said.
He took over the reins in the wake of the untimely death of former executive director Eric Bresee late last year.
“Candy Herbert was my interim co-executive director. She and I became co-executive directors in November when Eric passed,” he said. “We both interviewed for this position and the board picked me. She currently holds the director of operations position. Her help was crucial in helping to stabilize leadership after the loss of Eric. People really felt it helped stabilize things after Eric’s passing. The agency didn’t miss a beat.”
Baszto joined Farnham prior to Bresee’s arrival.
“[Eric] really made an effort to connect with everybody. He was known by everybody,” Baszto recalled. “I think he was the soul and mind of the agency. It was nice to see him come in and carry on former executive director Jean Unger’s visions. I’m trying to tap into that legacy of where they were headed — to carry the torch.”
Baszto grew up in Watertown and graduated from Watertown High School.
“My dad had a disability,” he said. “It kind of gave me a sense of disability and living with dignity at an early age.
“I had my first experiences with working with underserved populations — working with individuals with developmental-intellectual disabilities, at Jefferson Rehabilitation Center in Watertown, working in a residential setting providing direct care,” he said. “There I had an opportunity to practice a deeply held belief that everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. That’s where I got my first taste of working with people with disabilities. It was somewhat formative in that area. There I developed a deep understanding of the essential dignity and respect that everyone deserves.”
Coming home
“My wife, Rebecca Lewis, and I were actually friends in high school. We have different last names as she has a private practice as an ND (naturopathic medicine doctor) and it made professional sense for us to keep our last names. [Her family owns Green Planet grocery in Oswego and the one in Camillus as well.] Her family had moved to Watertown from Seattle, Washington,” he said. “I attended undergraduate school across the border in Kingston, Ontario, at Queen’s University; studying biochemistry as a pre-requisite toward a career in medicine.”
They moved out west to Seattle to attend Bastyr University to study naturopathic medicine for several years.
“I have always had a deep curiosity for what contributes to pathology and what cultivates wellness and healing. While in naturopathic medical school, I fell in love with the theory and practice of depth psychology and continued my studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Southern California,” he said. “After graduation, my wife and I made the decision to move back home to the East Coast to begin our careers and start a family, feeling the importance of giving back to our communities and raising our son, Simon Baszto [now 8 years old] surrounded by loving grandparents and extended family. My family was here and her family was here.”
Recalling being interviewed at Farnham for a clinical position in 2011, he said he felt an immediate resonance with the mission at Farnham under then-executive director Unger.
“It was apparent that Farnham was an organization committed to providing quality services with professionalism and compassion. It was also clear that the leadership and organizational culture was such that it treated staff and patients with equal care, having integrity as a core guiding principle,” he said. “I knew that this was an organization through which I could help make a meaningful impact on the wellness of my community and one that would help support my growth early in my career.”
From that date on, he has been committed to serving Farnham’s mission “in any way that I could be of use.”
“Therapy — I love it — I’d do it for free,” he said. He considers his approach to therapy “real therapy.”
“I started out practicing for several years as a therapist in our Fulton clinic, then as senior clinician helping foster the development of our team of skilled therapists. Then from there as outpatient program director supporting the outpatient programming across multiple locations,” he said. “Most recently, I was senior director of services overseeing prevention, treatment, recovery and harm reduction as well as grant programming. Basically all the services Farnham has.”
Throughout his years at Farnham, his commitment to the agency has always been to “try to be of use in the service of our mission, independent of role or title, focusing on trying to be in the position that allows me to maximize my impact within the organization,” he said.
Being named as executive director gives him a sense of excitement that grows from the confidence he has in the team around which he is surrounded, he said, adding, “Farnham has some of the most passionate and talented individuals of any organization I’ve known — people who truly care about the quality of services that we provide and who are inspired by the transformational work that is possible as a result. I am aware that while the role of executive director is the role of one individual, it is a symbolic extension of the good work that Farnham does as a team.”
Going forward
His first priority going forward “is to ensure stability and continue to cultivate healthy organizational culture.”
“I believe it is a testament to Eric’s leadership that, in his passing, Farnham has paradoxically grown stronger — with staff rising to meet the challenges of the moment — acknowledging that we are all leaders in this organization and all play an important role in its health and sustainable growth,” he said. “Eric’s singular vision has transformed into a shared agency-wide set of possibilities. Losing Eric was such a big deal — it hit everyone so hard — it was so unexpected.”
As executive director, he “will continue to nurture and cultivate Eric’s shared vision through close dialogue with staff and stakeholders to ensure the stability of what we already have set in motion.”
Collaborative spirit
The most important message that he’d like to convey to stakeholders and the surrounding community is a collaborative spirit.
“I am committed to seeking out new partnerships and creative ways to help promote wellness in our communities — willing to think creatively and collaboratively to develop novel solutions to complex problems, moving beyond our individual silos with the recognition that meeting human needs is never a zero-sum endeavor and that Farnham is excited to leverage the synergy that is arrived at through cooperation,” he said. “Eric used to say that there is nothing that couldn’t be done provided the right resources. I am of the belief that these resources are, by and large, all around us and that the key to unlocking them is to make the right connections.”
One of the big goals that he has is to “try our best to meet as many of the needs in this county with Farnham instead of having to send people to different places, different counties for services,” he added.
Although Farnham looks very different today than it did 13 years ago when he started his career, what has been unchanging, Baszto said, is that it remains a very special agency that values relationships, thoughtfulness, a depth of perspective, a relentless focus on quality, that operates with compassion, creativity and an openness to continue to do what it takes to be responsive to community needs.
The landscape for helping people with substance abuse right now is very different than it was 10, 15, 20 years ago, he pointed out.
“It’s just a lot more accommodating for people in recovery. There is more of an acceptance today of people about who they are,” he said. “We offer medical services now, too. That’s relatively new — at our clinics we can offer you primary care in a limited capacity. I think people feel pretty safe coming to our clinics. We don’t have a waiting list — we don’t turn people away. We have grown quite a bit in the past five years. We started recovery services with one peer, now we have 20.”
Some of his medium-term goals as executive director include the following:
• To help build the right level of organizational capacity to support the rapid growth, helping Farnham scale up to meet ever-increasing community needs,
• Developing the administrative apparatus to support the rapid growth of multi-departmental grant-funded initiatives.
• Developing Farnham’s Training Institute, which serves an important community role in developing a sustainable workforce.
• Promoting the presence of certified recovery peer advocates in community-wide engagement and harm-reduction efforts
• Enhancing the accessibility of medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD) and psychosocial services to rural populations
• To position prevention efforts strategically in community-facing venues to strengthen Farnham’s ability to provide services across the continuum of care, reaching more diverse populations across the lifespan
• To help reduce stigma for mental health and substance use in the community, normalizing and celebrating recovery while promoting awareness
• Providing enhanced medical services to our patients thereby reducing gaps in medical care and wait-times for engagement with primary care
Lifelines
Name / Position: Christopher Baszto, executive director
Birth Date: July 6, 1984
Birth Place: Watertown
Residence: Currently, in Camillus, with wife and son
Education: 2008-2011: Pacifica Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, California, Master of Arts in counseling psychology, with emphasis in depth psychology; 2006-2008: Bastyr University, Kenmore, Washington, completed two years of training toward naturopathic doctorate before accepting enrollment in counseling program at Pacifica Graduate Institute; 2003-2006: Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario,Canada, Bachelor of Science degree, honors biochemistry
Personal/family: Wife, Rebecca Lewis; son, Simon Baszto, 8
Hobbies: Distance running, depth psychology, meditation, playing tag with my son, creating amateur experimental music, reading literary fiction, philosophizing with friends, watching films with my wife.
