Noel Vest’s goal was to go to community college to earn a degree as a chemical dependency counselor when he walked out the doors of a Nevada prison on June 28, 2009.
Other than hard labor, it was the only career he thought was possible for a formerly incarcerated person.
Almost a decade later Vest is about to graduate from Washington State University with a PhD in psychology and start the next chapter of his life as a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University.
“Never in a million years would I have dreamed I’d be where I am today,” Vest said. “There’s a lot to be said about finding what drives you and for me that has been pursuing a career in higher education. It gave me the direction and motivation I needed to turn my life around.”
This June, Vest will move to Palo Alto to begin working with Keith Humphries, professor of psychiatry at Stanford and one of the world’s foremost experts in the prevention and treatment of addictive disorders.