The Invisible Workforce Crisis: A Candid Conversation with Marin Nelson
- Mar 15
- 8 min read
Updated: Mar 17
By Jamelia Hand MHS CADC CODP I
The first thing Marin Nelson remembers about the morning she decided to stop drinking was the quiet.
She was standing in her kitchen in Brooklyn, the early light just beginning to come through the window. The night before was a blur. Another blackout. Another morning waking up unsure what had happened.
But this time the fear felt different.
For the first time, she realized clearly that if something did not change, alcohol was going to kill her.
She picked up the phone and called her parents. She was twenty-four…
That moment would eventually lead her from recovery meetings in New York to enterprise sales leadership at Salesforce, and ultimately to founding Sobrynth, a company designed to help employers support employees and families navigating substance use and recovery.
When Marin and I spoke recently, it became clear quickly that her work is deeply personal. It also raises an uncomfortable question many employers have not fully considered.
What happens when the workplace becomes the place where addiction quietly shows up?
How I came to this conversation
I have spent more than two decades working in behavioral health and substance use treatment.
For most of that time, the conversation centered around treatment providers, healthcare systems, and policy. Employers were often adjacent to the conversation, but rarely at the center of it.
About two years ago, I began paying closer attention to the idea of Recovery-Friendly/Ready Workplaces and the role employers could play in supporting recovery and reducing stigma. The concept kept appearing in different corners of the field.
I recently wrote about this topic after speaking with Eliza Zarka, whose work focuses on helping organizations build recovery-friendly workplace frameworks.
That conversation became the article Recovery-Friendly Workplaces with Eliza Zarka. Just prior to that, I had written another piece exploring what happens after the awareness stage. Creating Recovery-Friendly Workplaces: Moving Beyond the Employee Handbook looked at why policies alone rarely change workplace culture.
The more I explored the topic, the clearer something became. Employers are beginning to talk about recovery, but very few had built systems capable of supporting it. Speaking with Marin felt like the next chapter in that exploration because Marin is not simply talking about recovery-friendly workplaces, she is building infrastructure to support them.
Recovery and the limits of rigid systems
Marin’s recovery story began in 2005.
Like many people trying to stop drinking, she started by seeking professional help. She scheduled an assessment at a treatment center and was honest about how much she had been drinking. The counselor reviewing her case recommended inpatient treatment. Marin explained that she had just moved to New York and started a new job. That option did not fit her life. So, the counselor suggested outpatient treatment.
The program ran during work hours.
When Marin said that schedule would not work either, the conversation essentially ended. There were no other options offered. There was no discussion about community recovery programs. No flexibility. No acknowledgment that people trying to change their lives are often balancing work, housing, relationships, and survival all at once.
Marin left determined to prove that recovery could exist outside the narrow path that had just been presented to her.
She walked into an AA meeting that day.
And she began building a community that would help sustain her sobriety.
Years later she would look back on that moment and recognize something important. The system had not been designed around the realities of people’s lives.
A career in enterprise sales
Long before Sobrynth existed, Marin built a career in enterprise technology sales.
She spent more than fifteen years working in sales leadership roles across healthcare and technology companies, eventually becoming a Regional Vice President of Enterprise Sales at Salesforce, where she led large enterprise SaaS (Software as a Service) deals and managed significant revenue portfolios.
Sales culture comes with its own traditions.
Client dinners. Conferences. Incentive trips. Celebrations that often revolve around alcohol. For many employees, that culture feels normal. For someone in recovery, it can be complicated.
Marin navigated it successfully for years. But during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic something changed. Companies began hosting virtual wine tastings to entertain clients and engage employees working remotely. Bottles were shipped to people’s homes. Drinking became part of the virtual workplace culture.
Even fifteen years into sobriety, Marin found herself uncomfortable which led her to ask a simple question. If she felt uneasy, what was happening to colleagues who were seeking sobriety or newly sober?
The moment that changed workplace culture at Salesforce
In 2020 Marin posted a message on Salesforce’s internal platform.
She shared that she was sober and invited colleagues who were sober, sober-curious, or supportive of recovery to connect.
The response was immediate.
Within months, hundreds of employees had joined the conversation. The group became Soberforce, an employee resource group dedicated to creating space for recovery conversations inside the company.
What happened next surprised even Marin.
Employees began sharing their stories.
Some had been sober for years and had never mentioned it publicly. Others were trying to reduce their drinking. Many had family members struggling with addiction.
The group quickly grew to hundreds of members.
Sober meetups appeared at conferences. Conversations expanded beyond alcohol to include opioids, mental health, and family recovery.
For the first time, many employees felt they could speak openly about recovery inside a corporate environment.
But the conversations revealed something else... Employees were asking a question that the workplace did not yet know how to answer.
Where do we go for help?
What employees actually encounter when they ask for help
Many employees had already tried their company’s Employee Assistance Program. The experience was often similar. Someone calls the EAP looking for guidance and receives a list of treatment centers and an insurance phone number. From there, they are expected to figure out everything themselves. Which treatment center is reputable? What level of care is appropriate? What insurance will cover? What to do if the first option does not work? For someone already overwhelmed, the process can feel impossible.
Even Marin, with years of recovery experience, found the system confusing when trying to help colleagues navigate it. The deeper she looked, the clearer the gap became. The workplace had made progress around mental health, but when it came to substance use, most systems were still fragmented, reactive, and difficult to navigate. Eventually Marin reached a conclusion she could not ignore.
If employees finally gather the courage to ask for help, the path forward should not be this complicated.
Sobrynth: building a different approach
In January 2024 Marin launched Sobrynth.
The company works with employers to provide a workplace benefit focused on substance use support for employees and their families.
Sobrynth combines peer recovery coaching, care navigation, and workplace education. Employees can access support anonymously and without session limits.
The goal is not simply crisis response, it is culture change.
Employees can also access the Soberpath platform, which allows them to browse recovery resources, read lived-experience stories, connect with peer coaches, and explore sober-curious challenges.
Sobrynth is intentionally offered through employers rather than directly to consumers. Marin believes the workplace has an important role to play in recovery. People spend a large portion of their lives at work. That environment can either reinforce stigma or help dismantle it.
The data problem employers do not realize they have
During our conversation, Marin pointed out something that surprised me. Most employers believe they understand the impact of substance use in their workforce because they review healthcare claims. But claims data captures only a fraction of the problem. Inpatient treatment appears in the data. Many other forms of recovery do not. Employees who recover through mutual aid groups, peer support, or community recovery networks never appear in claims reports. Family members struggling to support loved ones rarely show up in employer metrics.
Employees who continue to function at work while privately battling addiction often remain completely invisible.
When employers rely solely on claims data, they are measuring only a small portion of the real problem. It is like trying to understand a storm by watching only the lightning.
When employers take the issue seriously
Some companies are beginning to address the issue more directly.
Sobrynth has worked with organizations such as Gardner Builders, where leadership and employees shared personal recovery or family stories during a company-wide meeting.
The impact was immediate.
Employee awareness of available support increased dramatically.
Within ninety days, six percent of employees had utilized the service. In comparison, many Employee Assistance Programs see roughly two percent utilization across all conditions over an entire year.
Another example is Olympia Hospitality, whose HR leadership partnered with Sobrynth after experiencing firsthand how difficult it was to help an employee navigate treatment options.
The lesson was clear.
Employers do not need to become addiction counselors, but they do need a better next step when employees ask for help.
Where the conversation goes from here
As our conversation wrapped up, I found myself thinking back to the way Marin began her story.
A quiet kitchen in Brooklyn.
A moment of clarity.
A phone call asking for help.
That moment did not happen in a hospital or treatment center, it happened in someone’s home, in a private moment that most workplaces will never see.
But workplaces often see what happens afterward.
They see the employee struggling to concentrate. The manager who senses something is wrong but does not know what to say. The HR leader trying to help someone navigate a system they were never trained to understand.
The workplace does not cause addiction, but it is often where the consequences surface. Employers cannot solve substance use disorder, but they can decide whether their workplace becomes another place people feel they must hide or a place where asking for help does not feel like the end of a career. That choice shows up in policies, leadership conversations, benefits, and culture. The invisible workforce crisis Marin describes is already present in every organization. The question is whether employers are willing to see it.
A Different Kind of Workplace Leadership
What Marin Nelson has built is not simply a company, it is a shift in how workplaces think about addiction. For decades, substance use in the workplace has largely been addressed through compliance policies, disciplinary procedures, or benefits that are difficult for employees to navigate in moments of crisis. The underlying assumption has often been that addiction is something employers should distance themselves from rather than something they can help address responsibly.
Marin’s work challenges that assumption.
Drawing from her own recovery journey and her years leading enterprise sales teams at Salesforce, she recognized something many organizations had overlooked. Workplaces are not just places where people perform their jobs. They are communities where people spend a significant portion of their lives. Culture, leadership, and benefits all influence whether employees feel safe speaking openly about their struggles or whether they continue to carry them in silence.
By launching Soberforce inside Salesforce and later founding Sobrynth, Marin helped demonstrate that recovery conversations can exist in professional environments without stigma or judgment. She showed that when leaders acknowledge recovery openly and provide real support systems, employees respond with honesty, engagement, and trust.
Perhaps most importantly, she reframed the conversation.
Addiction in the workplace is not simply a compliance issue or a liability risk. It is a human issue that affects productivity, safety, relationships, and the wellbeing of entire families.
Marin Nelson’s leadership has helped bring that reality into the open.
In doing so, she has helped set a new tone for how addiction can be perceived, discussed, and addressed in modern workplaces. Thank you Marin!!
How Vantage can help
One theme that emerged clearly in the conversation with Marin Nelson is that recovery does not happen in isolation. It happens within communities.
Many employers recognize the need to support employees struggling with substance use, but they often do not know where to begin or which organizations they can trust. Few have established relationships with recovery community organizations, professional associations, or behavioral health providers who specialize in addiction and recovery.
This is where Vantage Clinical Consulting focuses its work.
Vantage helps employers connect with the broader recovery ecosystem by building relationships with recovery community organizations, professional associations, and behavioral health providers who are already doing this work every day. These partnerships create practical pathways for families seeking support.
This work complements solutions like Sobrynth by helping organizations strengthen the community connections that make recovery support more accessible and sustainable. When employees finally ask for help, the path forward should not be confusing or fragmented. The question is whether employers are ready, or not…
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