Felix

Manager, Community Operations
Detroit, MI

Felix joined firsthand in August 2025 as Manager of Community Operations for the Detroit market. Born and raised in Detroit, primarily in the southwest part of the city, Felix originally pursued a law degree before realizing his real interest lay somewhere else: in understanding why people behave the way they do. Psychology and behavioral health pulled him in, and his work has been rooted there ever since.

Felix came to firsthand from the Detroit Health Department, where he'd been brought on at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic as a behavioral health counselor through a CDC initiative. Within 60 days, he was asked to lead the entire response team. After the pandemic, the city kept him on, and for several years he trained people across Detroit in behavioral health, trauma informed care, and crisis response. He became the person the city called when something hard was unfolding, someone in crisis, an eviction, an outbreak investigation. If individuals were in distress, Felix was there to help hold the space.

When firsthand first reached out, Felix was considering what came next. The conversations that followed were a breath of fresh air. Too often, he'd watched people in crisis get pushed toward only two options: arrest or hospitalization. firsthand was building a real third path, one that walked with people toward a better quality of life instead of cycling them through the same revolving doors. The culture sealed it. He met people who were genuine, serious about the work, and committed to keeping individuals at the center. That was the place he wanted to be.

In his role today, Felix supports a team of guides, all of whom bring lived experience to their work. He approaches that work with patience, knowing you can't teach from a place you haven't mastered yourself. He's deeply proud of his guides, who show up in difficult spaces and embody what firsthand stands for. The advice he comes back to most often, both for himself and for the people he leads, is that the moment you make the work about yourself, the mission fails. Success comes from making it about the individuals being served, and about the colleagues showing up alongside you.

Outside of work, Felix is an avid sports fan, cheering on his Detroit teams and U of M (but not Ohio State). He's intentional about quiet time at home with his wife and children. He's also a writer, with a deep love of poetry, and spends his hours away from work reading, playing Madden on his PS5, and cooking, something he finds genuinely therapeutic.