Our Team

Joe Borelli

Recreation Counselor
CPT, CABCF
Pennsylvania

Joe Borelli has been at Caron since 2000 and for many of those years has been a recreation counselor. It’s a role he loves and has become known for, with many patients and staff referring to him as “Papa Joe.”

As a recreation counselor, Joe facilitates adventure-based counseling and lectures with young adults, using a ropes course, hiking, and other activities to build patients’ self-reliance, trust, and cooperation, qualities that will serve them well in recovery. He facilitates wellness groups and develops personal training plans for all Caron patients and adventure-based counseling with the Grandview Program.

He also facilitates wellness programs for the Older Adult Program weekly.

He started working at Caron as a counselor assistant and then became a counselor assistant supervisor. He is a Caron alum in recovery, which he believes helps him to better relate to and assist the patients he works with. He tells them that recovery can be fun and brings a lot of rewards with it, not least healthy relationships with family and friends.

For Joe, the best part of working at Caron is to see the transformations that takes place in patients as they progress through treatment and leave well-equipped for life in recovery.

Before coming to Caron, Joe was an appliance repair technician and did heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and electrical work for 25 years. It was a career that gave him a solid foundation in customer service, understanding how to respect people even when they were frustrated or stressed.

Joe is a certified personal trainer and certified adventure-based counseling facilitator.