On the Right PATH

Chemical Engineering graduate Jakob Bleacher takes a detour from med school to meet a critical community need for addiction recovery support.

Two years ago, Jakob Bleacher was on the cusp of graduation, preparing to take the MCAT and apply to medical school. Then an all-nighter around a campfire and a class with professor of practice Christine Mei changed everything.

When Bleacher, B.S. 2025, flew home for Thanksgiving break his senior year, he reconnected with middle school friend Patrick Reif. As the two caught up, the conversation naturally shifted toward the struggles they had seen among classmates and peers at their respective schools involving addiction, mental health and recovery, and the lack of resources for people trying to stay sober after completing in-patient treatment.

“Once someone finishes rehab, clinicians say, ‘All right, go hang out with people who are sober and will hold you accountable. Good luck!’” says Bleacher. “But how does someone do that successfully?” Over the fire that night, Blecher and Reif dreamed up a solution — an outpatient substance abuse recovery network with mental health specialists at the center to connect clients with medical providers, community resources, sober social activities, peers in recovery in the same demographic, and more.

Bleacher returned to the Forty Acres for the spring semester and finished his degree, all the while ruminating on how to make his and Reif’s idea a reality. Just after graduation, he reached out to Mei, his professor from Entrepreneurship for Chemical Engineers, to go through a Business Model Canvas exercise he remembered from her class and talk through potential next steps. “That conversation was pretty awesome,” he says. “She not only validated our ideas but gave me the confidence to think that maybe this could be real.”

Mei remembers the conversation well. “What stayed with me was that Jake reached out after the course had ended. That told me something important: He had been listening and reflecting all along, connecting the assignments to something he was already building in his own life,” she says. “When we sat down together, the mission and the ambition were already there. We worked through how to translate that conviction into the tangible proof points a business model requires.”

Fast forward one year and Bleacher and Reif’s idea has become PATH Therapy Services based in Youngstown, Ohio. They’ve brought on two additional business partners, including Bleacher’s dad’s best friend who lost his brother to an addiction-related overdose; just hired their sixth mental health clinician; and already serve upwards of 70 clients. The PATH team has launched an initiative specifically to support Spanish-speaking people in recovery; is planning to open a sober social center akin to Main Event or Dave and Buster’s; and is developing an app to centralize support meeting information like location, time, main contacts and average age of attendee.

At first blush, Bleacher’s work may seem a sharp detour from his chemical engineering training. But he sees it differently. “I’m problem solving every day. When I look at an issue the clinic is facing, I might not know the exact next steps, but I know what data I have and I can figure it out from there,” says Bleacher, who plans to start med school next year. “I’m proof that an engineering degree can set you up for anything you want to do.”