For most of the time Mike Sciandra spent in Lincoln’s sales and management offices, he looked the part. College-educated, present as a parent, active in a church community. The roles shifted across the years, from retail to management consultation to recruiting, but the outward picture stayed consistent. He was, by all appearances, exactly what he appeared to be.
What nobody saw was the gambling.
Sciandra has said he played anything he could find action in. Keno, skill-touch machines, casino floors, sports wagers. The habit began around age nine, by his own account. He went on to file for bankruptcy twice. The last time, according to a 2022 report from Nebraska Public Media, he was roughly $40,000 to $50,000 in debt. Across more than 25 years, he maintained a professional life in close parallel with a much more costly private one.
The call that ended that period came on December 14, 2020. Sciandra rang the Nebraska Problem Gambling Helpline and was connected to free outpatient treatment through the Nebraska Gamblers Assistance Program at Choices Treatment Center in Lincoln. Individual and group counseling sessions multiple times a week, daily check-ins, journaling, and financial education. He stayed in active treatment for nearly a year before beginning to step down.
Something else happened in that time. He began to see his own experience not just as something to recover from but as something with professional application. He enrolled in a Disordered Gambling Counselor Certificate program at Bellevue University (where he had earlier earned his Bachelor of Science in Marketing Management) and completed it while in recovery. By December 2023, he had also earned a Certified Peer Support Specialist Certificate from Southeast Community College. He later added certifications as an International Gambling Recovery Specialist and a Board Approved Recovery Advisor through the International Problem Gambling and Gaming Certification Organization.
In November 2021, with roughly a year of sustained recovery behind him, Sciandra joined Choices Treatment Center as its Education and Outreach Coordinator. The work drew on more than newly earned credentials. His sales and marketing background, years spent building relationships and making cases to people who weren’t already persuaded. All of it transferred in ways that a purely clinical career path would not have produced.
That role lasted just over three years. In April 2025, Sciandra was appointed Executive Director of the Nebraska Council on Problem Gambling, replacing Aletha “Buffy” Cornish, who had served as interim director since 2022. He also holds a Master of Arts in Management from Doane College.
NeCPG was founded in 1992, originally as the Nebraska Council on Compulsive Gambling, and operates as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. It is the sole Nebraska affiliate of the National Council on Problem Gambling. The organization’s work spans education, prevention, advocacy, and connecting Nebraskans to recovery resources. Its online resources page directs state residents and their families to the Nebraska Gamblers Assistance Program, which provides free, confidential treatment through certified disordered gambling counselors, and promotes the state helpline at 1-833-BET-OVER.
Sciandra has described his approach as drawing on two things: the professional relationships built across the treatment, prevention, and gaming operator communities, and a first-hand understanding of how problem gambling actually operates in someone’s daily life, well below the surface of anything visible.
One extension of that work has taken him into Nebraska state prisons. In a piece published by GamblingHarm.org, Sciandra described continuing to visit incarcerated Nebraskans to share information about problem gambling awareness, prevention, education, and recovery resources, with the reasoning that people inside those walls deserve the same outreach as everyone else in the state.
Getting into a prison requires a different kind of credibility than a public awareness campaign. Sciandra’s bet-free date is December 14, 2020. He keeps it specific.