MEET MORE 2026 UNITY AWARD WINNERS
KEN GINLACK IS A REDEEMER, starting with himself.
“I’m in long-term recovery. I went into treatment 18 years ago now. When I was in treatment, I was praying for my purpose in life. ‘Why am I here?’ A lot of people I know had died or gone to prison,” he says candidly. If they’d had a “Least Likely to Succeed” title in high school, Ginlack says, he would’ve won the superlative.
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One of the turning points in his life was a night when he was planning to commit a robbery. He remembers thinking, “If I do this, it’s going to change my life forever.” Despite all the bad decisions of his past, that thought finally grabbed hold of him. He snapped out of it. Instead of committing a crime, he walked to a recovery house.
“I think it’s a God thing, and also being sick of the life I’d been living,” he chuckles.
Today, Ginlack leads Serenity Inns, a residential addiction recovery program for men comprising three homes and an outpatient clinic around Milwaukee, the two main houses along Brown Street in Midtown. Under Ginlack’s leadership in 2024, Serenity Inns opened a $3 million, 14-bed residential treatment facility. But Ginlack keeps his office across the street, in the original (and still very much in use) recovery house rather than at the fancy new digs. It’s a similar setup to the place he found sobriety all those years ago.
For his most recent birthday, Ginlack hosted a barbecue in Serenity Inns’ backyard with all the residents. “Some days I walk in [to work] and take my jacket off and immediately start leading group with the guys. … Most CEOs in my position, they separate themselves from the people getting direct services. I make it my business for them to know who I am,” he says. “I think it’s really important to create that vulnerable space where men can speak openly to each other.
“I think of myself as a fisher of men. I want to be that lifeline for men who need that space to be vulnerable and open.”
How can we create more unity in Milwaukee?
“Being kind and helping others. A lot of people talk about addiction and ‘enabling,’ but helping someone who is struggling is not enabling them. It is giving them a pathway to what they need.”
