Doug Skvarla was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he graduated from Duquesne University. He has been in the pharmacy profession for 22 years. Upon completion of college, Skvarla moved to Tucson and worked briefly as a mail order clinical pharmacist, and the majority of his professional life has been in retail pharmacy, where he has held roles ranging from staff pharmacist to divisional manager. In 2016, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey appointed Skavrla as a member of the Board of Pharmacy, where he served until August 2017. At that time, Skavrla resigned his seat on the board to begin his role as director of the Controlled Substance Prescription Drug Monitoring Program. Since then Skavrla has become a member of the Governor’s Goal Council 3 and Rx Core Group, helping write the new Arizona Opioid Prescribing Guidelines. Additionally, he is part of the Rx Initiatives Health Care Advisory Team and the Opioid Regulatory Workgroup headed by Dr. Cara Christ, director of the Arizona Department of Health Services. All of these groups have the same goal: to fight the opioid epidemic and make communities safer.