Meet the Influential, Innovative, and Disruptive Women in Psychedelics

The psychedelic landscape might appear to be a boy’s club, but dig deeper and you’ll find that’s far from the truth. Women have always existed in the psychedelic space, in spite of persecution and ridicule, and in defiance of ambivalence and exploitation of their labor and wisdom.

As the psychedelic space continues to rapidly expand and evolve with increased research opportunities and public interest, more women than ever are bringing their expertise and knowledge to the forefront.

The women listed here represent a groundswell of activists, artists, therapists, journalists, researchers, scientists, philosophers, healers, social critics, and educators who have a growing and important influence on the psychedelic and plant medicine communities.

While a few of these names will be familiar, many have been rising behind the scenes. Take a journey with us as we explore the compelling future of an inspiring, emerging psychedelic community.

Please note that this is a living project, and not a definitive list. Our intention at DoubleBlind is to invite our community members to let us know who else you’d like to see highlighted here, so that we can continue to grow and update this list with your participation. 

Anya Oleksiuk

Co-director of The Psychedelic Society UK, director of The Psychedelic Chronicles

Anya Oleksiuk is a documentary filmmaker, host, speaker and educator. She leads on video production, psychedelic education and harm reduction. She curates and hosts talks and panel discussions about psychedelic science & psychedelic therapy, as well as drug policy and ethics. She is associated with the Psychedelic Society of the Netherlands, a consultant for the Polish Psychedelic Society (Polskie Towarzystwo Psychodeliczne), an advisor for The Global Psychedelic Society, and the education lead, curating talks and panels, at Anthropos Festival. 

Oleksiuk is a founder and director of Triptika Studios, which is a collective of independent filmmakers with interests in health, science, innovative solutions, mental health, drug advocacy, social and racial justice and environment-friendly lifestyles.  She is the creator, director and producer of The Psychedelic Chronicles: a bold, provocative, narrative-busting documentary that charts the dramatic re-emergence of the psychedelic movement into the mainstream consciousness and— more controversially—how it is intersecting with western capitalism, the mental health crisis, and Indigenous practices.

Buki Fadipe

Nigerian and British writer, educator, healing catalyst, seer, and certified Sacred Psychedelic Medicine Practitioner 

Buki Fadipe is a Nigerian-British writer, educator, healing catalyst, seer and certified Sacred (Psychedelic) Medicine Practitioner. Her work is rooted in earth-based holistic healing which encompasses the use of entheogenic plants and fungi, spiritual ritual, self-empowerment, and reclaiming ancient earth/indigenous wisdom practices and philosophies. She is the founder of Adventures is Om, a pathway for decolonized healing and resource for those seeking the tools, inspiration, guidance and entheogenic education in support of their expansion and liberation. Fadipe has recently completed a professional Psychedelic Practitioner certification with Synthesis Institute, an MSc in Transpersonal Psychology, and she is also a certified, trauma-informed Hatha Yoga practitioner.

Akua Ofosuhene

Co-founder of Hub and Culture, an African and Caribbean cooperative lifestyle shop and event space in Peckham, UK, and a psychedelic fashion designer

Akua Ofosuhene is the founder of African Spiritual Practices events. She is a public speaker and advocate of therapeutic and spiritual uses of psychedelics and also works full-time as a dressmaker. Six years ago, Akua Ofosuhene discovered that her teenage son had been groomed into drug dealing while at school. The shame and guilt brought on depression. Although her general practitioner, the police, and youth services were “doing their best,” their methods were not working for her and her son.. Ofosuhene learned about psychedelic medicines, and alternative healing modalities, such as Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), non-violent communication, self-inquiry, attachment parenting, and African spirituality. By putting these together, she was able to treat her depression and eventually get her son help. Today Ofosuhene advises other parents dealing with the effects of gang activity and assisting them with intention setting and integration. Akua also helps others escape cults and coercive control relationships.

Claudia J. Ford

Ethnobotanist, midwife, educator, and professor of environmental studies at State University of New York, Potsdam

Claudia J. Ford has had a career in women’s health and international development spanning four decades and all continents. She is an ethnobotanist and midwife, who studies traditional ecological knowledge, women’s reproductive health, and agricultural and food justice. Ford is on faculty at State University of New York, Potsdam and also serves on the boards of The Biodynamic Association and the Soul Fire Farm Institute. In 2020, Ford gave the keynote speech on Decolonizing The Psychedelic Renaissance at the Psychedelic Psychotherapy Forum on Snuneymuxw First Nation territory in Canada, in addition to hosting a workshop series on sacred medicines and decolonizing health practices. Ford is also a writer, poet, and visual artist, and a single mother who has shared the delights and adventures of her global travel with her four children.

Haya Al-Hejailan

Founder of The Arab Psychedelic Society, co-director and co-producer of The Psychedelic Chronicles, lead guitarist in Seera

Haya Al-Hejailan is a positive and coaching psychologist and an integration and harm reduction specialist who founded the Arab Psychedelic Society in 2022 with the goal of advocating for psychedelic science in the Arab world. Since 2013, Al-Hejailan has been researching psychedelics as therapeutic agents for a range of mental ailments and as catalyst for positive change when used with the intention of self-exploration and personal growth. In the last six years, Haya has worked with many different professional organizations in community engagement, policy advocacy, psycho-education, ketamine, and introductory psychedelic therapy training, to name a few. Today, Al-Hejailan is the lead guitarist for an all-female Arabic psychedelic rock band called Seera, based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Oriana Mayorga

Community organizer, vice chair of the board directors at Students for Sensible Drug Policy

Oriana Mayorga is a first-generation, anti-oppression organizer, and harm reductionist from New York. She is dedicated to dismantling structural oppression, promoting racial justice, ending violence against women, and advancing harm reduction practices. She is a longtime advocate of ending the war on drugs and centering the needs of people of color in psychedelia.

Ayana Iyi

Traditional healer

Ayana Iyi is a modern-day witch with ancient sensibilities, utilizing entheogenic plants in her work as a Psychic and Medium. Iyi has an intimate relationship to spirit going back to early childhood, sharing many decades of experience working as a healer of immense knowledge and power. Incorporating teaching fungi into her work was the perfect complement to accessing the ancient worlds of the divine feminine. She has spoken at psychedelic conferences internationally, including Beyond Psychedelics. Many testify to the fullness, depth and passion that Iyi brings to the Psychedelic community. 

Katherine Maclean

Research scientist, author, speaker

Katherine MacLean is a research scientist with expertise in studying the effects of mindfulness meditation and psychedelics on cognitive performance, emotional well-being, spirituality, and brain function. As a postdoctoral research fellow and faculty member at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, she conducted clinical trials of psilocybin and other psychedelic compounds. Her groundbreaking research on psilocybin suggested that psychedelic medicines can enhance openness to new experiences and promote mental health. She co-founded and was the first director of the Psychedelic Education and Continuing Care Program in New York, where she led training workshops and monthly integration groups focused on increasing awareness and reducing risks of psychedelic use.  In the summer of 2023, MacLean released her first published book, Midnight Water: A Psychedelic Memoir. 

Jimena Chalchi 

Memory Keeper & Intercultural Collaboration Lead, Naut sa mawt Centre for Psychedelic Research

Jimena Chalchi is a Global Leadership researcher focused on models and systems for intercultural collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples for mental, spiritual and planetary health. Extensive research on the traditional knowledge, philosophy and practices of Indigenous entheogenic medicine. Her most extensive research has been on the traditional knowledge, philosophy and practices of entheogenic medicine and land-based healing among Indigenous Peoples of Mexico and Peru. 

She is experienced as research facilitator within Indigenous contexts, bridging intercultural partnerships, developing cultural recovery projects and knowledge translation for diverse audiences. 

In her role as memory keeper at the Naut sa mawt Centre for Psychedelic Research she led the process to develop the Research Framework and  Relational Leadership Model that enables the NCPR  to provide culturally safe environments for the inclusion of Indigenous methodologies and participation in Psychedelic Research.

Yarelix Estrada

City research scientist with the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, director of the New York City Psychedelic Society

Yarelix Estrada is a first-generation Central American, drug policy and harm reduction researcher, and community outreach worker. Estrada works as a City Research Scientist with the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene conducting community-based harm reduction outreach and research. Her work is currently largely focused on implementation of the first drug checking research study in New York City with local syringe service programs.

She is also the director of the New York City Psychedelic Society, on the Board of Directors for the Tennessee Recovery Alliance, the Board of Directors for the Source Research Foundation, and is an organizer with the Urban Survivors Union and the Alliance for Collaborative Drug Checking. She received her Master of Science in Public Health in Health Policy at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Pamela Jackson

Founder of The Psychedelic Sisterhood and co-president of New Yorkers for Mental Health Alternatives

Pamela Jackson founded The Psychedelic Sisterhood in February 2020 to establish a sacred space for growth, healing, and womxn’s empowerment through psychedelics. She is also co-president of New Yorkers for Mental Health Alternatives (NYMHA), a founding member of the New York Psilocybin Action Committee (NYPAC), a member of the Brooklyn Psychedelic Society, and an involved member of the Global Psychedelic Society: a worldwide community of organizers offering guidance and resources to those interested in learning more about psychedelics. Jackson develops social gatherings, wellness events, and programs geared toward supporting the self-development of womxn-identifying and non-binary persons.

Preeti Simran Sethi

Founder of Asian Psychedelic Collective, award-winning writer and journalist, educator, birth doula, yoga teacher

Preeti Simran Sethi founded the Asian Psychedelic Collective. She is a 2023 Ferriss-UC Berkeley Psychedelic Journalism Fellow and Carter Center Mental Health Journalism Fellow developing a series on what it means to decolonize psychedelics, and researching a book on Asian mental health and entheogenic healing.  She came to psychedelics through her own experiences with psilocybin and MDMA for severe depression and anxiety, and is committed to expanding the dominant narratives around psychedelics: honoring the Indigenous lineages that have stewarded earth medicines and inspired synthetic analogues, uplifting explorations into altered states (including meditation and breathwork) and entheogens that are part of Asian culture, and destigmatizing mental health and drug use within Asian communities. Sethi was part of the only equity cohort at Fireside Project, providing free and confidential peer support to those actively working with a psychedelic or integrating a past psychedelic experience. As a member of the Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion team at the American Psychedelic Practitioners Association, she reviewed and supported the first Professional Practice Guidelines for Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy.  Sethi is enrolled in Psychedelic Facilitator Training through SoundMind Institute with a focus on psilocybin. She is also completing a Master of Science in Applied Positive Psychology and Coaching Psychology from the University of East London, researching psychedelic integration and post-traumatic growth. Her goal is to build on her background in journalism and academia, and service as a birth doula and yoga teacher, as well as training as an end-of-life doula to offer specific support to elders, immigrants/refugees, and people of Asian descent.

Neşe Devenot

Doctor of Philosophy, Senior Lecturer at JHU – University Writing Program, and Medicine, Society & Culture Research Fellow at Psymposia

Neşe Devenot joined the JHU – University Writing Program in 2023. Their courses have explored interdisciplinary topics including drugs in society, bioethics, comparative literature, and transdisciplinary collaboration. Before joining JHU, Dr. Devenot completed postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Cincinnati’s Institute for Research in Sensing, Case Western Reserve University’s Department of Bioethics, and the University of Puget Sound’s Humanities Program. 

They are currently working on a book project titled Chemical Poetics: The Literary History of Psychedelic Science, which was supported by the Zora Neale Hurston Writing Fellowship from Bard College. Their background in public humanities has included writing and editing for Psymposia, a psychedelic industry watchdog organization. Devenot’s psychedelic bioethics research has included a collaboration with JHU’s Center for Psychedelic & Consciousness Research. They received the European Romantic Review Article Prize in 2020 and the inaugural award for Best Humanities Publication in Psychedelic Studies from Breaking Convention in 2016. Devenot was a 2015-16 Research Fellow at the New York Public Library’s Timothy Leary Papers and a Research Fellow with the New York University Psilocybin Cancer Anxiety Study, where they participated in the first qualitative study of patient experiences. 

Charlotte James

Educator, medicine woman, lead trainer for The Psychedelic Liberation Training Program

Charlotte James works to create a world in which everyone is able to live in fearless pursuit of their radical transformation. She uses her skills as an educator, therapeutic coach, and ceremonial facilitator to build and engage a community focused on pursuing equitable liberation. James has been exploring her own mind and spirit with the support of Sacred Earth Medicines for over 15 years. Most recently, she helped to co-create The Ancestor Project—a Black-led pillar of education, ceremony, and integration in the psychedelic space. She has since left that organization to develop and lead The Psychedelic Liberation Training, a program that weaves together decolonization education, liberation psychology, entheogenic shamanism, and psychedelic-assisted therapy. They are informed by grassroots harm-reduction movements, clinical research, indigenous wisdom, and ancestral healing. She has completed a traditional apprenticeship with Kambo, and has supported hundreds of community members in ceremony. She graduated summa cum laude from Johns Hopkins University with a BA in Latin American Studies and Anthropology. While studying at JHU, Charlotte interned for the Baltimore CIty Health Department Needle Exchange Program and served as the first Overdose Prevention Coordinator, organizing city-wide Narcan training for third-party bystanders. James has lived throughout South America and is a multi-lingual Spanish and Portuguese speaker. She is actively continuing her facilitator training through a three-year certificate program in Transpersonal Psychology, Psychedelic Medicine, and Indigenous Wisdom. She has sat in ceremony with elders and medicine keepers of varying traditions and is committed to her ongoing unlearning and relearning process. 

Kathleen Harrison

Ethnobotanist, artist, photographer, researcher

Kathleen Harrison is an ethnobotanist, artist, and photographer who researches the relationship between plants and people, with a particular focus on art, myth, ritual, and spirituality. Harrison currently teaches field courses for the University of Minnesota (Hawaii), University of Missouri (Northern California), Albany College of Health Sciences (Peru), and Goddard College (Hawaii).  She also teaches independent field intensives for Botanical Dimensions. She has done fieldwork in Latin America for 30 years, and is the director of Botanical Dimensions, a nonprofit foundation devoted to preserving medicinal and shamanic plant knowledge from the Amazonian rainforest and tropics around the world. In her work with Botanical Dimensions, she has done fieldwork and supported Indigenous projects in Mexico, Peru, Ecuador and Costa Rica.

Juliana Mulligan

Owner of Inner Vision Ibogaine, Ibogaine Treatment Specialist, LMSW, and Harm Reduction Psychotherapist

Juliana Mulligan is a psychotherapist who is formerly opioid dependent, formerly incarcerated, and has been a working member of the ibogaine treatment community for eleven years. In 2011, with the help of ibogaine treatment, Juliana left opioids behind and set off on a path to transform the way drug users and their treatment is approached. She has a Masters in Social Work from NYU, was the Psychedelic Program Coordinator at the Center for Optimal Living for three years, and is currently a consultant for the Kentucky Ibogaine Initiative. She runs Inner Vision Ibogaine, which supports people in preparation and integration around ibogaine treatment and offers consulting services. She has worked in multiple ibogaine clinics, presented at various psychedelic and harm reduction conferences, and is the author of the Guide to Finding a Safe Ibogaine Clinic and co-author of Fireside’s Warning Signs When Selecting a Psychedelic Facilitator. She has taught about ibogaine at Charite University in Berlin and Southwestern College in New Mexico and has written for multiple publications about ibogaine, including Double Blind Magazine and Chacruna. Most recently, her focus on abuse and ethics in the ibogaine treatment space has led to her survivor advocacy and client support work.

Leonie Schneider

Co-Founder of PsyPAN and facilitator on the ACER Integration programme, United Kingdom. 

Leonie Schneider co-founded the Psychedelic Participant Advocacy Network (PsyPAN) after accessing psychedelic assisted psychotherapy in clinical trials. Participating in the Psilocybin for Depression clinical trial at Imperial College (2019) and Small Pharma’s DMT for Depression trial (2022) provided Leonie with a new path to improved mental health and enabled focused professional action. She had not found long-term relief with antidepressant medication or from conventional talking therapies prior to that. Leonie has since spoken publicly to raise awareness of the possibilities and pitfalls of psychedelic medicine and the importance of integration, including for Women in Psychedelics (Drug Science), BBC Science Focus, Scientific American and the upcoming documentary The Psychedelic Chronicles. She actively represents patient interests on Drug Science’s industry-wide Medical Psychedelics Working Group, supports the delivery of world-class psychedelic retreats in the Netherlands with Alalaho and is a circle facilitator on the ACER Integration programme. Leonie offers a holistic overview of the clinical trial experience from a participant perspective and across different psychedelics. She aims to expand access to these treatments by advocating for the safe, intentional and integrated use of psychedelics which led to her founding PsyPAN with Ian Roullier in 2021.

Hanifa Nayo Washington

Healing justice practitioner, sacred activist, co-lead investigator, Psychedelic Health Equity Initiative (PHEI)

Hanifa Nayo Washington is a sacred activist, healing justice practitioner, communications strategist, and digital creative, with 25 years of values-based nonprofit leadership. Washington, an equity and belonging facilitator, reiki master practitioner, musician, and thought partner, works at the intersection of mindfulness, place making, and social justice to cultivate organizations, gatherings, spaces, and experiences rooted in the values of beloved community. Washington, is Founding Team Emerita of Fireside Project—a nonprofit that is creating systemic change in the field of psychedelics in three key domains: safety, diversity, and equitable access. Through their Psychedelic Peer Support Line, Fireside Project has created a nationwide safety net that has substantially decreased 911 calls and hospitalizations while democratizing access to free high-quality care. The line has received over 11,000 calls since launching in April of 2021. Washington is the co-lead investigator of the Psychedelic Health Equity Initiative—in its beginning stages with the primary objective of identifying and creating opportunities for philanthropy to fund demonstration projects that will encourage governments, private sector actors, and foundations to invest in equitable access to psychedelic assisted therapies for marginalized communities. Washington is also the co-founder and organizing Principal of One Village Healing, an online BIPOC centered healing, resilience, and psychedelic wellness space. 

Erika Dyck

Author, professor, Canada Research Chair, History of Human Health and Social Justice

Erika Dyck is a professor and a Canada Research Chair in the history of health and social justice. Her interdisciplinary research brings social sciences and humanities perspectives to scientific and medical subjects. Her work has been published in medical, legal, economic, literary, philosophical, anthropological and historical venues. She is the author of several books, including: Psychedelic Psychiatry: LSD from Clinic to Campus; Facing Eugenics: Reproduction, Sterilization and the Politics of Choice, Managing Madness: the Weyburn Mental Hospital and the Transformation of Psychiatric Care in Canada, and with Maureen Lux, Challenging Choices: Canada’s Population control in the 1970s. She is also the co-editor of Psychedelic Prophets: The Letters of Aldous Huxley and Humphry Osmond, A Culture’s Catalyst: Historical Encounters with the Native American Church in Canada and Peyote, and The Acid Room: the psychedelic trials and tribulations of Hollywood Hospital. She is the co-editor of the Canadian Journal of Health History, the Vice President of the [International] Alcohol and Drugs History Society, and co-editor of two international books series with McGill-Queen’s Press—History of Health and Medicine, and Intoxicating Histories.

Dyck’s chief interests are in the history of psychiatry, mental health, deinstitutionalization and eugenics. She is the author of Psychedelic Psychiatry which examines the history of LSD experimentation and how it fits within broader trends in the changing orientation of psychiatry during the post-World War II period. Her second book, Facing Eugenics, examines the experiences of patients and families as they confronted eugenics in 20th century Alberta. It traces their experiences through coercive and voluntary sexual sterilization procedures and the legacy of eugenics for influencing our perceptions of reproductive rights, disability and reproductive choice. 

Courtney Watson

Owner of Doorway Therapeutic Services, LMFT, and AASECT certified sex therapist, psychedelic-assisted therapist

Courtney Watson is the owner of Doorway Therapeutic Services, a group therapy practice in Oakland, California focused on addressing the mental health needs of Black, Indigenous & People of Color, Queer folks, Trans, Gender Non-conforming, Non-binary and Two Spirit individuals. Watson has followed the direction of her ancestors to incorporate psychedelic-assisted therapy into her offerings for folks with multiple marginalized identities and stresses the importance of BIPOC and Queer providers offering these services. Watson has received training from the Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Research at California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Science (MAPS), and the Polaris Insight Center. She is deeply interested in the impact of psychedelic medicines on people with marginalized identities and how they can assist with the decolonization process for the global majority. She believes this field is not yet ready to address the unique needs of communities of color and is prepared and enthusiastic about bridging the gap. She is currently blazing the trail as one of the only clinics of predominantly QTBIPOC providers offering ketamine-assisted therapy. She has founded a non-profit, Access to Doorways, to raise funds to subsidize the cost of ketamine/psychedelic-assisted therapy for QTBIPOC clients.

Leticia Brown

LMFT, psychedelic-assisted therapist

Leticia Brown is a Black queer femme whose practice engages various healing modalities at the intersections of harm reduction, sexuality, and social justice. She prioritizes work with BIPOC and QTNBIPOC communities through a liberatory lens that values communal interdependence and affirms the inner healer we all hold within. Constantly exploring ways to decolonize her relationship to healing, she incorporates intergenerational exploration, spirituality, ritual, the use of the body, and reconnection to intuition in her practice. She sees her role as co-creator with those she walks beside on their healing journeys. Brown has been trained in a variety of psychedelic-assisted therapy modalities, including ketamine-assisted Psychotherapy training with Sage Institute, Polaris Insight Center, Healing Realms, and Doorway Therapeutic Services, where she maintains a small private practice. Brown was also a trainee of MAPS’ first-ever MDMA-assisted psychotherapy therapy training for communities of color in August of 2019. Additionally, she is a therapist with the MAPS expanded access program, using MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for treating severe PTSD. In her harm reduction consulting and training, Brown encourages both self-introspection and challenging discourse. In her work supporting therapists with engagement of anti-racist and decolonizing practices, she aims to offer a sense of groundedness and purpose to the work. In her work with clients and therapists around issues of sexuality and other altered states of consciousness, she holds a sociopolitical lens, and aims to cultivate a safe relationship to the body. In all of this work, Brown aims to be guided by Fannie Lou Hamer’s mantra that “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free”, particularly in her work with QTBIPOC folx.

Agnieszka Sekula

Researcher and co-founder of Enosis Therapeutics

Agnieszka Sekula is a researcher and co-founder of Enosis Therapeutics, a company that utilizes VR technology to facilitate psychedelic psychotherapy. Her research focuses on investigating therapeutic mechanisms in psychedelic treatment that can be strengthened through experience design and translating findings of this research into real life application, by developing virtual reality scenarios. She recently conducted the first case study with the use of VR and psychedelics. Enosis native VR scenarios use an innovative, patent pending mechanism, AnchoringVR™, which preserves the profound but elusive psychological insights that emerge during the psychedelic experience. 

Sekula is a scientist with a background in biomedical engineering and medical imaging. She uses cutting edge biotech tools, including customized imaging robots, 3D modeling and VR, to innovate medical research all over the world, including forensic medicine in Switzerland, space medicine in Austria, and translational science in Singapore. She is currently a PhD candidate at the Centre for Human Psychopharmacology at Swinburne University in Australia. She is devoted to science outreach, extensively advocating for open-science communication, community led research and outcome transparency. For her outreach efforts, she won the best speaker award at 3D MED Australia and the MiLabs Image of the Year award, among others. Her work has been displayed worldwide, including Shanghai EXPO, Florence Biennale or Sounds of Space Exhibition in Austria. Sekula’s academic work was published in the Journal of Forensic Radiology and Imaging, and the Journal of Nuclear Medicine. As a freelance journalist, Sekula produced numerous articles on altered states of consciousness, including a piece on Transcendental Therapy: Mysticism, Psychedelics and Mental Health for the prestigious Przekroj magazine.

Tracey Tee

Founder, Moms on Mushrooms

Tracey Tee has been actively involved in the “momosphere” for over 10 years, first co-creating and starring in the nationally touring cult-hit comedy show for moms, The Pump and Dump Show, while simultaneously co-producing the Band of Mothers Podcast, and serving as co-founder and CEO of The Pump and Dump Show’s umbrella brand, Band of Mothers Media. During the pandemic, and during her own journey with psilocybin Tracey began to feel called to support moms in a deeper and more meaningful way. In 2022 she launched an online community and digital microdosing courses created exclusively for moms called M.O.M. which stands for “Moms On Mushrooms.” Tee’s goal is to bring moms together through the sacred use of plant medicine for a shared journey of personal growth and healing.

Since its launch in 2022, M.O.M. has been featured on NPR, Good Morning America, Today Show, Piers Morgan, Rolling Stone Magazine, CBS Saturday Morning, NBC News, Romper Magazine, Café Mom, London Times and The Guardian, in addition to an appearance on Dr. Phil, defending the right to heal through microdosing. Tracey has spoken on panels for Rocky Mountain PBS, TAM Integration, Microdosing Collective and was an invited speaker at the MAPS Psychedelic Science 2023 Conference in Denver.

Mareesa Stertz

Filmmaker, community organizer, director of development at Global Psychedelic Society and media director at Lucid News

Mareesa Stertz is a filmmaker, storyteller, community organizer, and KRI certified Kundalini Yoga teacher. She is a cofounder and media director at Lucid News, and the producer and host of the documentary series, The Healing Powers (of Psychedelics and Other Mindful Practices), currently streaming on Gaia TV. Stertz is also director of strategy and communications for the Global Psychedelic Society. She has shared her stories of working with psychedelics on stages internationally as well as in education, for the Synthesis Practitioner Training Program, and teaches storytelling workshops in retreats and online for leaders and for psychedelic preparation. She is passionate about using story to illuminate the powerful transformation that comes from navigating trauma, and her work is heavily informed by her own journey of personal growth, which has taken her all around the world  filming with the curanderos of Peru to the holy men of India. She has a BA in Cinema at San Francisco State University, and her films have been featured by Gaia TV, Viceland, Indigenous Films, Merry Jane, and Participant. She is in development on a one-woman play that celebrates the adventure in healing, and is in post-production on a documentary chronicling her travels in Peru with ayahuasca, which she thought didn’t work for her. You can see her first feature length film on Damanhur, the Spiritual Intentional Community on Gaia TV. 

Bett Williams

Literary writer and psychedelic explorer

Bett Williams is the author of The Wild Kindness; A Psilocybin Odyssey, a memoir about growing mushrooms in the high desert of New Mexico. Her other works include The Wrestling Party and Girl Walking Backwards, which was named as one of the ten best young adult queer novels by Vogue Magazine. She has written for several publications including DoubleBlind, OUT Magazine, Flaunt, Lucid News, and Lenny Letter.

Rosalind Stone

Co-Creator of Semantrix Sessions, communications and media specialist

Rosalind Stone is the co-creator of the Semantrix Sessions, the first ever course to spotlight the co-action of language and perception in relation to psychedelic experiences. Designed with Reanne Crane and launched in September 2022, each session facilitates a deeper knowledge of psychedelic topics, instigates an enriched understanding of the use of language, and celebrates all inevitably arising interconnectivity. Stone is Breaking Convention’s press officer and partnerships coordinator. Turning to drugs from an English Literature background, she has specialized in media and communications on psychedelics since 2016. Stone has worked as the outreach manager for the Conservative Drug Policy Reform Group where she co-authored research, including Making UK Drug Policy a Success: Reforming the Policymaking Process. She has also coordinated coverage and events for organizations including the Psychedelic Press, the Beckley Foundation, the Berlin Psychedelic Salon and student harm reduction collective drugsand.me.

Zoe Cormier

Author, journalist, science writer, broadcaster, and public speaker

Zoe Cormier is an author, journalist, science writer, broadcaster and public speaker with an academic training in zoology, coupled with an upbringing in the music industry. Some think of her as a specialist—both from life experience as well as rigorous academic research—in the science of sex, drugs and music. She devoted her first book to this unholy trinity: Sex, Drugs and Rock n’ Roll: The Science of Hedonism and the Hedonism of Science, hand-picked by The Guardian as a “must-read science book”, and ranked as the 7th best book of 2014 by legendary record shop Rough Trade. Based in London, she is represented by the Artists Partnership, an agency that lists performers such as Idris Elba, Harvey Keitel, Kim Cattrall in their roster.

Anne-Marie Armour

Psilocybin-assisted therapist, RSW, psychedelic and harm reduction consultant

Anne-Marie Armour is a registered social worker practicing on the unceded traditional and ancestral territories of the Lekwungen people known as Victoria, BC. With immense gratitude and respect, she acknowledges that the entire field of psychedelic-assisted therapy and research would not exist without the wisdom and efforts of Indigenous Knowledge Keepers over the centuries. 

Anne-Marie has been working in the field of mental health for the past 12 years and holds degrees in Psychology (BA) and Social Work (BSW & Clinical MSW), including 7 years of front line harm reduction experience in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. She is a current Board Member with the Overdose Prevention Society (OPS), and former Executive Assistant & Volunteer Coordinator with the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) Canada and Registered Social Worker with TheraPsil, where she co-created a Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy for Substance Use Disorders Pilot Program and helped patients at end-of-life apply for section 56 exemptions to access legal Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy. Anne-Marie is a passionate advocate for increasing access to psychedelic-assisted therapies and reforming drug policy to include the voices and perspectives of people with lived and living experience.

Mitsu Puri

Co-founder and executive director of the Asian Psychedelic Collective

Mitsu Puri is the co-founder and executive director of the Asian Psychedelic Collective. She recently completed a master’s in clinical psychology from Columbia University, where her research focus was on spiritual awareness pedagogy and the therapeutic potential of spirit mind body interventions on wellbeing. She is eager to explore the clinical, philosophical, socio-cultural and historical dimensions of alternative states of consciousness and contemplative practices, especially those that emanate from her ancestral lands. Puri is a research assistant at the Psychedelic Humanities Lab at the New School for Social Research in New York City. She has a background in substance use treatment and harm reduction, and currently volunteers as a psychedelic peer supporter at Fireside Project. She was born in India and raised in Indonesia and Malaysia before she immigrated to the United States. 

Harpreet Lakhan

Director of operations at the Asian Psychedelic Collective

Harpreet Lakhan is the director of operations of the Asian Psychedelic Collective. Lakhan is a Registered Nurse and has worked with vulnerable populations such as the elderly, individuals living with physical disabilities, and clients living in subsidized housing. She also worked as a clinical supervisor in home and community care. Since then, Lakhan has transitioned sectors to explore her passion in the field of psychedelics and to be of service to others in the psychedelic community. Lakhan currently volunteers at Fireside Project, offering emotional peer support to individuals during and after psychedelic experiences. Lakhan is a strong advocate for the safe use of psychedelics, specifically for spiritual, mental and emotional well-being.  She was born in Toronto, Canada to immigrant parents from Punjab, India.

Sara Reed

Program co-lead of The Psychedelic Liberation Training 

As an empathic leader, mental health futurist, and clinical researcher, Sara Reed examines the ways culture informs the way we diagnose and treat mental illness. She is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist that provides science based, culturally responsible treatment for those in need. She supervises and trains clinicians in providing culturally responsible mental health treatment. Reed’s prior research work includes participating as a study therapist on the psilocybin-assisted therapy research study for major depression at Yale University. Before joining the research team at Yale, Reed was a sub-investigator and Study Coordinator for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies Phase 2 MDMA Clinical Study of posttraumatic stress disorder.

Geraldine Manson

Vancouver Island University Elder-in-Residence, Indigenous mentor to the Roots To Thrive Psychedelic Therapy Community Practice Group

Geraldine Manso is the Vancouver Island University’s Elder-in-Residence, where she works directly with students and Faculty in Health and Human Services programs at VIU and the Shq’apthut/Gathering Place. She serves as a mentor for the Roots To Thrive program, Canada’s first and only multidisciplinary, non-profit healthcare practice to legally offer evidence-informed, multi-week, group therapy programs that use a community of practice model, uniquely designed to address trauma and to promote resilience, and to also include the option of psilocybin-assisted and ketamine-assisted group therapy. She shares her Traditional Knowledge to work with all programs within the Health & Human Services and within the Shq’apthut programs. She is a member of the Snuneymuxw First Nation and is married to Earl Manson. Manson has worked for her community since 1980 and she credits her cultural wisdom and education to her Elders, present, and Elders who have passed on. As the Elders’ Coordinator for Snuneymuxw First Nations, she has carried many other responsibilities that relate to culture and traditions in the community. Geraldine has served 12 years as an elected council-member and I continue to be mentored in the traditional cultural practices of the Snuneymuxw people.

Marta Kaczmarczyk

Psychedelic sitter, co-founder of The Psychedelic Society of The Netherlands

Marta Kaczmarczyk is an optimisation and biohacking consultant, and a trained psychedelic sitter.  She was an assistant facilitator at the Synthesis Retreat, and a co-creator of the program and Client Experience Coordinator at the Longevity Centre. She has previously trained and worked as a carer and sitter for psychedelic emergencies during psychedelic festivals and as part of The Psychedelic Society of The Netherlands—an organization that she co-founded. At the moment she is working on preparing safety guidelines for participants of retreats and ceremonies taking place in the Netherlands. Kaczmarczyk is featured in the upcoming documentary film series, The Psychedelic Chronicles.

Julia Bornemann

PhD Candidate, Center for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London

Julia Bornemann is a PhD candidate at the Center for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London. With a background in neuroscience, she has been involved in several psychedelic trials at Imperial. She now focuses her research on investigating the therapeutic potential of treating chronic pain conditions with psychedelic substances, including the use of psilocybin for fibromyalgia. Her special interests include embodiment, mindfulness, compassion, movement, and public involvement in research. 

Saleena Subaiya

Assistant professor, department of psychiatry at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, study lead on ketamine for long COVID

Saleena Subaiya completed training at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where they focused on research methodology as it applies to international disasters and pandemics. Currently, they are leading a study on ketamine as a treatment for depressive symptoms in Long COVID, and a prospective cohort study on ceremonial ayahuasca use and its impact on depression and anxiety in a global sample of participants. They are intersex from birth.

Britta Love

Activist, writer, certified somatic sex educator

Britta Love (femme – she/they) weaves between the worlds of conscious sexuality and psychedelic ritual, with a through line of social justice and embodied consent. They became an advocate for sex worker’s rights as an undergraduate at the London School of Economics in 2007, and has been a writer and activist pushing for the decriminalization of drugs and sex work ever since. Love is a certified somatic sex educator through the Institute for the Study of Somatic Sex Education, has trained with Betty Martin’s School of Consent and is a certified circle keeper with the Planning Change Restorative Justice Certification Program under the tutelage of Kay Pranis. Love is currently completing a research-based memoir about healing and awakening through altered states induced by sex and drugs, based on her Consciousness Studies thesis at Goddard College. They are also in the process of launching the Sex Strike // Strike for Pleasure in response to the US abortion bans.

Sutton King

Indigenous rights activist, public speaker, co-founder and president of Urban Indigenous Collective 

Sutton King, MPH, Nāēqtaw-Pianakiw (comes first woman), is Afro-Indigenous and a descendent of the Menominee and Oneida Nations of Wisconsin. She is a graduate of CMSV and NYU School of Global Public Health. She holds a bachelors in psychology, a minor in sociology and a masters in public health. She is an internationally recognized Indigenous rights activist, public speaker, published researcher, and social entrepreneur dedicated to developing and scaling innovative solutions to improve Indigenous health equity across sectors. Her focus centers access and benefit sharing and culturally appropriate methodologies within technology, healthcare and business.

King is the co-founder and President of Urban Indigenous Collective, an Indigenous lead public health NGO supporting access to culturally-tailored health and wellness services for self-identified Indigenous peoples in Lenapehoking (NYC) and the greater NYC area (NY, NJ, CT, PA) through community-based participatory research, advocacy, community programming, and direct services. As a survivor, she leads UIC’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Trans and Two-Spirit People (MMWIGT2S)NYC+ program working to fill a gap in research, advocacy, and education to the public about the MMIWGT2S crisis and epidemic. She is the Co-Founder of ShockTalk, a culturally tailored telemental health platform that facilitates culturally appropriate patient-provider relationships for Indigenous communities through AI technology and social media. She joins the Indigenous Medicine Conservation Fund as a Program Manager of Engagement and Benefit Sharing sitting on the operations committee. She facilitates a relationship between the Psychedelic Space and Indigenous traditional cultures that centers Indigenous sovereignty. In 2021, she was named an NYU Female Founder and “one of the 100 most influential people in psychedelics” by Psychedelic Invest and PsychedStudio. In 2022, Business Insider recognized her as one of the 16 most influential women shaping Psychedelics.

Amanda Feilding

Founder of The Beckley Foundation, drug policy reformer, lobbyist, and research coordinator

Amanda Feilding, countess of Wemyss and March, is an English drug policy reformer, lobbyist, and research coordinator. She has been called the “hidden hand” behind the revival of psychedelic science, and her contribution to global drug policy reform has also been pivotal and widely acknowledged. Feilding was first introduced to LSD in the mid-1960s, at the height of the first wave of scientific research into psychedelics. Impressed by its capacity to initiate mystical states of consciousness and heighten creativity, she quickly recognised its transformative and therapeutic power. In 1996, Feilding set up The Foundation to Further Consciousness, changing its name to the Beckley Foundation in 1998. She realized that the potential harms and benefits of cannabis and psychedelics could only be adequately assessed by developing a sound scientific understanding of their mechanisms of action. Through the Foundation, she set about using cutting-edge brain imaging technologies to examine the neurophysiological changes underlying altered states of consciousness.

Feilding has commissioned and published over 40 books, reports, and policy papers which have analyzed the negative consequences of the criminalisation of drug use, and laid out possible alternatives which could protect public health, diminish violence and governmental costs, and protect human rights. Through her leadership of the Beckley Foundation’s Science Programme, Feilding has initiated much ground-breaking research and has co-authored over 80 scientific articles published in peer-reviewed journals. She collaborates with leading scientists and institutions around the world to design and direct a wide range of scientific research projects (including clinical trials) investigating the effects of psychoactive substances on brain function, subjective experience, and clinical symptoms, with a focus on cannabis, psychedelics, and MDMA. This research has not only shed light on the mechanisms of action and therapeutic potential of these substances, but also on consciousness itself. This has led to a groundswell of interest in, and recognition of, the possible benefits that careful use of these extraordinary compounds can bring. The research that Feilding has initiated has shown that psychedelics hold great promise in helping individuals with illnesses such as treatment-resistant depression and addiction.

Rosalind Watts

Clinical psychologist, clinical lead for Imperial College London’s psilocybin trial, founder of ACER Integration

Rosalind Watts is a clinical psychologist, a mother, and a nature lover. Her work as the Clinical Lead for Imperial College London’s psilocybin trial has made her one of the most prominent voices and minds in the field of psychedelic research. Watts has been named as one of the 50 Most Influential People in Psychedelics as well as one of the top Top 16 Women Shaping the Future of Psychedelics. However, what sets Watts apart is her focus on integration, harm-reduction and inclusion in the psychedelic space. Watts builds tools and structures to foster connectedness after psychedelic experiences, finding inspiration for their design from nature. Through all her work, Watss’s main learning has been that safe and effective use of psychedelics requires substantial integration support. As a result, she co-founded the UK’s first psychedelic integration group, and in 2022 launched ACER (“Accept, Connect, Embody, Restore”) Integration—a global online integration community where participants follow a 13-month process together to connect more deeply to the self, others, and nature. 

Michelle Baker Jones

Lead guide, Imperial College London’s psilocybin trial, psychotherapeutic counselor, integration specialist

Michelle Baker-Jones is a member of the Psychedelic Research Team at Imperial College London. She was a lead guide on Psilodep 2 trial, which is comparing psilocybin to antidepressants as a form of treatment for depression. She also offers individual psychedelic integration for people who are struggling to process psychedelic experiences and co-facilitates a monthly Psychedelic Integration group with Rosalind Watts. Baker-Jones is also an integrative psychotherapeutic counselor in private practice, based in London.

Gail Bradbrook

Activist, co-founder, Extinction Rebellion

Gail Bradbrook has been researching, planning, and training for mass civil disobedience since 2010 and is a co-founder of the social movement Extinction Rebellion (XR), which has spread internationally since its launch in October 2018; there are more than 1150 XR groups in 75 countries. Bradbrook has been arrested several times for acts of civil disobedience, and for these actions she faces time in jail. In a 2019 talk at the Breaking Convention conference on psychedelics, Bradbrook shared her story of building a relationship with ayahuasca and how her experience greatly influenced the development of XR. She also called for “mass psychedelic disobedience”, in protest against the criminalization of mind-altering substances. She has trained in molecular biophysics, and her talk on the science of the ecological crisis, the psychology of active participation, and the need for civil disobedience has gone viral and inspired many to join XR. She is from Yorkshire, the mother of two boys, the daughter of a coal miner, was named by GQ as one of the top 50 influencers in the UK, and honored in a Woman’s Hour Power list for her part in instigating a rebellion against the British Government. She is currently working on a major new global programme of work called XR Being the Change.

Jasmine Virdi

Psychedelic writer, future psychedelic practitioner

Jasmine Virdi (she/her) is a writer, educator, poet, activist, and space-holder based in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Her work focuses on psychedelics, spirituality, and ecology and has been featured in DoubleBlind Magazine, Open Democracy, Psychedelics Today, Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines, Psychedelic Press, and Lucid News. Jasmine has an MSc in Transpersonal Psychology and offers private coaching and mentorship to clients.

Since 2018, she has collaborated with the independent publisher Synergetic Press, where her passions for ethnobotany, consciousness, and regeneration converge. Additionally, she volunteers for Fireside Project’s psychedelic peer-support line, aligned with their mission to provide compassionate, accessible, and culturally responsive support to all. Often breaking away into the wilderness, Jasmine can be found wherever there are birds singing. You can follow her work and find out about her offerings here .

Monnica Williams

Clinical psychologist, public speaker

Monnica Williams is a board-certified licensed clinical psychologist and associate professor at the University of Ottawa in the School of Psychology, where she is the Canada Research Chair in Mental Health Disparities. She is also the clinical director of the Behavioral Wellness Clinic in Connecticut, where she provides supervision and training to clinicians for empirically-supported treatments. Prior to her move to Canada, Williams was on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School , the University of Louisville in Psychological and Brain Sciences , where she served as the director of the Center for Mental Health Disparities, and the University of Connecticut. Williams’ research focuses on African American mental health, culture, and psychopathology, and she has published over 100 scientific articles on these topics. 

Current projects include the assessment of race-based trauma, unacceptable thoughts in OCD, improving cultural competence in the delivery of mental health care services, and interventions to reduce racism. This includes her work as a PI in a multisite study of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD. She also gives diversity training nationally for clinical psychology programs, scientific conferences, and community organizations. Williams is a member of the American Psychological Association (APA), having served as the diversity delegate from Kentucky for the APA State Leadership Conference for two consecutive years. She has served as the African American SIG leader for Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT), and she serves as an associate editor of The Behavior Therapist and New Ideas in Psychology. She also serves on the editorial board ofCognitive Behaviour Therapy, and the Journal of Obsessive Compulsive and Related Disorders. She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the International OCD Foundation, and co-founded their Diversity Council. 

Dr. NiCole Buchanan

Professor, psychologist, scholar, activist

NiCole Buchanan is a professor, psychologist, interim board chair and CEO of the Board of Psychedelic Medicine and Therapies, and Founder of Alliance Psychological Associates, PLLC in East Lansing, MI. She serves on the Racial Equity and Access Committee for the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicine and previously served as co-chair of the Inaugural Board of Directors for the American Psychedelic Practitioners Association. Buchanan is a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, four separate divisions of the American Psychological Association, and has received numerous national and international awards for her research, teaching, clinical work, and professional service. An accomplished writer and scholar, she has 120+ publications focusing on workplace behaviors and their impact on organizational climate, employee well-being, and professional development, equity and inclusion (in psychedelics, training, and organizations), epistemic exclusion and harassment. Her work has been highlighted in hundreds of media outlets including CBS News, the Huffington Post, and Essence Magazine and she is a featured speaker for several programs including TEDx and National Public Radio . Buchanan consults with organizations and personnel across the country, including medical professionals, attorneys, academic and practicing psychologists, human resource managers, and campus, city, and state police departments. 

Deidra Somerville

Executive director, Alchemy Community Therapy Centre

Born in Ramaytush Ohlone territory (San Francisco, CA), Deidra Somerville is a mother, activist, scholar, and healer whose work is intentional in organizing, co-operative development, healing from trauma, and advancing decolonized principles and practices in organizational spaces. Somerville is trained in clinical and liberatory-based healing strategies and draws upon these approaches in her work with clients and communities. She is a lifelong learner and carries this interest into the veins of her approaches to consulting, organizing and her work as a healer. She has conducted qualitative and quantitative research on cooperative finance, alternatives to youth incarceration, fundraising practices and community organizing.She is a proud graduate of the University of California at Santa Cruz and Boston University, and earned her PhD in community psychology at National Louis University. Somerville is the executive director of Alchemy Community Therapy Centre, which offers accessible ketamine therapy and ketamine therapy provider training, on unceded Ohlone land (Oakland, CA).

Carmen Ostrander

Counseling therapist

Carmen Ostrander is a first-generation Australian and psychedelic fringe dweller engaged in independent co-research and practice in Vancouver. Her practice, Square Peg Therapy, provides low-barrier services to artists, queer, gender, and neuro-diverse peers, informed by Narrative Therapy and Transpersonal Art Therapy, supported by a history of engagement with the arts, and substance use in naturalistic, ceremonial and therapeutic contexts. Her deliberately secular approach, specializing in relational psycholytic protocols, straddles the considerable gap between medicalized and neo-spiritual substance-assisted therapies. Inspired by legacies of Bohemianism and performed at the intersections of class, queerness and creativity, Ostrander will share community-centered approaches that invite diverse practices and navigate the challenging inheritance of Psychedelic Medicine as it currently stands. Ostrander is on the advisory board of Therapsil, where she serves as Diversity Partner.

Jagpaul Kaur Deol

Clinical instructor, Therapsil

Jagpaul Kaur Deol is an assistant professor at UBC Faculty of Pharmacy and practices as a Clinical Pharmacist in both HIV/Infectious Diseases and Mental Health/Addictions with over a decade of experience in Cannabinoid Medicine and Psychedelic Harm Reduction. She is currently the Clinical Instructor for Therapsil, advocating for psychedelic access for people navigating end-of-life distress. Her work has spanned from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, BC’s rural communities and beyond into international humanitarian and medical aid via WHO, UN, MSF and other NGO’s. In addition to her pharmacy practice on the DTES she is a volunteer street medic, providing harm reduction and overdose response services. She is passionate about traditional healing modalities + wellness practices as she is an Ayurvedic Practitioner and a vocal advocate for drug policy reform to include equal access to psychedelics. She has been delving into consciousness and the human experience for many years and has a strong desire to provide assistance to patients struggling with end of life distress. Deol spends any free time immersed in nature or leading academic journal clubs on psychedelics.

Charlotte Jackson

Clinical counselor and clinical supervisor at Therapsil

Charlotte Jackson is a registered clinical counselor who has worked in the field of mental health and substance Use in Vancouver, BC, since 2001. She is currently a clinical supervisor at Therapsil, a small non-profit coalition dedicated to helping Canadians in medical need access legal, psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy and medical psilocybin. Jackson held the position of team lead with Vancouver Coastal Health for many years, providing clinical supervision to both mental health and outpatient substance use teams. She is a Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies-trained therapist and was a sub-investigator in the Phase III clinical trials using MDMA assisted therapy for individuals with severe PTSD. Jackson is currently an associate supervisor with MAPS, supporting therapists-in-training in the European MAPS sponsored MDMA clinical trials.

She works from a harm reduction, strengths based, trauma-informed perspective, as well as from an anti-oppression framework. She works with individuals seeking support with trauma, anxiety and depression as well as those wishing to explore the integration of psychedelic experiences and other expanded states. Charlotte is interested in serving communities and populations that have not historically been centered in mainstream medical, psychological, and research environments. She is passionate about supporting the increased access of emerging treatments to those who have been excluded from care. She is an expert in the area of substance use treatment and works from a harm reduction, client centered, anti-oppression framework. She also develops and delivers curriculum related to substance use care and psychedelic assisted therapies.

Noor Ramadhan

Breathwork facilitator and psychedelic researcher, member of The Arab Psychedelic Society and the University of British Columbia Psychedelic Society

Noor Ramadhan is an Iraqi breathwork facilitator and psychedelic researcher working for Roots to Thrive and the University of British Columbia. Her research is currently focused on how set and setting play a role in ketamine-assisted therapy and has previously worked on her own research project investigating the influence of psychedelic use on substance abuse severity. She has also worked on the Clairvoyant study, which is a clinical trial investigating the safety and efficacy of psilocybin-assisted therapy for alcohol use disorders. Additionally, she formerly held the position of Vice President at the UBC Psychedelic Society and is currently actively involved in running the Arab Psychedelic Society. Her goal is to introduce psychedelic-assisted therapy to the Middle East and improve its accessibility for marginalized populations.

Ellen Wong

Death and grief companion, psychedelic guide, certified Somagetics practitioner, breathwork guide

Ellen Wong is a  Shandong-Taiwanese-American entheogenic death and grief companion, supporting people holistically across the physical, emotional and spiritual bodies using tools like breathwork, inner child somatic root healing, micro/macrodose journeying, and spiritual altar work. She is a certified Somagetics (previously known as Transpersonal Energy Healing) practitioner and breathwork guide, currently serving as a resident facilitator for DoubleBlind Magazine. Wonghas extensive training in core shamanic and animistic practices, trip sitting and microdosing, in addition to becoming a certified death doula. As an Asian-American woman, Wong is dedicated to serving people of the global majority, and acknowledges her gratitude for the Tongva and Cahuilla ancestral lands where she lives and works, alongside her Taiwanese and Chinese ancestral lineages. 

Zoe Helene

Founder, Cosmic Sister, artist, cultural activist

Zoe Helene is an artist, environmentalist, and cultural activist best known for women’s empowerment and sacred psychedelic plants and fungi such as cannabis, ayahuasca, peyote, iboga, Wachuma (San Pedro), and psilocybin mushrooms, and for Psychedelic Feminism, a concept she originated and popularized in support of women in psychedelics. Her personal work with psychedelic medicines from the earth continues to deepen her determination to help protect Earth’s diverse biological abundance. She believes that creating a true balance of power across the gender spectrum—globally—is the only way humans and non-humans will survive, and that it is our moral responsibility to protect and defend the rights of earth and non-human earthlings. Helene founded Cosmic Sister, an environmental feminist collective and creative studio for people who understand that the current, grossly imbalanced “power-over” patriarchal model will continue to lead humans down a devolutionary path that will eventually end in the destruction of life on Earth as we know it. Cosmic Sister’s psychedelic feminism educational advocacy projects promote sacred plant spirit medicines as a way to “jump-start rapid cultural evolution,” starting with women’s empowerment and representation. She has amplified the voices of underrepresented women in the psychedelic space by sponsoring their work at psychedelic and plant medicine conferences around the world. 

Anja Loizaga-Velder

Psychotherapist, psychedelic researcher, founding member of Nierika Institute for Intercultural Medicine

Anja Loizaga-Velder is a German-Mexican psychotherapist who has been investigating the therapeutic potential of the ritual use of psychedelic plants for over twenty years, specializing in humanist and transpersonal psychology, the study of consciousness, music therapy and ethnopsychotherapy. She is a founding member and director of research and psychotherapy at the Nierika Institute for Intercultural Medicine in Mexico, holds an MA degree in Psychology from the University of Koblenz/Landau, a PhD in Medical Psychology from the Heidelberg University in Germany, and is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Health Sciences at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). As part of her scientific work she wrote her master’s thesis and her doctoral thesis on the use of ayahuasca for the treatment of addictions, as well as collaborating on a research project on the ritual use of ayahuasca for eating disorders. Loizaga-Velder has published several articles in international academic journals and book chapters on topics of traditional medicine and mental health, and has been invited to speak at several psychedelic and plant medicine conferences around the world. 

 Jessica “Jaz” Cadoch

Co-ecosystem director at The Global Psychedelic Society, cultural and medical anthropologist, co-founder of ALKEMI

Jessica Cadoch is a cultural and medical anthropologist bridging the grassroots and for-profit sectors of the psychedelic movement. Co-founder of ALKEMI, a consulting firm for psychedelic ethics and accountability, Cadoch has contributed substantially to the development of Colorado’s Natural Medicine Health Act. Cadoch serves as the co-ecosystem director with The Global Psychedelic Society, a collaborative initiative to foster cooperation, knowledge sharing and connection with folks interested in psychedelics and plant medicine, around the world. 

Adriana Kertzer

Founder and principal at Plant Medicine Law Group

Adriana Kertzer is the founder and principal at Plant Medicine Law Group, a psychedelics and cannabis law firm. She is on the board of Doctors for Drug Policy Reform and a member of the Psychedelic Bar Association and New York City Bar Association’s Committee on Drugs and the Law. Plant Medicine Law Group is a psychedelics and cannabis law firm active in New York, California, Colorado, Georgia, and Oregon. Their mission is to expand equitable access to psychedelics and cannabis plant medicine by helping companies and clinicians succeed in a complex, emerging market. 

Michelle Lhooq

Music and drugs journalist, author

Michelle Lhooq is a music and drugs journalist, and author of the stoner cult classic, WEED: Everything You Want to Know But Are Always Too Stoned to Ask. She writes a Substack newsletter called Rave New World, and throws a party called Weed Rave. After studying Comparative Literature at Columbia University, Lhooq was a music editor at VICE in NYC from 2014 to 2017, covering electronic music and global nightlife. Since moving to Los Angeles, her writing has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, Bloomberg, New York Magazine, GQ, and others. Lhooq’s work is centered on the themes of counterculture and political autonomy—through the critical lens of underground parties, street protests, and drugs. Lhooq has been interviewed in PAPER, i-D, Out, and Study Hall. She has also hosted podcasts, documentaries, and panels for Boiler Room, VICE, Red Bull, Thailand’s Wonderfruit Festival, and CTM Berlin. As a consultant on emerging trends, her clients have included WGSN and The Future Laboratory.

Christine Diindiisi McCleave

CEO, National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition

Christine Diindiis McCleave, enrolled citizen of the Turtle Mountain Ojibwe Nation, is the past CEO of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition. She is currently a doctoral student in Indigenous Studies at the University of Alaska Fairbanks with a focus on entheogenic plant medicines and Indigenous knowledge systems. With a B.S. in communication studies and an M.A. in leadership, she conducted her master’s thesis on Native American spirituality and Christianity and the spectrum of Native spiritual practices today including peyote religion. She has pioneered an unprecedented national research scope, spoken at the United Nations in New York and Geneva, and helped write a bill for a truth and healing commission in the U.S. Her work continues to concentrate on the intersection of cultural, political, and spiritual agency for global Indigenous Rights and the healing of Indigenous historical trauma as a generational survivor of U.S. Indian Boarding Schools. She is also a member of the board for the Psychedelic Society of MN and lives in Minneapolis. 

Yuria Celidwen

Researcher, scholar, public speaker

Yuria Celidwen is Indigenous Nahua and Maya, born into a family of mystics, healers, poets, and explorers from the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico.  Her research examines the experience of self-transcendence in Indigenous ‎contemplative traditions wide-reaching, and how its embodiment enhances prosocial and ‎pro-environmental behavior towards what she suggests is an “ethics of belonging” – ethics, compassion, kindness, reverence, and a sense of awe, ‎love, and sacredness.‎ Her interdisciplinary ‎approach intersects Indigenous studies, cultural ‎psychology, and contemplative science to bridge Indigenous and Western methodologies for ‎epistemological equity. Within this work, she suggests an Earth-based identity to ‎encourage relational wellbeing, purpose, and actions toward planetary flourishing. She emphasizes the reclamation, revitalization, and transmission of Indigenous wisdom and the ‎advancement of the rights of Indigenous Peoples and the rights of Mother Earth. ‎She co-chairs the Indigenous Religious Traditions Unit of the American Academy of Religion and is a contemplative faculty and scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. Celidwen has worked with the United Nations, and is a senior fellow at the Othering and Belonging Institute. In 2023, she co-authored and published a scientific review paper on ethical principles of traditional Indigenous medicine to guide western psychedelic research and practice. She is committed to the reclamation, revitalization, and transmission of our Indigenous wisdom for social and environmental justice.

Jessika Lagarde 

Plant medicine facilitator, integration coach, co-founder of Women On Psychedelics

Originally from Brazil, Jessika Lagarde is an experienced plant medicine facilitator, integration coach, educator, and Women On Psychedelics co-founder. She provides one-on-one coaching, sessions, and group ceremonies for women going through life transitions, such as grief, career change, relationship break-ups, motherhood, or moving countries. Since 2020, she has produced content for Women On Psychedelics, where her passion for storytelling, women’s empowerment and psychoactive substances converge. Women On Psychedelics exists to bring awareness about the benefits and risks of psychedelics use for women and encourage all of us to make well-informed choices about their therapeutic potential and transformational capacities. In 2021 she was listed among the “40 Under 40 Outstanding BIPOC Leaders in Drug Police in the USA” by the SSDP, and in the article “9 Women of Color Creating A More Inclusive Psychedelic Movement” by Psychedelics Today. Jessika’s goal as an advocate for psychedelics is to work towards the normalization of these substances and the end of the stigmatization of women’s mental health and women’s drug use.

Mary Carreón

Journalist, co-host and co-founder of Hyphae Leaks Podcast

Mary Carreón is an independent journalist, editor, copywriter, and podcaster from Southern California. Her work has appeared in Insider, Billboard, KCRW/NPR, High Times Magazine, DoubleBlind Magazine, Forbes, OC Weekly, LA Weekly, and many other publications. Mary reports on Schedule I drugs, culture, the environment, and often where these worlds intersect. Her reporting also touches on the underbelly of wellness culture trends. Carreón’s written stories on pesticides, nuclear waste, local water politics, cannabis and psychedelics drug policy, the sustainability of cannabis cultivation, hemp “meat” and other alternative meats, the sustainability and conservation of Palo Santo, labor issues in the crystal trade, the collapse of California’s cannabis industry, buying drugs on the internet, the emergence of new music genres for the use of psychedelic therapy, the mad honey trade, how the DEA believes it has the power to determine the legitimacy and sincerity of entheogenic religions, and much more. Most of Carreón’s work aims to humanize drug culture and explore the real-world impacts of drug policies that impact access and the environment. As a third-generation Mexican and Guatemalan, she’s also dedicated to amplifying Latine and BIPOC voices, issues, and perspectives. Carreón is currently co-host and co-creator of Hyphae Leaks, a podcast presented by Psychedelics Today that uses community discourse as fodder to navigate difficult conversations with relevant figures to help listeners understand the real stories behind big issues regarding drug industries, culture, and policy.

Mariela de la Paz

Indigenous visionary plant medicine artist

Mariela de la Paz is a Chilean-born artist whose bold, transcendental paintings evoke her prolific training,  research and practice in modern fine art, contemporary shamanism, ritual use of psychedelic plants and fungi, and Mesoamerican, Andean and Amazon cultures. De La Paz’s paintings offer a glimpse into her personal journey of lineage reclamation and healing, while reflecting the ancient traditions of sacred ritual and invoking a universal, ancestral memory and resonance. 

Lucy Bennally

Board member of the Indigenous Medicine Conservation Fund

Lucy Benally is from the Dine Nation, located in the 4-Corners area of the United States of America. She is of the Tabaaha (Edgewater) Clan, born for the Ashihii (Salt) Clan, Maternal Grandftaher is of the Taachiinii (Red Streak running into the water) Clan and her paternal grandfather is of the Bit’ahnii (Folded Arm ) Clan. Married to Steven S. Benally with three children and three grandchildren. With a BS. Degree in Education, M.A. in Bilingual Education, and as a retired educator, she is a founding member of the Youth Committee with Azee’ Beenahagha of Dine Nation in educating Dine Youth on Peyote conservation, reconnection and instilling essential life skills and information on Peyote way of life for their sustainability, stability and security. A firm believer in the conservation, protection and preservation of sacred plant medicines.

Maya Fern

Hypnotherapist, Oregon Psilocybin Program Coordinator, instructor in SoundMind Psychedelic Facilitator Training Program

Maya Fern is a queer, trans woman, and board-certified hypnotherapist living in Eugene, Oregon. She is SoundMind Institute’s Oregon Psilocybin Program Coordinator and Instructor in the SoundMind Psychedelic Facilitator Training Program. Throughout her life, psychedelics have played a profound role in deepening her understanding of her own identity, inspiring her to empower others in discovering how greatly the subconscious mind shapes our inner and outer worlds. She has a passion for understanding and working with marginalized communities in the psychedelic space and is dedicated to supporting their unique journey in a purposeful, intentional way. Fern has helped build the SoundMind Identity Initiative, creating free content around the use of psychedelics to explore aspects of one’s gender and sexuality identity. Together with Hannah McLane, Maya co-authored Trans-Affirming Care in the Psychedelic Space: A Guide for Therapists, Clinicians, Facilitators, and Healers.

Jeanna Eichenbaum

Psychotherapist, ketamine-assisted psychotherapy

Jeanna Eichenbaum is a psychotherapist with a private practice in San Francisco, specializing in sexuality and relationship concerns and trauma informed treatment, with an emphasis on serving the queer community. She graduated from the Masters of Social Welfare Program at the University of California-Berkeley with Honors, and was the director of the Transgender Recovery Project at Walden House, the first residential drug treatment program in the country serving the transgender community. She completed the certificate program in Psychedelic Assisted Psychotherapy at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and has a strong interest in the use of these medicines for healing. 

Aubrey Howard

Breathwork and psychedelic-assisted therapy facilitator

Aubrey Howard is an Afro-Indigenous queer woman of color, breathwork and psychedelic-assisted therapy facilitator based in Philadelphia. Howard served as a breathwork and ketamine-assisted psychotherapy facilitator at SoundMind Institute, as well as a guest instructor for their psychedelic facilitator course, which has trained over 200 facilitators nationwide. Aubrey has also led over 1,000 individual and group breathwork sessions.

Jessica Katzman

Clinical psychologist, Co-founder of Healing Realms

Jessica Katzman is a licensed clinical psychologist with over 20 years of experience as a therapist. She was trained at the California Institute of Integral Studies in both traditional and transpersonal perspectives on healing. She is the co-founder of  Healing Realms, a depth-oriented ketamine assisted psychotherapy outpatient private practice that supports those with treatment-resistant mental health concerns, as well as those without major diagnoses who are interested in gaining greater insight into themselves and their connection to life. She has presented at the ASKP and KRIYA Conferences on therapeutic ketamine, and facilitates an ongoing ketamine-assisted psychotherapy consultation group for medical and mental health professionals. In her private practice, she specializes in integrating psychedelic experiences, supporting the LGBTQQIAAP communities, treating substance use from a harm reduction perspective, addressing body image concerns from a Health at Every Size lens, mood/anxiety disorders, social justice conversations, and navigating non-traditional relationships and sexuality.

Irina Alexander

Co-founder of Alchemy Community Therapy Center, ketamine-assisted psychotherapy

Irina Alexander is a therapist who loves people who use drugs, people who live on the edges of society, and people whose existence is a radical act in and of itself. She is one of the original co-founders of Alchemy, finding passion in the intersections of community mental health, harm reduction, and psychedelic therapy. She’s worked for over a decade doing street-based outreach work, which she continues to do in San Francisco. Alexander has volunteered for several years with the Zendo Project and is currently also working as an Adherence Rater in the MAPS MDMA Clinical Trials.

Danielle M. Herrera

Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapist, educator

Danielle M. Herrera is an Ohlone Land (Oakland)-based psychotherapist providing psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, psychedelic integration, and harm reduction psychotherapy. She is a Queer, detribalized mixed-Indigenous woman of Chiricahua, Yaqui, Chicana, and Filipina descent. Her culture and background working within harm reduction treatment for unstably housed communities, individuals, and families informs her warm and emotion-focused decolonized framework, with attunement to systemic oppressions and violences that impact the individual within a complicated ecosystem. Herrera has used her passionate voice to support the decolonization of psychedelic and plant medicine, giving talks with Psychedelic Seminars and Students for Sensible Drug Policy, in addition to being featured in an Al Jazeera news documentary exploration of psilocybin mushrooms for healing. She enjoys working with spiritual emergence; Queer, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color; people who use drugs; and others outside of the mainstream. 

Sabrina Sierra

Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapist, manager at Alchemy Community Therapy Center

Sabrina Sierra is a Registered Associate MFT born and based in occupied Huichin—Berkeley/Oakland. She graduated from the second ever Depth Psychotherapy and Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy Clinical Training Program at Alchemy Community Therapy Center (formerly Sage Institute), following her M.A. in Integral Counseling Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). As both a therapist and manager at Alchemy, she’s invested in increasing access to ketamine-assisted therapy and psychedelic integration to people who are underserved by existing mental health resources and psychedelic treatment options. As a liberation-oriented clinician, Sierra loves working with BIPOC and queer folks, and has a particular interest in supporting people who may identify as psychiatric survivors or those who have experienced harm in psychedelic spaces. Sierra approaches the psychedelic therapy field with epistemic humility and concern for relationships of reciprocity.

Jazmin Pirozek

Public speaker, founder of Boom Bay Integrative Healing and Learning Centre, board member at Canadian Psychedelic Association

Jazmin Pirozek practices and teaches traditional and contemporary methods regarding the Boreal and Amazon forest plants. Currently, Pirozek is a consultant combining scientific and traditional methods, focusing on remediating chronic illnesses for the people of Northern Ontario, Canada. Pirozek has applied concepts of Nishnawbe Aski Nation Health Transformation perspectives in her work to combine Traditional and Contemporary Health practices to create better access to Integrative medicine for all.

Pirozek is an advisor with Science North, Ontario’s Science Education Centre and has written and narrated their planetarium production Under the Same Stars: Minwaadiziwin. She was invited to the UK for Breaking Convention 2019 and the Psychedelic Psychotherapy Forum 2020 to speak about the historical and current uses of traditional psychedelic medicines and their effective treatment of chronic mental health illnesses. Pirozek founded Boom Bay Integrative Healing and Learning Centre on Beautiful Lake of the Woods, Kenora, Ontario, set to continue construction into 2021. 

Robin Divine

Founder of Black People Trip

Robin Divine is the creator of Black People Trip, an initiative started to provide education and to advocate for equity and safe spaces for the Black community, especially Black womxn, in the psychedelic community. Divine founded Black People Trip in 2020 after her own experience with psychedelics for depression, and quickly noticed how challenging it was to find other Black people in the psychedelic and plant medicine space. 

She has provided education through community outreach workshops and has created safe space by helping individuals find supportive BIPOC therapists, facilitators, and healing spaces. In addition, she educates white therapists and facilitators on how to care for Black clients in psychedelic sessions. Divine is in the process of establishing the Entheogenic Equity Fund for Black Womxn—a non-profit organization that will help cover the cost of psychedelic therapy. Divine and her work with Black People Trip has been featured on several podcasts including Psychedelics Today and Mushroom Revival.

Gül Dölen

Founder of DölenLab, psychedelic researcher, associate professor at the Kavli Neuroscience Discovery Institute, professor at John Hopkins University School of Medicine

Gül Dölen earned her M.D., Ph.D. at Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she carried out seminal work on the pathogenesis of autism. Dölen completed postdoctoral training in the department of psychiatry at Stanford University, where she did paradigm-shifting work on the neural circuits underlying social reward learning. In 2014, Dölen began her faculty position at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Medicine. Her laboratory studies the neurotransmitters, brain circuits, developmental programs, and evolution of social behaviors, with a focus on diseases of the social brain, including autism, schizophrenia, PTSD, and addiction. Recently, her lab has become interested in uncovering how MDMA induces prosocial behaviors across species like humans, mice, and octopuses, as well as shedding light on the mechanisms underlying MDMA’s profound therapeutic effects. Dölen is the recipient of several prestigious awards including the Joukowsky Family Foundation Outstanding Dissertation Award, the Conquer Fragile X Rising Star Award, the Angus MacDonald Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the Society for Social Neuroscience Early Career Award, the Searle Scholars Award, and the Johns Hopkins University President’s Frontier Award.  

Mikaela de la Myco

Ceremonial facilitator, activist, educator

Mikaela de la Myco comes from a multicultural, first-generation Italian, Afro-caribbean, and Indigenous Mexican family who lived in Los Angeles, unceded Tongva territory. Her education path has led her down the ways of sacred intimacy work and the temple arts, Indigenous Mexican ceremony, womb healing facilitation in the ma’at tradition, all under the care of a colorful variety of teachers and guides. She now lives in San Diego, occupied Cahuilla and Kumeyaay territory, with her family and friends.  In her journey as a mushroom mother, she was called to create virtual and in-person spaces for psychedelic families and birthing people. Her primary focus in medicine work is to hold community and small group spaces where people can journey through the dark amenta to uncover their ancestor codes, explore and enjoy the body, and heal sexual trauma wounds with mushroom medicine—while keeping barriers for entry low. De la Myco uses her voice to advocate for reciprocity, repair and justice for those who have been harmed in psychedelic spaces.

Clancy Cavnar

Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapist

Clancy Cavnar offers therapy for depression, anxiety, trauma, addictions, LGBTQ+ issues, psychedelic integration, and complex childhood trauma.  She has over 25 years experience helping people with psychological issues and has been licensed in the State of California since 2015. She uses a combination of psychodynamic therapy with cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness, and deep listening. Cavnar has done research on, written, and edited several publications on the topic of psychedelics, including 10 books with co-editor Beatriz C. Labate, and has completed the Certificate in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies and Research from the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), and a certificate in chemical dependency treatment from University of California Berkeley Extension. She holds a Psy.D. from John F. Kennedy University, a master’s degree in counseling from San Francisco State University, and a master’s in fine art from the San Francisco Art Institute. Cavnar is on the board of the Chacruna Institute of Psychedelic Plant Medicines and helps coordinate the LGBTQ+ page on the site.

Devon Christie

Clinical instructor at UBC Department of Medicine, principal investigator and study therapist at MAPS MDMA Assisted Psychotherapy for PTSD, Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapist at Numinus Wellness Inc.

Dr. Devon Christie is a Clinical Instructor with UBC Department of Medicine, and a family doctor with a focused practice in chronic pain and mental health. She has been a clinical investigator and study therapist in MDMA-assisted therapy research for PTSD and chronic pain. She is certified in Functional Medicine, Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, Relational Somatic Therapy, Level 1 Internal Family Systems, MAPS MDMA-Assisted Therapy, and ketamine-assisted therapy. She teaches therapists in multiple acclaimed psychedelic-assisted therapy training programs, including CIIS, IPI, ATMA, VITAL, Numinus, and EmbodyLab, emphasizing ethical practice, mindfulness, and trauma-specific skills. Devon is passionate about broadening the dominant healthcare paradigm to include trauma-informed, bio-psycho-social advances in understanding of illness and wellness. She sees careful introduction of psychedelic-assisted therapies into modern healthcare as part of a movement toward an holistic approach that traditional systems of healing have long emphasized.

Kassandra Frederique

Executive director, Drug Policy Alliance

Kassandra Frederique is the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), a national nonprofit that works to end the war on drugs and build alternatives grounded in science, compassion, health, and human rights. During her time at DPA, Frederique has built and led innovative campaigns around policing, the overdose crisis, and marijuana legalization—each with a consistent racial justice focus. Her advocacy, and all of the DPA’s work, lies at the intersection of health, equity, autonomy, and justice. She has mobilized cities to rethink their approach to drug policy from the ground up and has helped bring the dialogue around safer consumption spaces to the national level through strategic organizing and partner development. Among other victories, Frederique was the architect of the campaign that cut the number of New York City marijuana arrests by more than 99 percent since 2010, ending the city’s infamous reign as the marijuana arrest capital of the country. Throughout her work, Frederique has been a powerful advocate for working closely with people who have been directly impacted by the war on drugs, and built strong alliances with partners in New York and beyond. She has been instrumental in grounding the national drug policy conversation around reparative justice and restitution for communities harmed by the war on drugs. 

Additionally, Frederique is actively working with the In Our Names Network and other efforts across the country to resist drug war-fueled state violence. She has been featured in the New York Times, MSNBC, USA Today, National Public Radio, and the Netflix documentary Grass is Greener. She has received numerous awards, including the Activist Award from SEIU32BJ, New York City Council Women of Distinction, VOCAL New York’s Joe Bostic Advocacy Award, National Advocates for Pregnant Women Emerging Leader award, and was recognized on both Essence Magazine’s Woke 100 and The Root’s ROOT100. 

Gabrielle Williams

Teacher, Medicine Woman, Holistic Healer

Born in Atlanta and raised in Maryland and Washington, D.C., Gabrielle is a multidisciplinary teacher, medicine woman, and holistic healer. Among her most significant influences have been womanist-centered education at Spelman College, her ancestors, being a boy mom, and her training in shamanic and ancestral healing in Brazil. In 2012, Gabrielle moved to Salvador, Brazil — a decision that would change the trajectory of her entire life. There, she became integrated into the local holistic and shamanic healing communities. In time, she was chosen by her shamans to apprentice as a medicine woman working with ayahuasca, hapé, and other Indigenous Amazonian sacred earth medicines. She provides journeys, workshops, courses, and spiritual retreats where she shares the wisdom of ancestral spiritual traditions and sacred earth medicines to aid BIPOC and allies seeking inner peace and paths to self-healing.

Sunumi (Sunny) Jackson

Entheogen Educator

Sunumi Jackson is the developer of a psilocybin curation platform called Thehealinghustlas, which offers personal growth classes, women’s circles, and assistance with the medicine integration process. She is an entheogen educator journeying with the community to expand trauma-informed integrations, medicine ceremonies, decolonization of medicine work, and, at the root of it all, remembering nature. Sunumi is a mother who has consumed and studied psilocybin use during pregnancy with the intention of finding additional healing modalities for postpartum hormonal imbalances and depression. She works with adaptogenic mushrooms, micro-dosing, and infusing foods with mushroom medicine.

Dayana Mendoza

Co-Founder, Heal the Heros & Coach

Dayana Mendoza co-founded Heal the Heros, a BIPOC collective of healers that offers plant medicines ceremonies and integration gatherings to those at the frontlines of social and inner change. A creatrix, energy healer, life coach, ceremony guide, and facilitator, Dayana’s most significant role is being a mother to her two children. Growing up without her mother, who passed away from cancer when she was just three years old, Dayana says plant medicine healed the wounded child within her so she could parent from an embodied, centered, grounded, and loving space. She works to support other mothers and women entrepreneurs in personal and professional growth, guiding clients in the process of self-transformation. Dayana, Yoga Journal’s first bilingual meditation practitioner, is passionate about introducing meditation and holistic practices to the Latinx community and newcomers. She’s also driven to empower mothers to reclaim sacred sovereignty through her coaching program, Spiritual Mamacitas.

Destiny Rok

Co-Founder, Black People Need Psychedelics

Destiny Rok, also known as The Hood Bruja, is a mother of four originally from Inglewood, CA. She and her partner of 10 years co-founded Black People Need Psychedelics, a non-profit that educates and curates safe spaces for people of color. Her love for plants led her to study botany and become a gardener tending to over 30 crops. As a homeschool mom, she has developed a curriculum that teaches children about edible, non-edible, medicinal, and psychoactive plants. She strives to be proof that there is another way to survive and thrive for POC that may come from her same walk of life.

Mother Jaguar

Afro-Indigenous Traditional Medicine Woman

Mother Jaguar has been initiated by diverse teachers and mentored by Indigenous shamans over the past decade. Now she leads Shamanic plant medicine ceremonies with profound wisdom and experience. Her high intentions and respect for ceremony honor authentic practices and evoke powerful healing and nurturing in her presence. She is blessed with a ceremonial singing voice and has received songs from the spirit teachers, which she uses to aid and amplify the healing of others. Her singing provides a vocal counterpart, blending beautiful ceremonial chants and sounds to maximize your healing experience. Mother Jaguar is in service to the Divine as a powerful medicine mother. She is a claircognizant empath, relationship coach, Tarot coach, and mentor. She hosts sacred workshops, events and Shamanic journeys, and has a group dedicated to creating healthier relationships called Yin & Yang Conversations. Since childhood, the healing path has been part of Mother Jaguar’s life, and she has evolved her knowledge into her own unique field of medicine work. She’s had the opportunity to work with many teachers and study many spiritual practices like Shamanism, Sufism, Taoism, Sukiyo Mahikari, Tibetan/Sanskrit chanting, Ausar Auset (Kemetic/Egyptian rituals), and Hermetic Teachings, and has been under the guidance and wisdom of teachers of the Dogon tribe from Mali, West Africa, in addition to being initiated by Pajé (Chieftess) Waxy Yawanawa out of Acre, Brazil to serve the sacred brew of Ayahuasca and Tobacco Snuff, Rapéh. Mother Jaguar founded Universal Bridge Church of Transformation, Diaspora Ascending LLC, and Medicine Women Circle Temple of Wisdom. Mother Jaguar has much experience to offer a fellow seeker as a pioneer, messenger, and intuitive guide.

Laura Dawn

Leadership Coach, Host, The Psychedelic Leadership Podcast

Through her signature Mastermind Programs and Plant Medicine Retreats, Laura Dawn weaves together science with ancient wisdom. She teaches business and thought-leaders, entrepreneurs, and creative professionals how to mindfully explore psychedelics and sacred plant medicines as powerful visionary tools for inner transformation, fostering emotional resiliency and unlocking new depths to our creative potential. Through mindset, somatic coaching, and plant medicine integration, she inspires leaders to align body, mind, and heart to get unstuck and take centered action in alignment with a more profound sense of purpose to influence meaningful change. Laura Dawn has a Master’s in Science specializing in Creativity and Change Leadership. Her degree explores the intersection between psychedelics and creative problem-solving, helping leaders and teams consciously work with sacred plant medicines to think more creatively and cultivate heart-centered leadership in order to unlock innovative solutions to the complex challenges we collectively face.

Skye Weaver

Lead Practitioner of Psychedelic Sitters School, Advanced Practitioner of Cannabis-Assisted Psychedelic Therapy

Skye Weaver is a medicine mentor, psychedelic self-care specialist, and earth medicine mentor supporting the international medicine community through mentorship, education, and ceremony. Her work aims to weave and remember the many pieces of the Self, bringing them back into integral wholeness. Skye lives in Southern California and offers online services for safe and continued support through COVID. She provides coaching and mentorship in integral medicine practices, living in right-relationship with all things, nervous system regulation, and sacred self-care practices. She hosts community psychedelic integration circles through InnerSpace Integration and the Aware Project, and founded NOT a Shaman School: An in-depth, experiential training for new and seasoned journeyers who feel called to practice integral medicine work and learn guardianship and facilitation skills. She hosts CannAbyss, a legal, above-ground cannabis practice for people interested in exploring non-ordinary states of consciousness in a safe, legal, and navigable way. Pre-COVID, she also offered Integrative Bodywork using stretch therapy, massage, Reiki, and vibrational therapies. Skye trained at the Hakomi Institute of California and with Medicinal Mindfulness, where she is now on the leadership team and helps co-facilitate trainings and retreats. She is also a certified yoga teacher, Reiki Master in the Usui & Karuna lineages, trained bodyworker in Thai Yoga Massage and stretch therapy, and has her MFA in acting from Harvard. 

Deanna Rogers

Clinical Counselor, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, Instructor, Integration Specialist

Deanna is a practicing clinical counselor, somatic experimenting practitioner, and instructor in British Columbia, Canada. She also studied and worked with Dr. Gabor Maté, and completed a one-year course in Compassionate Inquiry. Over the last decade, Deanna’s primary focus has been to study and work with plant medicines and psychedelics with the intention of healing and spiritual exploration. She has supported many aspects of plant medicine and psychedelic experiences for people from a variety of cultures and backgrounds, both individually and in groups. Her work has included assessment, program design, preparation, retreat facilitation, group processing, integration therapy, and training healthcare providers in psychedelic harm reduction and psychedelic-assisted therapy. She had the privilege of being introduced to this work through an indigenous context in Peru, where she worked alongside Shipibo indigenous healers at the Temple of the Way of Light for several years. This time expanded a lot of her limited Western concepts of what healing is and could be which she is deeply grateful for. She is currently consulting, designing curriculums, and teaching in a clinical context at Numinus. She also acts as a resident integration facilitator for DoubleBlind. Deanna uses an embodied focus and the practice of inquiry in her therapeutic work with clients, supporting them in uncovering their own truths and integrating different aspects of experience. Curiosity and compassion are two of the main tools that she uses in her therapy practice.

Julie Holland

Author, Psychiatrist

Julie Holland, M.D., is a psychiatrist specializing in psychopharmacology. As assistant professor of psychiatry at NYU School of Medicine, she spent her weekends running the psychiatric emergency room at Bellevue Hospital for nine years, publishing her memoir, Weekends at Bellevue, in 2009. She is the editor of two non-profit books: Ecstasy: The Complete Guide-A Comprehensive Look at the Risks and Benefits of MDMA, and The Pot Book: A Complete Guide to Cannabis. Proceeds from each book fund therapeutic studies. Dr. Holland’s fourth book is Moody Bitches: The Truth About the Drugs You’re Taking, the Sleep You’re Missing, the Sex You’re Not Having, and What’s Really Making You Feel Crazy. Published by Penguin Press, it is now available in eleven languages. Her newest book, Good Chemistry: The Science of Connection, From Soul to Psychedelic was published in June, 2020 by HarperWave. Dr. Holland lectures widely and has been quoted in Time, Harper’s, Slate, the Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal. Holland has appeared as a medical expert regarding mental illness and drug use on numerous television shows, including Today, Good Morning America, Dr. Oz, Katie Couric, and CNN. She runs a private practice in New York City and lives with her husband and two children in New York’s Harlem Valley.

Natalie Lyla Ginsberg

Global Impact Officer, MAPS, Co-Founder, Jewish Psychedelic Summit, Kosmic Kamels

Natalie Lyla Ginsberg (MSW) is the Global Impact Officer at MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, and the co-founder of the Jewish Psychedelic Summit.  She works for the ethical, accessible and safe integration of psychedelics into mainstream culture and society. Natalie joined MAPS in 2014, founding the Policy & Advocacy department, and serving as its director for 5 years. She also initiated and co-developed MAPS’ Health Equity program, including MAPS’ first MDMA Therapy Training for Communities of Color. Natalie is particularly inspired by psychedelics’ potential to assist in healing intergenerational trauma, for building empathy and community, and for inspiring creative and innovative solutions. She has also partnered with Israeli and Palestinian colleagues to develop a psychedelic peace-building study. Natalie received her B.A. in history from Yale, and her Master’s of Social Work (M.S.W.) from Columbia University. Natalie was born and raised in NYC and currently lives in LA. 

Rachel Yehuda

Professor of Neuroscience & Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine, Lead, Center for Psychedelic Psychotherapy and Trauma Research, Mount Sinai

Rachel Yehuda, Ph.D., is a Professor of Neuroscience and Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the lead of the recently established Center for Psychedelic Psychotherapy and Trauma Research. She is also Director of Mental Health at the Bronx VA Medical Center and Director of the Traumatic Stress Studies Program at Mount Sinai, a program she founded in 1991. Dr. Yehuda has a long track record of educational, clinical, and world-renowned scientific work in traumatic stress studies and recently completed the clinician training for MDMA-assisted psychotherapy sponsored by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS).

Lauren Taus

Psychedelic Psychotherapist, Educator

Lauren graduated summa cum laude from Barnard College at Columbia University with a BA in Religion before completing her Masters in Social Work at NYU. Lauren focuses on the matrices that hold individuals, rejecting mainstream efforts to pathologize people as if their symptoms could be isolated from their environments. Licensed as a clinical therapist in both New York and California, Lauren believes that life – and good psychotherapy – is psychedelic. She is trained by MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies), the Ketamine Training Center, and in the shamanic realms. Lauren feels honored to partner with plant and compound allies in her work, but will always hold loving relationships as the most essential medicine, and the only one we all really need. Lauren’s biggest prayer is to wake people up to the magic of life and what they’re part of. Lauren understands that the highest form of personal healing contributes to collective liberation. She feels particularly excited to share her work publicly. Lauren frequently contributes to stages at psychedelic conferences such as Meet Delic, Wonderland, and Trail Blazers. Her work has also been featured in magazines such as DoubleBlind, New York Magazine, Chacruna, the Guardian, and Forbes. 

Dr. Sonya Faber

Racial Equity and Access Committee Member, Chacruna Institute, Medical Science Liaison, Angelini Pharma, Adjunct Professor, Epidemiology & Public Health, University of Ottawa 

Dr. Sonya Faber graduated with a Master’s in Neurobiology from Brown University after completing her undergraduate work at the University of Pennsylvania. She continued her graduate studies at New York University, earning a PhD in molecular genetics with a thesis concentration in signal transduction. Over the last 15 years, she has had the opportunity and privilege to contribute equally to academic research institutes and commercial pharmaceutical development. Her interests lie in creating innovative solutions for projects that could benefit patients and the scientific community, partly by connecting with top scientists, industry, and regulatory agencies. She is interested in training the next generation of clinical researchers and has designed courses to teach scientific writing and Good Clinical Practice. Dr. Faber is a member of the Board of Directors of the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines and serves on Chacruna’s Racial Equity and Access Committee. Her engagement on Chacruna is on a volunteer basis and because she has a personal interest in the science of psychedelics. In recent years, she started an international collaboration with researchers at the University of Ottawa in Canada on several mental health disparities and social justice projects. She also served on the steering committee for the American Psychedelic Practitioners Association.

Annie Mithoefer

Registered Nurse, Psychedelic Psychotherapy Educator and Trainer

Annie Mithoefer, B.S.N., is a Registered Nurse living in Asheville NC, where she is now focused primarily on training and supervising therapists conducting MAPS-sponsored clinical trials, as well as continuing to conduct some MAPS research sessions in Charleston, SC.  Between 2004 and 2018, she and her husband, Michael Mithoefer, M.D., completed two of the six MAPS-sponsored Phase II clinical trials testing MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD, as well a study providing MDMA-assisted sessions for therapists who have completed the MAPS Therapist Training, and a pilot study treating couples with MDMA-assisted psychotherapy combined with Cognitive Behavioral Conjoint Therapy.  Annie is a Grof-certified Holotropic Breathwork Practitioner, is trained in Hakomi Therapy, and has 25 years experience working with trauma patients, with an emphasis on experiential approaches to psychotherapy.

Laura Mae Northrup

Somatic & Psychedelic Psychotherapist, Author

Laura Mae Northrup, MFT is the author of the book Radical Healership: How to Build a Values-Driven Healing Practice in a Profit-Driven World and the creator of the Inside Eyes podcast, an audio series about people using entheogens & psychedelics to heal from sexual trauma. Drawing from her work as a practicing somatic and psychedelic psychotherapist, she consults and speaks internationally on issues related to the treatment of sexual trauma. Her work focuses on defining sexual violence through a spiritual and politicized lens, mentoring healing practitioners in creating a meaningful path, and supporting the spiritual integrity of our collective humanity. She lives and works in Oakland, CA. 

Tanya Kammonen

Naturopathic Doctor, Molecular Biologist, Program Manager & Ayahuasca Technical Committee, Indigenous Medicine Fund

Tanya Kammonen is a Canadian living in the Amazon in Peru. She works primarily in the ayahuasca part of the Indigenous Medicine Fund’s projects, in addition to behind-the-scenes support. She is trained as a molecular biologist and naturopathic doctor, and worked in ayahuasca integration and retreat facilitation before diving into a more interculturally informed investigation into self, then healing, and ayahuasca. This inquiry led to an appreciation that the ceremonies we use in the West are still very active parts of the traditional cultures that kept them alive for generations, and she thinks conserving and protecting those cultures is essential for true integration and healing at a level that goes beyond self. Tanya is a mother of two small kids in an intercultural family, raising them in a way that integrates their ancestral language and traditions with her own Western roots.

Paula Kahn

Movement Strategist, Community Health Worker, Policy Advocate

Paula Khan (she/they), is a movement strategist, community health worker, policy advocate and consultant conjuring transformation at the intersections of indigenous rights, racial, migrant, environmental justice and the healing arts. Paula is interested in how plants, psychoactives, ceremonies, rituals, music, dances, and collective experiences can build historical memory and advance processes of conflict transformation, repair, and rematriation. They are currently working towards a Masters in Public Health at John Hopkins University, where they focus on the epidemiology of violence and policy design for violence prevention. Paula advocates for the rights of Indigenous, migrants, adolescents, and survivors within the psychedelic research and therapy ecosystem, and broader drug policy movement. Born and raised in the working-class suburbs of Los Angeles, Paula descends from Mayan, Ashkenazi Jewish and Iberian ancestries.

Xiaojue Hu

Psychiatrist, Therapist, Psychedelic Researcher, Assistant Clinical Professor at NYU School of Medicine

Xiaojue Hu, MD is a psychiatrist, therapist, and researcher. She is an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine, where she conducts psychedelic research investigating the impact of psilocybin on depression. Dr. Hu incorporates a humanistic, holistic approach to psychiatric practice through psychotherapy and responsible medication management. She has an insight-oriented, trauma-informed style that aims to treat clients from a whole perspective, integrating considerations on diet, lifestyle, beliefs, sociocultural contexts, as well as neurochemistry. Her areas of expertise and interest include cultural psychiatry (such as issues around identity, migration, race), women’s mental health, spirituality, and integrative approaches to mental health. Dr. Hu is also trained in psychedelic integration therapy and Focusing, a mind-body therapeutic approach. Dr. Hu is a diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. She completed her adult psychiatry residency and fellowship in psychosomatic medicine at NYU. She is a graduate of the Program in Liberal Medical Education at Brown University, where she received her M.D. and a B.A. in comparative literature. She has appeared on podcasts and radio shows, and has also been featured in GQ and World Journal.

Mati Engel

Spiritual Care Practitioner, Theologian, Practicing Performance Artist

Mati Esther Engel is a queer Jewish feminist theologian, Humanist chaplain, and community organizer. In her ministry work, she utilizes the arts, ritual, and experience design to facilitate meaningful rites of passage, community, and connection. Mati grew up in an Ultra-Orthodox Hassidic community in Boro Park, Brooklyn, and has since felt at home in multiple and diverse communal settings. Her love and commitment to the development of pop-up communities – be it in hospital settings, churches, forsaken synagogues, night clubs, or her kitchen table- has pushed her to develop her craft as an inclusive and compassionate leader with experience designing, facilitating, and leading vibrant and attuned spiritual spaces. Mati is a third-generation Holocaust survivor, with family originating from Munkatz, Hungary, and Ukraine. She simultaneously feels deeply connected to her Afghanistani and Pakistani ancestral roots.

Lorna Liana

CEO, EntheoNation

Lorna is the CEO of EntheoNation, a media company covering psychedelics, modern shamanism, and visionary culture. She is also the Founder of The Plant Spirit School, an online school offering workshops, programs, and 1-to-1 mentoring to individuals and professionals in the psychedelic and plant medicine sector. With over 25+ years of psychedelic exploration, Lorna is an advocate for the safe, intentional use of entheogens as a tool of self-mastery, as well as the practice of sacred reciprocity. She credits the intentional use of ancestral medicines, such as ayahuasca and magic mushrooms, for healing a lifetime of racial and colonial trauma. Her experience growing up in colonial Hong Kong, informs her work on plant medicine decolonization and inspires her to further the expansion of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the psychedelic sector. Over the last 20 years, Lorna s activist work in indigenous rights and cultural preservation has brought her around the world in support of a multitude of Indigenous communities, from the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico with the Zapatista, to the lowlands of the Ecuadorian Amazon, India, Nepal and Tibet. She has been a guest of Indigenous communities in restricted territories of Acre Brazil, with the Huni Kuin, Yawanaw, Ashaninka, Kuntanawa, and Puyanawa tribes. As a full-stack internet marketer, Lorna helps psychedelic brands, startups, retreat companies, guides, integration coaches and therapists grow their business with integrity.

Camille Sapara Barton 

Social Imagineer, Author & Politicized Somatics Practitioner

Camille Sapara Barton is a Social Imagineer, author, and politicized somatics practitioner dedicated to creating networks of care and livable futures. Rooted in Black feminism, ecology, and harm reduction, Camille uses creativity, alongside embodied practices, to create culture change in fields ranging from psychedelic-assisted therapy to arts education. They are certified in the Resilience Toolkit – a framework to reduce stress and grow our collective capacity to change the conditions that create harm. Their debut book Tending Grief: Embodied Rituals for Holding Our Sorrow and Growing Cultures of Care in Community, will be published in April 2024 by North Atlantic Books. In recent years, Camille has taught within various programs for psychedelic therapists in training on topics including cultural humility, somatic grounding, embodied ethics, and intersectionality. Former clients include Alma Institute, Psychedelic Coalition for Health, Synthesis, CIIS and MAPS. Since 2017, Camille has worked to ensure that MDMA Psychotherapy will be accessible to BIPOC and other communities disproportionately impacted by the war on drugs. They have written about drug policy and racial justice for publications including Vice, Talking Drugs, The MAPS Bulletin, and DoubleBlind. Camille has presented at conferences, including Psychedelic Science (2017 & 2023), Drug Policy Reform Conference (2017 & 2019), Harm Reduction International (2019), and Breaking Convention (2023).

Leia Friedwoman

Teacher, Writer, Mentor, Podcast Host, The Psychedologist 

Leia Friedwoman loves to connect the dots as a teacher, writer, and permaculturist.  Born and raised in Lowell, MA, Leia obtained her master’s degree in Clinical Psychology from Rivier University and worked as an in-home therapist before psychedelics turned her world inside out. She is now a psychedelic integration facilitator, a trainee in restorative and transformative approaches to conflict, a budding herbalist, and the host of a podcast called The Psychedologist: consciousness positive radio. Leia holds her permaculture design certificate from Starhawk’s Earth Activist Training, a program that emphasizes social permaculture and spirituality in activism. Leia has written for Wiley Encyclopedia, Psymposia, Lucid News, and DoubleBlind on topics relating to consciousness through the lens of social and environmental justice. You’ll find her teetering on a slackline in Costa Rica, up to her elbows in dirt from working in the garden, or nose in her laptop, grading papers for her psychology students. 

Lorien Chavez

Development and Operations Officer, Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines

Lorien Chavez is the Development and Operations Officer for the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines. Based in New Mexico, she received her BS in Psychology and Biology with a focus on Neurology. She is passionate about researching and using sacred plant medicines as a tool for generational epigenetic healing. She has been motivated to look deeper into how psychedelics may aid in the process of remapping our minds and nervous systems, and is eager to do it in a way that remains respectful and celebratory of the traditions these medicines are rooted in. Passionate about plant-based healing, Lorien is also the COO of CommuniTeas – an herbal education platform and production company working to bring holistic healing to communities in accessible formats.

Nicolle Hodges

Journalist, Author

Nicolle Hodges is a Toronto-based journalist, author, and sexual freedom philosopher. Hodges, a former CTV Vancouver television host and producer, left her previous life to pursue the world of sex, psychedelics, and shedding shame. Staying true to her media roots, she became the culture editor for Herb, an independent journalist for DoubleBlind, and host of The Dales Report — a media platform offering investment strategies for traders focused on psychedelics, cannabis, and crypto. In 2017, she launched Men Who Take Baths, a men’s mental health movement addressing masculinity, vulnerability, and gender equity. Hodges holds intimate conversations with men, interviewing them on what it means to “be a man” as her guest sits in a bubble bath.

She is also the founder of Girls Who Say Fuck, a pleasure-centric incubator for ideas that instigate change. Here, she launched a viral movement urging people to rebrand “virginity” to “sexual debut,” pushing back against heteronormative, patriarchal ideas of sexual expression and towards female empowerment. Her debut book, “Oh, the Places You’ll Go Oh Oh,” explores the power of female orgasms through Dr. Suess-style rhyme and illustration. Hodges is currently pursuing her BA in Psychology at York University to become a psychedelic-assisted therapist.

Sarah Tilley

Therapist, Founder & CEO of Beautiful Space 

Sarah Tilley is a psychedelic guide, integration specialist, and couple therapist specializing in psychedelic therapy, modern relationships, and sexual wellness. Working with plant medicine and altered states for 20 years with individuals, groups, and couples, she is an expert in facilitating shifts in awareness to understand the root causes of a problem. Sarah does this by using a complex method of psychedelic therapy, regression, hypnosis techniques, breathwork, and guided visualization for full-spectrum holistic wellness. Sarah has guided hundreds of altered-state journeys with music, working with powerful intention and ongoing integration. She is a member of the Complementary Medical Association and a long-term student of Esther Perel. Speaker opportunities include Microdose Wonderland, Miami, and Psych Symposium, UK. As an activist, she has spoken at the NHS and the UN on sustainable healthcare, complementary medicine, and women’s equality. She is involved with the Women’s Equality Party and is a popular figure in the UK press for sex equality, consensual non-monogamy, and female empowerment.

Allyson Grey

Visionary Artist, Co-Founder of Chapel of Sacred Mirrors

Allyson Grey, a conceptual abstract painter and co-founder of CoSM, Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, has long been a mentor and influencer of the contemporary Visionary Art movement. In 1971, in a psychedelic awakening through the guidance of Ram Dass’s book Be Here Now, Allyson heard a voice calling her to express an essentialized worldview in her art. Chaos, Order & Secret Writing came to artistically symbolize the three essential characteristics of human perception, a minimal yet all-encompassing artistic statement worthy of immersion for a lifetime. Allyson’s art is a personal and shared meditation on the structure of thought, life, and enlightenment. In addition to being a committed painter and social sculptor, Allyson has edited the first draft of Alex’s books, Co-Chief Editor of CoSM Journal of Visionary Culture, volumes 1-11 (now in progress), writer & editor of countless articles and interviews throughout the Grey’s partnership. Allyson is sought after for her open feedback in her long-running blog, Ask Allyson about Art & Life, engaging in conversations relevant to the lives of artists and to all who may be looking for practical observations from a sacred, wise woman. On panels and in solo interviews, Allyson represents her view as a spiritual/creative woman. Her favorite topics include: Art as Right Livelihood, Psychedelic Family Business, Everything CoSM, Conscious Conception & Parenting, Relationships, Art School or Not?, Life Transitions, Meditation, Yoga, Piano Practice in your 60’s, the Parsha, and more.

Rebecca Kronman

Therapist, Psychedelic Preparation & Integration Specialist, Co-Founder, Plant Parenthood

Rebecca Kronman, LCSW, is a licensed therapist in Brooklyn, NY. Using Mindfulness techniques and Somatic Interventions, she works with clients to cope with issues such as trauma, depression, anxiety, and life transitions. She is a harm reduction informed preparation and integration therapist, working with clients to prepare for and integrate after psychedelic use. Rebecca is an assistant trainer with Fluence, a group that trains other clinicians in harm reduction-informed psychedelic preparation and integration work. She also runs Plant Parenthood, a digital community of parents who use psychedelics. Rebecca holds a Master’s Degree in Social Work from Hunter College. Selected postgraduate trainings include Somatic Interventions, Mindfulness for Clinicians, Psychedelic Harm Reduction and Integration, and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction.

Melissa Lavasani

Co-Founder & President, Psychedelic Medicine Coalition

Melissa Lavasani is a trailblazing leader in the field of psychedelic medicine advocacy. As the Co-Founder and President of Psychedelic Medicine Advocacy, she is dedicated to ensuring Americans are empowered to elect lawmakers who support safe, equitable access to these life-changing treatments. Melissa’s passion for this cause stems from her own experience as a working mother using psychedelic medicines to overcome severe postpartum depression when the healthcare system failed her. This experience inspired her to propose Initiative 81, the Entheogenic Plant and Fungus Policy Act of 2020, which broke records as the largest ballot initiative win in Washington DC’s history with 76 percent approval. Before founding Psychedelic Medicine Advocacy, Melissa established the Psychedelic Medicine Coalition, a national association committed to creating and protecting access to psychedelic medicines through advocacy and education on a federal level. As a devoted wife and mother, Melissa cherishes her free time, playing with her children, fly fishing, and showering love on her beloved pit bull, Gus. She brings the same compassion and dedication to her advocacy work, striving to improve the lives of individuals and communities through safe and effective psychedelic medicine. Melissa’s bold leadership and unwavering commitment to this cause make her an inspiring force for change in the world.

Virginia Haze

Writer, Photographer, Co-Author of The Psilocybin Mushroom Bible and The Psilocybin Chef Cookbook

Virginia Haze is a prolific writer and photographer, and has written a number of books on the use of substances and the culture around them, including co-authoring the best-selling books The Psilocybin Mushroom Bible and The Psilocybin Chef Cookbook with Dr K. Mandrake. She’s been featured in lifestyle publications, including Merry Jane, and her photography has appeared in many books. She learned to grow mushrooms under the tutelage of Dr. K. Mandrake and has since become a fierce proponent of psilocybin decriminalization and the dissemination of science-backed information relating to psychedelics. She has been working in this field for over a decade.

Ophelia Chong

Artist, Entrepreneur, Cannabis and Psilocybin Advocate & Educator

Ophelia Chong is a talented artist, entrepreneur, and educator in Los Angeles, California. She is best known for her work as the founder of Stock Pot Images, a stock photography agency that specializes in images of cannabis culture and industry. Chong is also a sought-after public speaker and educator on cannabis, psilocybin, AAPI, entrepreneurship, and creativity. She is a President’s Award Fine Arts/Photography graduate of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, and has worked as a creative director for many major brands, including Slamdance Film Festival, Raygun Magazine, Harpers Collins, Workbook + Co., Sony, Adobe. Her artwork has been published and included in gallery shows. In addition to her work in the cannabis industry, Chong is also a passionate advocate for social justice and has been involved in a number of initiatives to support marginalized communities. Chong serves as Advisor to DoubleBlind’s “How To Grow Mushrooms” educational class series with Dr. Del Potter. Her advocacy is guided by one mission: to advocate and offer truthful reflections of the communities that embrace cannabis and psilocybin.

Hena Malik Başak

Communications Officer, Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines, Board of Directors, Students for Sensible Drug Policy

Hena Malik Başak is a Muslim woman of color, gen-z leader, and social media strategist who is passionate about the healing and spiritual potentials of cannabis and psychedelics, harm reduction, drug reform, and education. She received her BS in Biology at the University of Florida and also holds a degree in Arts and Humanities. She is currently pursuing her Masters in Psychoactive Pharmaceuticals at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Hena is pursuing research on the intersection of Islamic theology and psychedelics. She also serves on SSDP’s Board of Directors and is the Communications Officer for the Chacruna Institute, where she works on all of Chacruna’s social media platforms. Hena curated Chacruna’s Islam, Muslims, and Psychedelics series, aiming to unite and uplift Muslim leaders in this space.

Antanika Hoberg

President, Australian Psychedelic Society, Advisor, Australian Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Practitioners 

Antanika currently holds the position of President within the Australian Psychedelic Society, and her influence has been instrumental in shaping the organization’s path. Antanika’s profound connection with the realm of psychedelics is rooted in her personal journey, where she utilized these substances to treat CPTSD effectively. This life-altering transformation, marked by Post Traumatic Growth, ignited her unwavering commitment to ensuring that individuals seeking similar healing experiences encounter a landscape of safety and liberation from societal stigma, while remaining safe in their communities. Antanika saw a noticeable void within the psychedelic community, motivating her to establish the Adelaide chapter of APS, and she has since been engaged in psychedelic advocacy and mental health projects. Antanika’s authentic zeal revolves around cultivating a sense of community and advocacy, areas she perceived as deficient during her initial exploration of psychedelics for mental health purposes. Alongside her role as APS President, she also lends her expertise as an advisor to the Australian Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Practitioners (AMAPP) and the Monarch Mental Health Group. In these capacities, she diligently strives to bridge the gap between local communities and the broader organizations and networks within the field. Antanika hosts monthly national group calls for women, where they explore harm reduction, ethics, community support, and self-education within the psychedelic sphere. 

Xochitl (So-chil) Kusikuy Ashe

Medicine Woman, Founder, Magical Medicine Journeys: Mazatec Psilocybin Mushroom Retreats, Mexico

Xochitl (So-chil) Kusikuy Ashe has been a teacher and guide in one-on-one mentorships, workshops, and ceremonies in the US and internationally for the last 27 years. At 16 years old, she became the first female of five generations of men to be initiated into the healing traditions of her Peruvian ancestral lineage. She is a Medicine Woman in the Peruvian Andean tradition and has worked with sacred plant medicines since her initiation. For the past 23 years, she apprenticed under her Godfather, a Mazatec Medicine Man of the ancient healing tradition with the “Nti-si tho” “Santitos” or Psilocybin mushrooms. ​​She is a professionally trained herbalist and IFS Therapy Practitioner (Internal Family Systems), specializing in the ceremonial use of Cacao and Psilocybin Mushrooms. In her practice, Xochitl focuses on the healing of generational trauma and the ways in which that trauma impairs our ability to thrive, create wealth, and have a positive impact on the world.​​ She is also the founder of Magical Medicine Journeys, an Indigenous women-owned retreat company that offers legal Mazatec Psilocybin Mushroom Retreats in Mexico. Xochitl’s mission is to honor the traditional indigenous knowledge and ceremony of sacred plant medicine and provide the most authentic and powerful life-changing experiences. She is a faculty member at Esalen Institute, The Microdosing Institute, and the Shift Network.

Monica Cadena 

Writer, Journalist, Movement Worker, Digital Alchemist

Monica Cadena is an Afro-Chicana, California-based writer/journalist, movement worker, digital alchemist, plant ally and advocate of ending the war against culture. The former co-founder of Wear Your Voice Magazine, an intersectional feminist digital publication, Monica’s passionate about highlighting stories from those at the intersections of healing and social justice activism and centering healing-based initiatives. Monica works with many organizations within the psychedelic and entheogenic space, including Oakland Hyphae, SPORE, and The Society for Psychedelic Outreach, Reform & Education and is committed to the healing and liberation of Black and Indigenous communities.

Miyabe Shields

Scientist, Founder, Project Chronic, Cannabis Educator

Dr. Miyabe Shields (they/them, assigned female at birth) PhD is a queer, neurodivergent, stoner scientist and an avid psychonaut. After cannabis positively changed their ability to relate to others at the age of 15, Miyabe dedicated their life to understanding the inner workings of the neurodivergent brain on drugs. Miyabe went from academic research in pharmaceutical sciences specializing in drug discovery in the endocannabinoid system to rare extract and formulation research in the cannabis industry, embracing the thrill of pushing scientific boundaries. However, due to other boundaries, Miyabe found themselves incompatible with academic and industrial research settings. Now a beginner farmer immersing themself in urban agriculture as a community health initiative, Miyabe aims to facilitate change by creating authentic, accessible scientific education content, protocols, and experiences that lower barriers to health equity. Miyabe is currently a farmhand and natural medicines program officer at Maitland Mountain Farm who, after completing The River Course in early 2023 led by Dr. Joe Tafur, MD, has completely realigned the intention of their research and life. The spiritual significance of our connection with natural medicines should not be underestimated regarding its contribution to the therapeutic value of the molecules it produces. And the prohibition of the safe and reasonable exploration of this connection is an infringement on a primal human freedom and an evolutionarily ancient pillar of our health and wellness as individuals and as a community.

Amanda Siebert

Journalist, Author, Psychedelic Preparation & Integration Coach, Podcast Host

Amanda is a best-selling author, podcast host, and award-winning freelance journalist interested in health, drugs, and altered states. She is trained in psychedelic integration and recovery coaching, and offers one-on-one preparation and integration sessions. She hosts the podcast, Ibogaine Uncovered, and has written two books about cannabis and psychedelic drugs, the #1 selling Canadian non-fiction cannabis book, The Little Book of Cannabis: How Marijuana Can Improve Your Life and Psyched: 7 Cutting-Edge Psychedelics Changing The World. Amanda writes a Substack called A to Z of Altered States, and has bylines in The New York Times, Forbes, Lucid News, Healing Maps, DailyOm, Vice, Leafly, The Dales Report, Calgary Herald, and The Georgia Straight among others. In 2022, she received a Cosmic Sister Emerging Voices Award and was awarded Reporter of the Year at the second annual Microdose Awards. In 2023, Amanda was awarded Psychedelic Journalist of the Year at the Cannadelic Awards.