Founder, Lead Dialogic Facilitator
Dr. Ross Ellenhorn has spent his career creating treatment modalities that help people achieve meaningful changes in their lives outside of institutional models, and treatment formed by diagnostic assumptions. Cardea is the latest step along that lifelong journey, a model that resists the current encroachment of the Western medical model on psychedelic care.
Trained as a sociologist, psychotherapist and social worker, Ross is a pioneer and leader in the development of community integration services, types of care that empower individuals diagnosed with psychiatric and/or addiction issues while they remain in their own communities. He created the first fully operating intensive hospital diversion and wrap-around program in Massachusetts and later developed one of the first public programs for Assertive Community Treatment teams in the state. He is also the founder and owner of Ellenhorn, the most robust community integration program in the U.S., with offices in Boston, New York City and Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina.
Dr. Ellenhorn has authored two books on human behavior. Parasuicidality and Paradox: Breaking Through the Medical Model (Springer, 2007) addresses psychiatric hospital recidivism and techniques for diverting hospital use. How We Change (and the Ten Reasons Why We Don’t) (Harper Collins, 2020) takes a deep dive into the dynamics that influence all human change. His third book, Purple Crayons: The Art of Drawing A Life (Harper Wave, 2022) is an update on the 1955 children’s classic that explores ways adults can live their lives as art, summon more inner aliveness and resist the ever-growing pressures to conform.
Dr. Ellenhorn is the founder of the Shifting The Paradigm conferences, a biannual series that addresses humanistic and empowering changes in behavioral healthcare; and is the cofounder and president of the Association for Community Integration Programs (A4CIP), a professional association promoting programs dedicated to empowering clients who are receiving services while living and participating in their community. Dr. Ellenhorn is the first person to receive a joint Ph.D. from Brandeis University’s prestigious Florence Heller School for Social Welfare Policy and Management and the Department of Sociology.
Space Holder, Dialogic Facilitator
Aisha is a dedicated Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner, wellness advocate, and holistic healer. Her client-centered approach is grounded in her diverse background in psychiatric-mental health nursing, yoga, and holistic wellness. Aisha is deeply committed to providing compassionate, empathetic, and open-minded care while collaborating with clients to address their mental health needs.
Throughout her career, Aisha has provided comprehensive care to individuals experiencing various mental health issues, often co-occurring with substance use, medical conditions, or psychosocial challenges. She strives to deliver care that embraces a holistic and humanistic approach, intentionally nurturing the mind, body, and soul in an integrated manner.
Aisha earned her Master’s degree in Psychiatric-Mental Health Nursing from Hunter College School of Nursing. Prior to her current role, she served as the Lead Nurse at Ellenhorn, where she supported clients with severe mental illnesses within the community and their homes as part of an assertive community treatment team. Her formal training includes Motivational Interviewing, Mentalization-Based Treatment, Open Dialogue, and Interpersonal and Social Rhythm Therapy.
Complementing her academic and professional background, Aisha continually seeks wellness training to enhance her holistic practice. She completed a 200-hour Vinyasa yoga teacher training at Yogamaya and a 300-hour Kaula Tantra yoga and shamanism course at Durga’s Tiger School in Ecuador. Aisha is also a trained Thai yoga bodywork practitioner, offering gentle healing touch to clients. Her extensive education, training, and experiences have equipped her to deliver exceptional mental health care to those in need.
Aisha’s mission is to positively impact the quality of her clients’ lives by remaining curious, caring, and empathetic toward each individual’s unique experiences.
Space Holder, Dialogic Facilitator
Kayvon Pourazar was born in Tehran and spent his formative years in Iran, Turkey and England. He immigrated to the US in 1995, graduated with a BFA in Dance from SUNY Purchase in 2000 and has resided in NYC ever since, working as a contemporary/experimental dancer and teacher. Kayvon has collaborated and performed in the works of numerous NYC-based choreographers and dancemakers. In 2010 he received a Bessie Award for Performance. He has served as Adjunct Faculty at Bennington College and The New School, has taught classes frequently at Movement Research and as a guest artist in several universities and festivals domestically and internationally.
Concurrently with his performing and teaching career, Kayvon has engaged in and developed a lifelong self-guided interoceptive somatic practice that he calls “Pleasure Palace”. The public facing aspect of this practice is a guided mediation entitled “Guided Bodily Reverie” which is currently being offered at Cardea to complement the psychedelic experience.
Dimitri Mugianis, harm reduction advocate and psychedelic practitioner, musician, writer, and community organizer, became the face of using underground Ibogaine to kick heroin addiction in the United States. He developed a hybrid modality of administration that integrates the ceremonial and musical elements of traditional ibogaine ceremonies with the best safety protocols of Western medicine. His story is the focus of the documentary I’m Dangerous With Love. Even though Ibogaine is still prohibited in the United States, it is attracting avid interest from researchers all over the world and becoming accepted among care providers and clinics.
Dimitri has led over five hundred Ibogaine ceremonies and supported numerous individuals with their problematic habits. He’s also performed thousands of ceremonies using sound, art and psychedelics – especially Psilocybin and MDMA – to help individuals break with their psychological suffering and to spark spiritual awakenings.
Immersed in the psychedelic space for the last 20 years, Mugianis is an expert in both the potential and limitations of psychedelic medicines. A respected icon in the field of harm reduction, he co-created a holistic program at New York Harm Reduction Educators (NYHRE), a groundbreaking Harlem-based community organization bringing together acupuncture, ritual, sound meditation, reiki, bodywork and other treatment modalities for people experiencing homelessness, active drug users, sex workers and the formerly incarcerated.
Medical Advisor, Ketamine Space
Julie is a psychiatrist specializing in psychopharmacology, with a private practice in New York City. She majored in the Biological Basis of Behavior at the University of Pennsylvania and received her M.D. in 1992 from Temple University School of Medicine. At Mount Sinai Medical Center, she completed a residency program in psychiatry, where she launched a research project that treated schizophrenics with a new medication. In 1994, she received the Outstanding Resident Award from the National Institute of Mental Health. From 1996 until 2005 she worked weekends running Bellevue Hospital’s psychiatric emergency room, and she’s penned an autobiography of this time, Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych ER. Holland is the editor of Ecstasy: The Complete Guide – A Comprehensive Look at the Risks and Benefits of MDMA, and The Pot Book: A Complete Guide to Cannabis. Holland also provides expert testimony and forensic consultation on a range of drug-related behavior and phenomena, with a focus on PCP and MDMA.
Founder, Sound Director & Space Holder Ceremonialist
John Maclean is an experienced ceremonial guide and space holder, as well as an internationally touring musician and producer. He is an expert on the intersection of music, sound, vibration, and psychedelics, and creates music and soundscapes specifically for these types of experiences. He has extensive experience and training in both indigenous ceremonial practices and modern, science based applications of sound healing. John believes in the “Iso Principle,” a concept from music therapy that values an attuned approach to each person seeking help. He applies this theory in his work, straying away from fixed playlists, and instead focused on curating and improvising the guiding sounds to each person’s ‘set’ and creating a ‘setting’ that is optimal for healing and exploration. Whether it’s playing vibrational instruments live during the process, or preparing recorded passages tailored to the recipient’s needs, he creates the optimal sonic platform for consciousness transformation.”
Clinical Director, Psychedelic Psychotherapist & Guide, Ketamine Services
Zach is a Clinical Social Worker, licensed in the state of New York. He is a graduate of Tulane University with a BA in Philosophy, and of Rutgers University with a Master of Social Work. He completed an intensive Ketamine assisted psychotherapy training through Polaris.
Zach previously worked for 3.5 years at Ellenhorn LLC, a Program for Assertive Community Treatment, with a team of clinicians using a model that focuses on the trauma experienced by people who have been diagnosed as suffering with psychiatric symptoms. Employing a compassionate Harm Reduction model, he acted as the Integrative Dual Diagnosis Therapy Coordinator for the program’s New York City location, supervising all cases involving clients in complicated relationships to substances.
Zach has also worked for 3 years in a harm reduction setting with BronxWorks, providing therapeutic services to clients in frequent extreme states of mind and mood. His caseload consisted of clients with a history of chronic street homelessness.
He has over 13 years of experience within psychedelic communities as an advocate and proponent of psychedelic harm reduction.
Zach also maintains a caseload of private therapy clients.
Zach has focused his work on supporting individuals who have been harmed by the medical model of mental health. His therapeutic style is born from an acknowledgment of the vastness of the human experience and the sacredness of the individual within their community. His passion is caring for people who have become isolated due to the harmful stigma generated by prevailing ideas around mental illness.
Zach is interested in supporting and bearing witness to a shift from the guilt and shame of being “mentally ill” or “broken,” to an empowered stance which honors the reasonable pain of operating within systems which cut us off from meaning and purpose.
Medical Director & Lead Physician, Ketamine Services
Mike is a licensed and board-certified Family Medicine physician living and working in New York City with interests in primary care, psychedelic medicine, harm reduction, and social justice.
Having previously worked as a case manager with marginalized individuals struggling with homelessness and substance use issues in the Bronx, Mike graduated medical school from Georgetown University School of Medicine with distinction in Health Justice Studies. He then completed residency training in Family Medicine with the Institute for Family Health/Mount Sinai Hospital in Harlem.
Mike’s experiences with psychedelics over the past several years, and the personal growth he has seen has led him to further explore training and education in the field to find different opportunities around their therapeutic potential. This ultimately led him to Cardea.
Mike has certification in medical cannabis prescribing in New York State, Ajna Light therapy certification from Chiang Mai University School of Medicine, and has completed multiple trainings around the use of psychedelics for therapeutic purposes. In addition to being Cardea’s Medical Director & Lead Physician, Mike serves as a Senior Clinician for participants at OnPoint NYC (a joint project of New York Harm Reduction Educators in East Harlem and Washington Heights Corner Project). OnPoint NYC is an organization dedicated to improving the health, safety, and well-being of marginalized people who use drugs or engage in sex work, and it currently operates the country’s first and only supervised consumption sites. Mike is facilitating a connection between Cardea and OnPoint NYC which will allow Cardea to provide services and training to OnPoint participants and staff. Mike publishes regularly writing on topics at the intersection of health and social justice.
Chief Operations Officer
Jill Reick was drawn to Cardea after witnessing the powerful and transformative psychedelic journeys of people close to her. She has seen the often harmful effects of the current mental health and addiction fields and is committed to creating a healing environment that values the agency and complexity of individuals. In her role as Chief Operating Officer, she oversees the business operations of Cardea.
Jill obtained her Master’s in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Loyola University and began her career as a clinician at a community mental health agency in New Orleans. After relocating to the New York City area in 2013, she worked at Children’s Aid Society managing a team of social workers and oversaw permanency planning of children in foster care.
Jill continued her career at New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) as part of the Division of Prevention Services. At ACS, she was involved in city initiatives to reduce homelessness and stabilize housing and public benefits for families in the child welfare system. In her most recent role as Deputy Director of Strategy, Planning, and Analysis, Jill oversaw the launch of new systems, managed data collection, analysis and reporting procedures, worked on policy improvement, and developed trainings for contracted child welfare agencies.
Community Outreach & Partnerships
Paige Rothaus graduated from Penn State University with a focus in Organization Psychology and Marketing. Paige brings ten years of corporate consulting, client services, and sales experience in the areas of recruitment, human resources, leadership and culture development across various industries. She has successfully partnered with fortune 500 companies to strategize and deliver on custom workforce management solutions to achieve optimal department performance and employee satisfaction through improving culture and retention. Throughout her corporate services she built a strong sense identifying root causes of organizational problems, by focusing on each individual’s strengths and motivations, and bringing teams closer together on common goals through curated workshops. Committed to breaking old corporate patterns of treating people like machines, and creating culture where one can bring their whole self to work, Paige found herself digging deeper into healing corporate and societal trauma and found her own passion in using psychedelics as tools for deepening self-awareness and raising consciousness. Paige assists Cardea with developing retreats and managing clients experiences, as well as wholistic marketing, and fostering community partnerships.
Randy Polumbo is an installation-based artist who lives and works between Joshua Tree, California and New York City. His artwork has been shown nationally and internationally across metropoles and natural landscapes such as deserts, ruins, and caves. He is a graduate of The Cooper Union School of Art, as well as a LEED accredited master builder and serves on the Board of Directors of New York Live Arts.
Randy joins us with decades of experience in building spaces and immersive environments, using polished metal and blown glass, reishi mushroom mycelium, kaleidoscopic grottos, and cast glass. His projects range from museum installations to public sculpture, to monumental renovation of New York mansions and apartments for clients and design luminaries around the world.
Randy has designed and built our Tribeca Ketamine Space in New York City to enhance the calming, novel and imaginative environment for transformative experiences. The space’s design materializes our concept of “radical hospitality,” which places the guest and their goals at the visual, tactile, and acoustical center of the experience. All sensory interactions have been considered, from lighting, sound, scents and textures, leading each moment of a journey to a new discovery.
Randy first began growing and casting mycelium at the COVID. This led to his monumental installation at the Brooklyn Museum and myriad other mycelia projects including Cardea!
Space Holder Ceremonialist, Retreats
Johanna Verley is a Reiki Master, Certified Sound Healing Practitioner, Yoga Nidra Practitioner and Breathwork Facilitator. Johanna is also the Founder of Darmae Essentials. She uses various healing modalities to create a container for the individual to explore their self-discovery, to encourage their optimal well-being and to empower them with the tools to strengthen their own innate ability to heal. All this to unlock true freedom and lasting happiness while on the journey to the best expression of self.
Space Holder Ceremonialist, Retreats
Paola Guerrero is a Caribbean Colombian-American who walks the medicine path as a shamanic ceremonialist, certified reiki master, herbalist, modern-day griot, and certified yoga instructor (200 HR RYT) specializing in Social Emotional Learning and Feeling (S.E.L.F). In addition, she is a wellness mindfulness practitioner with nearly 15 years of experience, practice, analysis, and implementation of various healing modalities for practical application. She utilizes these methods to liberate others to have the courage to take charge of their physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional health. Paola feels healing is a vehicle for liberation. She was born and raised in Queens, NY, and currently splits her time there and in Puerto Rico.
Space Holder Ceremonialist
Adam is a licensed master of social work and spiritual counselor living in New York City. He is an NYC native, by way of Caribbean parents, and brings his lived experience into a warm, humanistic, and inclusive healing space.
Adam brings his knowledge of Shaolin Wushu and Qigong into his work with embodied processing, mindfulness, meditation and movement for wellness. Adam is deeply informed by a sense of personal mysticism and believes that our healing is a matter of expanding our consciousness.
Adam has spent the last few years as the Wellness Coordinator and student clinician of a private mental health agency, and co-founder of their Social Responsibility Committee, dedicated to creating supportive spaces for marginalized groups and raising the consciousness of organizations. He continues that work as the creator of MakeYourMedicine. He remains culturally sensitive, and is trauma-informed.
Adam works with all people who are curious about healing and is especially welcoming to those belonging to at-risk and marginalized groups. In honor of his ancestors, Adam seeks to pay tribute to the role of Bohique: a healing spiritual figure of Arawak culture.
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Creative Arts Psychotherapist
Laura (she/her) is creative arts psychotherapist based in Brooklyn, NY (traditional Lenape and Canarsie territories). She received her certification in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy from Integrative Psychiatry Institute (IPI) in Boulder, CO. She has experience working with the Queer and TGNC community, as well as Poly/Kink identities and altered states.
Guided by healing justice and revolutionary growth principles, Laura’s approach to therapy incorporates trauma-informed and person-centered care. Using her trained musical ear, she guides clients to become aware of patterns and narratives through listening with curiosity and openness. Sessions with Laura are eclectic, combining verbal processing with somatic experiencing and creative exploration. She considers the therapeutic process co-work, emboldening clients to connect with their deepest selves while confronting both unique and broad oppressive structures. Above all, Laura is passionate about growth, agency, and resilience in the quest to subvert pathologizing and colonized healthcare structures.
