The Team
Advisory Board
Ross Ellenhorn, LICSW, Ph.D
His work is rooted in the belief that many of the behaviors understood by traditional psychiatry as brain-bound symptoms are instead the result of negative social experiences, such as loneliness, lack of social support, and ostracism. Ross is a pioneer and leader in the development of community integration services — empowering therapeutic models that help people experiencing extreme events of thought or mood, or those engaged in problematic habits, achieve recovery and purposeful reconnection to real life while remaining in their own communities and outside institutional settings. “Treatment today,” says Ross, “is really built on a factory model, in which a person is seen as defective in a definable way, and then sent to a sort of machine shop to be fixed by tools that are expertly made for their particular kind of defectiveness.” He believes that this way of treating people placing a lot of uniformity on something that is absolutely not uniform: human beings in general, but also growth and healing—”processes that are totally unpredictable and improvisational.” Ross believes that good psychotherapy is “basically an improvisational artform in which one person in the room is suffering and the other is listening and responding to this suffering.” His recent book, How We Change (And Ten Reasons Why We Don’t), published by HarperCollins in 2020, focuses on the science of human change, and how this science supports the argument that change occurs in collaborative and co-created relationships. “It’s a form of healing that is very close to jazz,” he says, “and that’s one reason we see someone like Coltrane as an elder we follow at Cardea.”
Jill Rieck
Jill Rieck obtained a 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 gained extensive experience working with families involved in the child welfare system. She initially worked as a supervisor at the Children’s Aid Society Medical Foster Care program, where she oversaw the permanency planning of children in foster care. Jill continued her career in child welfare 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. Most recently in the role of Deputy Director of the Strategy, Planning, and Analysis team, Jill specialized in project management, data analysis, and reporting on system trends.
Julie Holland, MD
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.
Mike Pappas
Mike is a licensed and board certified Family Medicine physician living and working in New York City with interests in primary care, psychedelic medicine, and harm reduction. Having previously worked as a case manager, he graduated medical school from Georgetown University School of Medicine with distinction in health justice studies and completed residency training in Family Medicine with the Institute for Family Health/Mount Sinai Hospital. In addition to being Cardea’s Prescribing Physician, Mike serves as a physician for participants at New York Harm Reduction Educators (NYHRE), the country’s first and only supervised consumption site located in Harlem, NY. Mike is currently facilitating a connection between Cardea and NYHRE which will allow Cardea to provide services and training to NYHRE participants and staff. He has certification in medical cannabis prescribing in New York State, Ajna Light therapy certification, and has completed multiple trainings around the use of psychedelics for therapeutic purposes. He publishes regularly writing on topics at the intersection of health and social justice.
Le' Jai' La Troi
Le’ Jai’ La is a medicine woman based in Mexico who works with sacred plants and modalities to help others come back into alignment. She is a writer, reiki master, herbalist, and channel who accesses the Akashic Records. Her understanding of various indigenous and traditional healing practices allows her to bridge the connection with modern medicines and technologies to empower individuals to discover their highest selves. Le’ Jai’ La is the founder of Akashic Remedies, a regenerative conscious collective; that assists a growing community in living in their missions while expanding through healing sessions, coaching, ceremonies, wellness programming, and brand consulting.
Zach Rieck, LCSW
Clinical Director, Psychedelic Psychotherapist & Guide, Ketamine Services
Zach is a licensed clinical social worker, Zach previously worked with a team of clinicians, using a model that focuses on the trauma and isolation experienced by people who have been diagnosed as suffering with psychiatric symptoms. He has over 13 years of experience within psychedelic communities as an advocate and proponent of psychedelic harm reduction. He has applied his personal experience and training to educate and guide others, through trip-sitting and integration work. Zach’s work is heavily influenced by his own transformative experience using iboga to move beyond years of intravenous drug addiction.
Jodi Ann Moser
Jodi-Ann is the owner and founder of our partner retreat space, Kotch Villas, with her Husband James. A big part of our mission at Kotch is to create experiences that allow people to reconnect with nature and themselves. When James and I started these villas, creating wellness experiences was always at the forefront of our hearts and minds. We have a commitment in Treasure Beach to what is called Community Tourism, a mode in which a community has full ownership and management of tourist experiences, ensuring that the economic benefits of tourist business stays within the community.
John MacLean
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.”
Tim-Haley, CPA, CFP
Tim brings 25-plus years of financial and business management experience to his role at Ellenhorn. A licensed Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and Certified Financial Planner (CFP), Tim earned his undergraduate degree in finance from the University of Miami and his graduate degree from Bentley University where he graduated first in his class and received the Professor E. Dandes Award for Graduate Academic Excellence.
Aimee Meredith Cox
Aimee Meredith Cox is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and African American Studies at Yale University. Her research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of Anthropology, Black Studies, and Performance Studies. Cox’s first monograph, Shapeshifters: Black Girls and the Choreography of Citizenship (Duke 2015), won the 2017 book award from the Society for the Anthropology of North America, a 2016 Victor Turner Book Prize in Ethnographic Writing, and Honorable Mention from the 2016 Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Prize. She is also the editor of the volume, Gender: Space (MacMillan, 2018). Aimee is a dancer and choreographer. She performed and toured internationally with Ailey II and the Dance Theatre of Harlem and has choreographed performances as interventions in public and private space in Newark, Philadelphia, and Brooklyn. Her most recent work, based on interviews with long time activists in Cincinnati, engaged hundreds of residents in a performance ritual as part of her research in that city for an ethnography entitled Living Past Slow Death. An accomplished yogi who teaches master classes internationally, Aimee has led several yoga retreats and teacher trainings. Her experience in this realm is the basis for her next ethnographic exploration. This project considers the intersection of race, what she calls, ‘spiritual theater’, and performances of healing and recovery within the context of rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn.
Dimitri Mugianis
Founder, Lead Dialogic Facilitator & Space Holder Ceremonialist
Dimitri Mugianis, a musician, writer, community organizer, harm reduction advocate and psychedelic practitioner, became the face of using underground ibogaine to kick heroin addiction. As documented in the 2009 film, Dangerous with Love, he has led more than five hundred ibogaine ceremonies and supported numerous individuals with their problematic habits. He’s also performed thousands of ceremonies using sound, art and other psychedelics – especially psilocybin mushrooms and MDMA – to help individuals with 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 elder in the field of harm reduction, he co-created a holistic program at NYHRE (the New York Harm Reduction Educators, a Harlem-based community organization) bringing together acupuncture, ritual, sound meditation, reiki, bodywork and other modalities for people experiencing homelessness, active drug users, sex workers and the formerly incarcerated. He believes in the power of international psychedelics for revolutionary and evolutionary change.
Daliah Heller, Ph.D
Daliah Heller is a public health leader at the intersection of criminalization and community health, with a particular focus on drug use. Over more than two decades, she has designed and led innovative policy and practice efforts in the non-profit and government sectors. Dr Heller directs the Overdose Prevention Program at Vital Strategies, the lead partner in Bloomberg Philanthropies’ initiative to reduce overdose deaths in the United States. Previously, she established the Alcohol and Drug Use Bureau in the New York City Health Department as Assistant Commissioner and, before that, she built and led a nationally-recognized harm reduction services organization in the Bronx. Dr Heller has served as an advisor to state and local governments, community leaders, researchers, and non-profit organizations on social issues, including housing, policing, and healthcare access. She holds a PhD in Social Welfare from City University of New York Graduate Center, MPH in Population and Family Health from Columbia University, and BA in Political Science and Philosophy from McGill University. She is the principal at DHPHP, LLC, and currently an Adjunct Professor in the School of Global Public Health at New York University.
Yarelix Estrada, MSPH
Yarelix Estrada, MSPH, is a first-generation Central American, drug policy and harm reduction researcher, advocate, and community outreach worker. Yarelix works as a City Research Scientist with the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene conducting community-based substance use harm reduction outreach and research. Her work is currently largely focused on implementation of the first higher-technology drug checking research study in New York City with local syringe service programs and overdose prevention centers. Yarelix is passionate about supporting people throughout the full continuum of drug use, from use for pleasure and healing to overdose prevention. She is dedicated to improving the quality of care for people who use drugs and historically oppressed communities by working to understand the intersectionality between health policy and the societal factors that impact the lives of people who use drugs. She is the Director of the New York City Psychedelic Society, is on the Board of Directors for the Tennessee Recovery Alliance, the Board of Directors for the Source Research Foundation, on the Advisory Board of the psychedelic media group Psymposia 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.
Devin Brown
Devin is a soulful singer-songwriter, a studied massage practitioner and a mindful energy facilitator. He graduated from Bluff Cliff Massage College in New Orleans Louisiana and has successfully navigated an energy practice for 19 years. He has worked professionally in the music industry as a background vocalist and vocal producer traveling the world with several pop stars. Devin is also a budding recording artist whose focus is the agency of alignment. Despite the medium he believes we can achieve active oneness through balance.
Randy Polumbo
Space & Design Author
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 building spaces and immersive environments, using polished metal and blown glass, reishi mushroom mycelium, kaleidoscopic grottos, and cast glass with projects ranging from museum installations, to public sculpture. Construction includes monumental renovation of New York mansions and apartments for clients and design luminaries around the world. He is now Cardea’s Space Author and Designer, transforming our Tribeca Ketamine Space in New York City, to capture the calming, novel and imaginative “holding space” for transformative experiences. The space’s design will materialize our concept of radical hospitality, placing the guest and their goals at the center of the experience. All sensory interactions have been considered from lighting, sound, scents and textures, leading each moment while in our care through to a new discovery.
Ira Silverberg
Ira Silverberg has worked with writers and artists since the mid-1980’s. He has been Editor-in-Chief of Grove Press; Publisher of High Risk Books/Serpent’s Tail; Senior Editor at Simon & Schuster; and was a Literary Agent and Foreign Rights Director at two New York Agencies before joining the National Endowment for the Arts as Literature Director during the Obama administration.
Silverberg has worked with finalists for the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize; Whiting Award winners; New York Times Best Sellers; New Yorker Debut Fiction writers; and three Nobel Prize Winners. He has been a judge or panelist for numerous awards, fellowships and grants. At present, he works as a consultant to nonprofit arts organizations, publishers, writers, and artists, many through Bloomberg Philanthropies and the New York State Council on the Arts. He’s a member of the Board of Copper Canyon Press. Silverberg has been an adjunct faculty member of the Columbia University School of the Arts MFA Writing Program since 2013.
Christine Fitzsimmons, NP
Christine Fitzsimmons is a nurse practitioner with a passion for the therapeutic use of psychedelics. She is dedicated to the pursuit of equitable mental health care. Christine holds a BFA in Theater from Pace University and an MSN in Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner from New York University. With more than a decade of nursing experience, she has worked in a variety of settings, from intensive and intermediate care units at Ellis Hospital and Mount Sinai of Queens Hospital, to psychedelic assisted detoxification clinics facilitating treatments with Ibogaine in Costa Rica and Ketamine clinics in New York City. She is a co-author of The Clinical Guidelines for Ibogaine Assisted Detoxification, with the Global Ibogaine Therapist Alliance. She also currently practices at the New York Harm Reduction Educators (NYHRE) and Montefiore drug user health clinic, located within a syringe access program in East Harlem. She has training in Somatic Experiencing for trauma healing, and has completed level 3 of the practitioner certification.
Fenia Weiller, Ph.D
Fenia Weiller, Ph.D. is a Clinical Psychologist in practice for 20 years. A graduate of the Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies at Adelphi University, Fenia has worked with individuals with a wide variety of mental health challenges in both inpatient and outpatient settings as well as in private practice. During this time, she developed a specialty in treating clients with histories of trauma and co-occurring substance misuse. Several years ago, she began to work with plant medicines for her own healing. These experiences have been transformative for her, both with regard to her own development, as well as her growth as a mental health practitioner. Fenia has completed a number of academic programs including the MAPS training in MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy for PTSD, Ketamine Assisted Therapy training, and the Certificate in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies and Research at CIIS in 2021. Fenia is a Reiki Level 2 practitioner. In her work with clients, she see’s her role as bearing witness to their stories, helping them to make meaning of their experiences, and come to understand the purposes their problematic behaviors serve. Although her approach is informed by psychoanalysis and harm reduction, she believes treatment must consider the whole person, and include healing of the body and spirit, as well as the mind. She advises clients in developing their own mindfulness-based practices and in finding ways to connect with their bodies through yoga. Along with these practices, she is deeply committed to providing support for clients who use psychedelic medicines as a part of their healing process.
Brian Murphy, M.Ed, LCSW
Brian Murphy, M.Ed, LCSW, is a New York City-based holistic psychotherapist who works with people who are preparing for psychedelic plant medicines, have taken them, or are considering them as an option. He is a graduate of the New York University master’s degree social work program, and has been working with psychedelics since 2003, utilizing the internal family systems therapy and the clean language approaches. These modalities are radically different from regular ‘talk’ therapy, and they are well suited for processing the emotional/spiritual experience of a psychedelic session. Before entering private practice full time, Brian was director of Mental Health, and then head of Holistic Health, at New York Harm Reduction Educators, a syringe exchange operating in East Harlem and the Bronx. In this location he used meditative and holistic approaches in his work with marginalized and stigmatized populations. Brian has published articles on psychedelic issues and treatment in Reality Sandwich, Psymposia, Alternet, and Psychedelic Times. His website www.afterthemedicine.com, is a resource for people exploring psychedelic plant medicine experiences
Elizabeth Baum
Elizabeth is a New York-based psychotherapist, with foundations in psychodynamic and transpersonal approaches. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design, and an MA in Integral Counseling Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies. She has a dedicated interest in meaning making, and how we each best access and channel our unique gifts; through imagery, dreams, senses, and ritual. With the sincere goal of meeting each client in their own space, Liz’s approach is flexible, creative, and informed by myriad sources. She is certified in EMDR, Reiki, and EFT, and has trained extensively in Internal Family Systems (IFS), Somatic Experiencing (SE), and Imago approaches, among many others, which she calls upon for her work both with individuals and couples.
Rebecca Wolfe, M.Ed
Rebecca Wolfe, M.Ed is highly trained in psychedelic support with over 25 years of experience working as a psychiatric and substance abuse emergency services clinician in hospital emergency rooms, mobile community crisis teams and for the past eleven years embedded full time as the clinical co-responder with the Arlington Police Department in Arlington, Massachusetts. She has also co-taught, with a police partner, the mental health and substance abuse curriculum in the Massachusetts Police Academies. Rebecca created the first police department-based opiate overdose outreach program and has assisted police departments and communities across the country in creating their own
Brian Campbell, MBA
Retired Major, Brian Campbell, brings to CARDEA fourteen years of service in the Jamaica Defense Force as a military pilot and eighteen years as a senior manager and consultant to corporate Jamaica. He has a wide range of experience in real estate, finance, logistics, food and beverage and entertainment sectors from the perspective of start-up operations to large conglomerates. Brian was trained as an officer at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, United Kingdom and as a pilot at the 3 Canadian Forces Flight Training School, Manitoba. He holds an MBA from the Cranfield University, United Kingdom. Brian is married with five children
Paige Rothaus
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.
Greg Droggitis
Gregory Droggitis is a DJ, producer, multi-instrumentalist and experimental musician living and working in New York City. What comes through most clearly in his music is a sense of freedom and a lack of inhibition. A true purveyor of the “anything goes” ethos, he’s spent 20+ years honing his craft. As a vocalist, he began training at the age of 8 under the guidance of Plácido Domingo and the Washington Opera Company in Washington, DC. In 2020, he formed a collaborative project with John MacLean that intentionally wields the power of psychedelic sound as a ritualistic, ceremonial and healing device. Greg has guided over 50 group and individual ceremonies, and is currently working on a series of releases for a new DFA sub label entitled “Sacred Service” aimed to capture the essence of this work.
Paul Calderon
Paul Caldron is a writer, teacher, and actor. He has worked with such film luminaries as directors Quentin Tarantino; Steven Soderbergh; Spike Lee; Martin Scorsese; Alan Taylor; Abel Ferrara; Sidney Lumet; and actors Robert De Niro; Robert Redford; Al Pacino; Harvey Keitel; Christopher Walken; and Ed Harris; among others. His stage credits include Broadway & Off-Broadway; and is an OBIE AWARD recipient. He is a Lifetime member of the Actors’ Studio. In 1992 he co-founded the LAByrinth Theater Company; where he directed productions starring Philip Seymour Hoffman; Sam Rockwell; John Ortiz and Stephen Adly Guirgis. Currently, he is co-artistic director of the Primitive Grace Theater Ensemble, for which he has written and directed three full-length plays. Over the years he’s been on faculty at NYU Tisch Graduate Film School, The Lee Strasberg Institute; The School of Visual Arts; and The Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University. He is a certified instructor in the Healing Tao system founded by Mantak Chia; as well as a certified yoga instructor.; and has facilitated workshops at the Esalen Institute and the Kripalu Center; as well as leading Freeing the Artist Within workshops at the Shambhala Yoga and Dance Center in Brooklyn, NY.
Michael Madera, Psy.D
Michael Madera, Psy.D. is a seasoned executive coach, family business advisor, mindfulness practitioner and musician. Michael specializes in guiding and catalyzing positive change for leaders and families in business. He believes in building on each person’s strengths, talents and motivations to enhance the effectiveness of the team and fellow stakeholders. He is a long-time student of adult developmental theory and its application to ‘Vertical’ leadership coaching. “The power of psychedelics to provide the experience of a broader, more open mindset is a game changer in the quest to accelerate leaders’ development progress.” He uses his talent for deep listening, honed through training in music, psychotherapy and coaching, and learning a 2nd language, to engage in the spirit of jazz improvisation to support people’s life and career journeys.
Jerome Lamaar
Jerome LaMaar is Bronx-born and raised. He has been defying expectations in fashion, art and culture for 20 years. He has dressed A-listers, created “South Bronx Luxe,” collaborated with major companies, designed Beyonce’s Ivy Park x Adidas line and was featured as a key designer in Beyonce’s Black is King film. Mr. LaMaar is a polymath with experience as a Creative Director, Designer, Stylist and Futurist. His career began in 2001, at the age of 15, when he worked for Baby Phat by Kimora Lee Simmons as a high school intern and later as the Junior Creative Director/Brand Coordinator. In 2008, he became a trend forecaster traveling the globe to contribute to, and guide, some of the world’s leading brands such as Adidas, L’Oreal, Uniqlo, Calvin Klein and Mattel, lending his perspective on art, culture, concepts and colors to push new ideas in technology and style. He created his own brand called 5:31 Jérôme in 2013. Two years later, Mr. LaMaar opened his luxury pop-up boutique in the South Bronx called 9J, which shifted the image of the Bronx by showcasing art, music, design and new thought, landing him on the cover of the New York Times. He recently created a state-of-the-art, hands-free interactive exhibit for Bronx Children’s Museum called Bronxtopia. Mr. LaMaar is also the youngest Trustee to join the board of The Bronx Museum of the Arts.
Nicholas Powers
Dr. Nicholas Powers is a literature professor, novelist and journalist. He has facilitated workshops from Occupy Wall Street, PEX, Burning Man and the California Institute for Integral Studies. Attendees are guided into meditation, primal scream therapy, role playing in order to delve deeper into autobiographical writing. Turning the self, inside out to jettison raw feeling into fresh language is the first step to rebuilding our relationship to ourselves and the culture we inhabit. His writings have appeared in The Village Voice, Huffington Post, The Raw Story, Truth-Out, The Indypendent, Business Insider, Chacruna, Double Blind and MAPS Spring 2018 newsletter. Recently he was interviewed by The New Yorker and The Root on psychedelics and race. His book The Ground Below Zero: 9/11 to Burning Man, New Orleans to Darfur, Haiti to Occupy Wall Street was published in 2014 by Upset Press. Thirst, his first novel is coming out in March.
John Sinclair
John Sinclair is a renowned poet, writer, musicologist, and political activism from Flint, Michigan. He emerged as a leader in the counterculture and psychedelia movements of the 1960s and manager of the Detroit-based political rock group MC5, Iggy and The Stooges. He was primary founder of the White Panther Party in 1968, the anti-racist group during the civil rights movement. Sinclair is an influential figure in legalizing cannabis, pushing to successfully overturn his own jail sentence which helping inspire the first decriminalization of Marijuana in the US, and is considered an elder in the area of psychedelics.
Tehseen Noorani, Ph.D
Advisory Board
Tehseen Noorani, Ph.D. is an anthropology researcher at Durham University, UK, bridging science studies and the critical medical humanities. He is interested in the phenomenological, epistemic and sociopolitical character of extreme experiences, and how these come to be understood in different contexts. After his PhD research documenting mental health mutual aid practices, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher with the Johns Hopkins psychedelic research team from 2013 to 2015, spearheading the lab’s first qualitative research study. He has since taught at New York University and the University of East London, publishing widely on the topics of psychedelics, experiential knowledge in mental healthcare, and participatory practice. Well-known amongst academics in the psychedelic communities, he is a leading commentator on the medicalization of psychedelic therapy and has been interviewed by numerous media outlets including The New Yorker.
DeBlois Milledge, RN
DeBlois Milledge is a Registered Nurse with a degree in Nursing from Miami Dade College. She specializes in Pediatrics and Hospice, facillitating transitions of spirit. A lifelong musician, composer, guitarist and songwriter, DeBlois has played on stages all over the world, singing her original folk songs of peace and love, and working as a teacher with lay people to help them harness the power of music in their own lives. A master of western musical theory, she is excited to explore the less quantized and plentiful overtones of intuitive instruments in ceremony, and sing with her most open heart to create and hold space for healing.
Paola Guerrero
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.
Laura Foxx
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.
Johanna Verley
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.
Adam Ortiz
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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