Denver, Colorado
@AnnAwad

Ann Marie is an award-winning independent journalist and podcast producer with more than a decade of experience in local news. Their work has appeared on NPR, Here & Now, and Life of the Law. As the creator and host of the podcast On Something, Ann Marie spent three years exploring the effects of rapidly changing drug policy on people’s everyday lives. They’re now working on a new podcast about psychedelics.

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Clayton is a writer and physician. He has written about the promise and peril of ibogaine for Wired, the complexity of medical testing for The New Yorker, exponential growth for The Guardian, iron metabolism for Nautilus, hospital overcrowding for Undark Magazine, and more. He hopes to never write about COVID-19 again. Clayton has a medical degree from Columbia University and trained at Harvard University. He lives in New Mexico with his wife, where he works in rural hospitals serving Indigenous communities. Clayton is working on a magazine story about psychedelics and a new paradigm of psychiatric treatment.

South Africa
@kimondegreef

Kimon is a freelance journalist from South Africa who has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, Guernica, National Geographic, and other publications, including a story on 5-MeO-DMT, a hallucinogenic substance derived from Sonoran Desert toads, for The New Yorker. He coauthored a book on abalone smuggling with a poacher who began writing a memoir in prison. He holds a conservation biology masters from the University of Cape Town and a journalism masters from New York University. He’s currently working on a book about psychedelics.

Brooklyn, New York

Kenya is the cofounder and creative director of Domino Sound, a new production studio creating innovative, educational, and provocative multimedia. She wrote, directed, and executive produced the narrative audio drama The Cheat Code, and she was audio ep on photographer Naima Green’s prototype digital archive of queer New York, Skin Contact. For Kenya, imagination and experimentation are key. Due to relocation after Hurricane Katrina, she grew up in both New Orleans and the DMV. She is a disabled Scorpio who hates racism. She is also a psychonaut who throws amazing parties and currently resides in Brooklyn, NY.

Los Angeles, California
@OliviaGoldhill

Olivia is an investigative reporter at STAT who has been reporting on psychedelic research and drug development since 2016. She’s interested in exploring how psychedelics fit within the existing model of health care and holding the industry to high standards to create the strongest protections for patients. Her previous reporting in this space includes investigating a potential magic mushroom monopoly and exposing sexual abuse in a psychedelic clinical trial. She is a 2021 EPPY Award finalist and a 2020 Livingston Award finalist. Before joining STAT, Olivia worked at Quartz in New York and The Daily Telegraph in London. In 2022, Olivia began work on a book for Bloomsbury called Psyched, about how emerging psychedelic therapies call into question the very foundations of the mental health industry.

Bridgeview, Illinois
@CraftOurStory

Tasmiha is an independent journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Geographic, and Vox, among others. Currently, Tasmiha covers a wide range of topics related to health, race, politics, culture, and religion. In 2021, Khan was named a Fellow for Knight Science Journalism at MIT, a Religion News Service/Interfaith America Journalism Fellow, and a Higher Education Media Fellow at the Institute for Citizens and Scholars and Education Writers Association. Most recently, her reporting has been supported by the Pulitzer Center. She is working on a story about psychedelics and American Muslims.

Brooklyn, New York
@manalkhan07

Manal is an independent journalist who tells stories in words, photos, and video. Her work has been at the intersection of gender, culture, cinema, and psychedelics. Her fellowship project dissects the relationship between queer identities and psychedelics in the megacity of Karachi. She is a Falak Sufi Fellow of the Near Eastern Studies and Journalism program at New York University.

Minneapolis, Minnesota
@londonoe

Ernesto is a journalist at The New York Times working on a book about the past and future of medicinal psychedelics that will be published by Celadon Books. Ernesto served as Brazil bureau chief at The New York Times from 2017 to 2022 and was previously a member of the Editorial Board, where he wrote about global issues. Before joining The Times, Ernesto worked at The Washington Post for nine years, where his assignments included covering the Pentagon, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Arab Spring. Born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia, Ernesto is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese.

Brooklyn, New York
@shayla__love

Shayla is an award-winning freelance journalist based in Brooklyn. Previously, she was a senior staff writer at Vice News for five years where she wrote about health, science, psychology, and psychedelics. She has a master’s degree in science journalism from Columbia University, and her work has appeared in Mosaic, STAT, Undark Magazine, The Washington Post, Kenyon Review, The Atlantic, Vice, Harper’s Magazine, Gothamist, and others.

Tulsa, Oklahoma
@michael_mason

Michael is a journalist and the author of Head Cases: Stories of Brain Injury and Its Aftermath (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008). He is the founding editor of This Land Press, and his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Believer, Discover, and elsewhere. His current project is the nonfiction book called Psychonaut, which explores the architecture of psychocosmic experiences through a psychedelic crime story.

Rome, Italy
@jonathan_moens

Jonathan Moens is an Eritrean-Belgian science and investigative journalist based in Rome. He studied brain sciences in London and Paris, where he worked as a neuroscience research assistant, before pursuing journalism in New York. As a freelancer, he covers science, health, and environmental stories, which have been published in National Geographic, Undark Magazine, The Atlantic, and more. Jonathan is writing about a series of experiments in Europe using psychedelics as a treatment for patients in vulnerable states. He’ll examine the ethical, political, and scientific ramifications of these studies and hopes to produce a multimedia project merging long-form writing and photography.

Brooklyn, New York
@RachelNuwer

Rachel is an award-winning freelance science journalist and author based in Brooklyn. She regularly contributes to The New York Times, National Geographic, Scientific American, and more. She often writes about conservation, ecology, and illegal wildlife trade, and more recently has expanded her beat to include psychedelic science as well. Her next book, I Feel Love: MDMA and the Quest for Connection in a Fractured World (Bloomsbury, June 2023), will explore the science, history, politics, and culture of MDMA. For the fellowship, Rachel wrote about ibogaine for National Geographic.

Thomas, West Virginia
@cassadyariel

Cassady is a writer from West Virginia and proud alumna of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. In addition to being a 2022 Ferriss-Berkeley Fellow, she is also the 2022–2023 Opinion Fellow for The New York Times. She’s been fascinated by psychedelics ever since learning about her Beat Generation namesake, Neal Cassady, and is especially interested in writing about how psychedelics are spreading to red states and rural places. Cassady’s fellowship story ran in Rolling Stone magazine in June 2022. Read it here: “These Mormons Have Found a New Faith—in Magic Mushrooms.”

Denver, Colorado
@bikejournalist

Chris is a freelance journalist based in the Mountain West who specializes in narrative, long-form reporting. Over the past decade his work has spanned four continents, ranging from investigative journalism to arts and culture writing. His research into drug policy includes the 2020 narrative podcast series The Syndicate, about the rise and fall of a cannabis-smuggling empire in Colorado. Walker’s work can be found on his website. For his fellowship, Chris reported a four-part podcast digging into what’s going on with the two competing psychedelics ballot initiatives in Colorado.

South Orange, New Jersey
@benwyatt78

Ben is a British-born storyteller. Formerly a multimedia journalist and development executive for over a decade with CNN, Ben now tells stories across print, audio, and video for outlets including the BBC, The Guardian, Fast Company, and more. A recent graduate of The New School’s creative writing MFA program, his work has explored the effects of sport-related CTE and potential solutions psychedelic medicines may offer to those living with the condition.

@Tahtone

Tristan is a member of the Kiowa Tribe and is the incoming editor-at-large at Grist. He previously served as editor-in-chief at the Texas Observer and Indigenous Affairs editor at High Country News. He has reported for Al Jazeera America, PBS NewsHour, National Native News, NPR, and National Geographic. Tristan’s stories have won multiple honors, including investigative awards from the Gannett Foundation and Public Radio News Directors Incorporated. He also led the High Country News team that received a George Polk Award, an IRE Award, a Sigma Award, a Society of News Design Award, and a National Magazine Award nomination. A past president of the Native American Journalists Association, Tristan is a 2017 Nieman Fellow and a director of the MuckRock Foundation.

@alanburdick

Alan is a senior staff editor on the science desk of The New York Times and is the author of Why Time Flies: A Mostly Scientific Investigation. His first book, Out of Eden: An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion, was a National Book Award finalist and won the Overseas Press Club award for environmental reporting. Alan has worked as an editor at several publications, including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and Discover. His writing has also appeared in Harper’s, GQ, Natural History, On Earth, Outside, and the Best American Science and Nature Writing anthology. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and is the namesake of asteroid number 9291. He lives outside of New York with his family.

Adizah is a senior producer at VICE Audio where she edits and produces episodes for VICE News Reports. Prior to VICE, she worked at The New York Times, where she produced The Daily and 1619. Her award-winning work has also aired on Snap Judgment, Reveal, NPR, KQED, and elsewhere. Adizah also served as an audio editor for the 11th Hour Food and Farming Fellowship at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. She resides in Brooklyn, NY.

Faculty Director and Principal Investigator

Tina Trujillo is an associate professor at UC Berkeley’s School of Education, where she has researched and taught about the politics of education; policy analysis; epistemology; and the links among education, democracy, and social justice. Her current interests focus on nature and well-being, as well as scientific, spiritual, and Indigenous ways of knowing. Tina is faculty director of the BCSP Certificate Program, where she conducts ethnographic research and an evaluation of the program. She is interested in understanding how this training can be diverse and inclusive, serve to identify best practices in the professional preparation of psychedelic facilitators, and advance the use of psychedelics as tools for mending humans’ relationships with the broader natural community.

Program Director, Spiritual Care

Moana Meadow, MA, MDiv, serves as the Psychedelic Facilitation Certificate Program’s staff director. She also teaches on spiritual care for expanded states of consciousness. She completed four units of Clinical Pastoral Education at hospitals in California and Hawaii, and has worked as a hospice chaplain and spiritual director for over ten years. She was ordained as an interfaith minister at the Chaplaincy Institute, where she served as guest faculty and academic advisor until 2018. She later served as Executive Director of a non-profit church in Sonoma County. She has studied with indigenous elders in the United States and Mexico, and holds a BS from MIT, an MA from Boston University, and an MDiv from the Pacific School of Religion.

Psychotherapy, Clinical Science, and Research

Joseph Zamaria, PsyD, ABPP, is a licensed and board-certified clinical psychologist and an associate clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the UCSF School of Medicine. At the BCSP, he directs the psychotherapy curriculum as well as the clinical science and research curriculum. He has been a researcher of psychedelics for over fifteen years, and at UCSF, has served as a therapist and researcher in clinical trials examining the potential of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy to treat a range of conditions. Dr. Zamaria is a founding member of the American Arab, Middle Eastern, and North African Psychological Association (AMENA-PSY) and serves on the advisory board of the Fireside Project.

Ancestral Entheogenic Traditions

Susana Bustos, PhD, is a psychotherapist and music therapist trained in Chile, whose work focuses on the transformative potential of expanded states of consciousness. A Holotropic Breathwork practitioner since 1999, Susana directed the Spiritual Emergence Network in the U.S. between 2016-2020. Her 20+ years of study of entheogenic traditions from the Americas, especially their healing practices and songs, brought her to teach and mentor students in psychedelic-assisted therapy trainings in the Bay Area and abroad, and to co-found the Escuela de Psicovegetalismo. At BSCP, she leads the Ancestral Entheogenic Traditions curriculum, aiming to bridge the conversation between anthropocentric healing systems and those based on the relationship of human cultures with other sentiences in nature.

Contemplative Science and Practice

Eve Ekman, Ph.D., MSW, is a teacher, writer, and contemplative social scientist. At the BCSP, Eve leads experiential sessions on the science and practice of compassion, emotional awareness, and pro-social connection as supportive tools for psychedelic participants and healthcare professionals. Eve’s qualitative research has explored burnout, emotional awareness, psilocybin-assisted therapy, and meditation. With the support of the Dalai Lama, Eve and her father collaborated on the Atlas of Emotion, an online tool for developing emotional awareness. Eve is the lead trainer for the Cultivating Emotional Balance training program, Well-Being and Mental Health Lead at Apple, Senior Fellow at the Greater Good Science Center at UCB, and a Mind and Life Institute fellow.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Mary Sanders, LCSW, is a psychotherapist and social justice advocate exploring transgenerational trauma with BIPOC, 2SLGBTQIA+, veterans, immigrants, refugees, and foster youth. Mary has completed training at CIIS CPTR, MAPS, and the Ketamine Training Center and is certified in Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Mary works both in private practice and at the Veteran Affairs’ homeless program in San Francisco. She is a founding board member of the People of Color Psychedelic Collective. At the BCSP, Mary lectures on historical and current systems of oppression, explores collective healing through an intersectional lens, and facilitates conversations around community-oriented infrastructures that center accessibility, and culturally attuned care. She is currently completing training in Somatic Experiencing and Internal Family Systems.

Ethics for Expanded States

Kylea Taylor, M.S., LMFT, developed and teaches InnerEthics®, a self-reflective, self-compassionate approach to ethical relationship for therapists and practitioners. She has been writing and teaching about ethics for almost three decades. Kylea started studying with Stanislav Grof, M.D. and Christina Grof in 1984 and worked with Grof as a Senior Trainer in the Grof Transpersonal Training throughout the 1990s, facilitating and observing thousands of extra-ordinary state of consciousness sessions. She is the author of The Ethics of Caring: Finding Right Relationship with Clients, The Breathwork Experience, Considering Holotropic Breathwork®, and is the editor of Exploring Holotropic Breathwork®. At the BCSP, she brings her expertise instructing learners in the nuances of ethics for psychedelic care.

Program Coordinator

Kristina Hunter is a mindfulness-based somatic counselor and writer with a specialization in psychedelic integration. She has spent over fifteen years studying the transformative potential of expanded states of consciousness with Indigenous and mestizo practitioners from Central and South America. Additionally, she has been studying and practicing Buddhadharma with Tibetan and American teachers for the past two decades. Kristina’s work explores the intersection of psychology, plant medicine, and Buddhist contemplative practice. She consults with clinicians on individualized approaches to psychedelic facilitation, with an emphasis on preparation and integration, self-awareness, and harm reduction. At the BCSP, Kristina supports the Ethics curriculum, tracks legislation and policy developments, and conducts research on programmatic content areas.

Project Manager

Joody Marks is a project manager and operations strategist, who specializes in change-making experiential programming. She is especially interested in promoting equitable access to transformative health care and has created and supported projects that focus on mindfulness, mutual aid, health equity, artivism, rural justice, nature connection, movement, farming, and food justice. At the BCSP, she manages operations and administrative systems for the Certificate Program. She brings over a decade of experience as an event coordinator and production manager in alternative healing, arts, and social justice spaces. Her approach is largely informed by her love of guiding people into wild places, and two decades as a contemplative spiritual practitioner in Tibetan Buddhist, yoga, and embodied awareness traditions.