Community
About Us
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Jennalise Abridge
Head of Strategic Initiatives
Vision Council, Strategic Initiatives, Co-founder
Jennalise comes to Gather Well Psychedelics with experience as a community organizer, heart-centered strategist for the expansion of yoga studios across the Hawaiian islands, and facilitator of numerous training programs within the realms of movement and mindfulness. A dancer at heart, Jennalise is inspired by Earth and moves with the rhythm of change, allowing her to thrive in ambiguity and maintain space for emergence when developing and executing operational strategies. Since childhood, she has felt the urge to be of service to the healing of humanity through the restoration of interconnectedness within community. Jennalise feels that her life's purpose aligns deeply with organizational mission and is thrilled to be part of such an inspired effort.
Florie St. Aime
Program Development & Ceremonial Lead Guide
Program Team
Florie (she/hers) LCSW, is a Fat Black Queer Cis Woman born, raised, in Lenapehoking particularly the Canarsee peoples land, now known as Brooklyn NY one generation removed from Haiti, the land of the Taino’s and before that the landmass now known as Africa, people unknown. She describes herself as a liberation-based clinician. This label roots her work in naming and blaming social constructs instead of individuals; encouraging curiosity and sensing as resistance; and practicing human connection and care towards all beings as radical action. Florie invites others into liberation practices through organizing/activism, group facilitation/workshops, individual counseling, holding sacred space and clinical supervision.
Naama Thomas
Vision Lead, Program Development, Lead Ceremonial Guide
Co-Founder, Vision Lead, Board member, Vision Council, Program Team, Ceremonial Lead Guide
I am a guide, mother, partner, artist and creator of containers for personal and cultural change. I identify as a white, cis-queer, woman, first generation American of French and Israeli descent and also raised by the redwood forests of California’s central coast. I am committed to love and a future in which everyone has the opportunity to know their goodness and thrive. I have apprenticed in expanded states of consciousness work and psychedelic healing modalities most of my life with my mother, Francoise Bourzat and for the past 12 years with the Casimiro-Estrada family, a family of Mazatec ceremonial healers in the Oaxacan region of Mexico. I studied at the Hakomi Institute and hold a certificate in permaculture design with a special interest in social permaculture principles. I received my Bachelors of Fine Arts with a focus in conceptual and interactive art. Since 2018 I have turned my creativity towards building this organization in the service of healing, growth and collective systemic change. I am a Co-founder of Gather Well, and currently hold the Vision Lead position where I co-lead in the vision and trajectory of the organization, co-create programs and curriculums and serve on the Vision Council and Board of Directors. I live in the area known as Nevada City, the unceded land of the Nisenan, in the Sierra foothills of California with my partner, Bear, and our two young sons. Here I enjoy getting my hands in the dirt, growing plants, and being in community.
Nikiya Schwarz
Community Engagement
Communications, Vision Council, Co-founder
Nikiya is a guide, artist and mama with twin passions in the creative and healing arts. She has a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies weaving Eastern Religion, Sociology & Ecology and is a certified Skills for Change coach, a Holy Fire Reiki practitioner, has studied Hakomi, the Rosen method, Relational Somatic Healing (RSH) and Buddhist meditation. She is also an interior designer and a certified BTB (Black Sect) Feng Shui Practitioner. She enjoys exploring the relationships between people and the spaces they inhabit. She lives on unceeded Nisenan land in the foothills of Northern California.
Tyger Blair
Ceremonial Lead Guide
Tyger has been gradually stepping into the role of “Elder” as the role was anciently held. Tyger's ceremonial work began with studying with Maildoma Patrice Some and some work with Sobonfu Some with their teachings of the Dagara traditions of Burkina Faso, West Africa. That work set the foundation of the working with the ancestors, grief ritual and the primary elemental rituals of the earth, and the magic of the worlds as the Dagara have held it for centuries. He has cultivated a multitude of skills and passions with a focus in holistic healing, creativity of various iterations and the inspiring of personal and spiritual development in others. He has learned with Naama Grossbard and Franciose Bourzat of the Mazatec cosmology of Mexico as well as how that cosmology translates into the learning of indigenous practices in this hemisphere. Tyger is a Restorative and Transformative Justice practitioner assisting organizational systems and individuals with finding and holding effective and non punitive options in addressing harm caused, generally urging toward some semblance of accountability and mutual equilibrium. When called, Tyger steps into the seat of a mediator, group ceremonial guide, integration coach and spiritual teacher. Tyger has enthusiastically studied Buddhism, Sufism, Judaism, Religious Science, Indigenous Systems, Family Constellation, Hakomi and Transpersonal Psychology.
Susan Weiss
Program Team
Susan comes to Gather Well from a background in graduate education, where she supported, trained and supervised students in a Transpersonal/Holistic Psychotherapy Program. Currently, at GatherWell her work is on the programming team, with a focus on helping to create and establish the infrastructure to offer students, staff, programs, and the organization as a whole the opportunity for self-reflection and feedback - valuing these as integral for continued growth and evolution.
Other loves include family, connecting deeply with the land around her, and getting her fingernails dirty tending her garden.
Bear Thomas
Vision Council
Bear Hart Thomas is a deep thinker who likes to identify patterns and challenge assumptions. He holds graduate degrees in Cultural Theory, Creative Writing, and Linguistics. Bear then pursued a law degree, but found himself feeling deeply disconnected and unfulfilled, so he abruptly reformed himself to a life of living off the land and learning about plants, healing, and himself more deeply. He now lives in Northern California with his family where he enjoys following his interests in art making, cooking, plant tending, building, imaginative play with his kids, and in depth dialogues about the nature of reality and the social constructs of our world.
In my role as an advisor to Gather Well, I intend to offer dynamic perspectives to our dialogues in order to support GW in their steadfast commitment to their mission. My knowledge of cultural theory and systems thinking, along with my lifelong personal experience of attempting to understand human consciousness have provided me with much to share. Too much, some say. But it is my passion to overthink, to problem solve, and ultimately, to help create a safer, more gentle, more fulfilling human experience for us all.
Deborah Sharpe
Advisor
Deborah Sharpe (pronouns: she/her/hers) is a board-certified, registered art therapist and received her Ph.D. in Art Therapy from Dominican University of California in May 2023.
Deborah has been a practicing art therapist for over 30 years and teaches full-time at Saint Mary’s College of California in the Graduate Counseling Department. Deborah is also a certified life coach and hypnotherapist and is currently pursuing training as a Reiki practitioner. Deborah lives in San Pablo, in Northern California, with her spouse of 30 years, as settlers on the land unheeded land of the Ohlone, the Miwok, the Muwekma, and the Confederated Villages of the Lisjan. They have a beautiful son and daughter-in-law who bring much joy to their lives. Deborah enjoys being creative and making art. She is nourished by nature and travel, loves cooking for family and friends, and practices meditation, yoga, and walking for self-care.
In advising Gather Well I bring a background in therapeutic work with clients of all ages, identities, and backgrounds, a passion for serving individuals and communities, and a commitment to nurturing the light that resides in all beings by facilitating and supporting life-enhancing experiences and spiritual awakenings that can be accessed through the expressive arts, plant medicine, energy medicine, mindfulness and meditation, breath work, and movement. As an educator, I understand the importance of nurturing the next generation of change-makers. I thrive in working within and through a shared community and deeply value the healing that comes from being deeply involved in the beauty of service to the planet.
Alisha Morton
Operations
Staff
For over 10 years, Alisha has offered support to people on their journey towards inner awakening and collective transformation. After receiving her Master's Degree in Holistic Health Education, she began working alongside spiritual teachers like Tara Brach, Jack Kornfield, Eckhart Tolle, and A.H. Almaas to design and implement courses, in-depth trainings, online summits, local events, international retreats and conferences. She currently manages the EcoDharma programs and events at Spirit Rock Meditation Retreat Center in addition to offering operational support at Gather Well Psychedelics. Alisha currently lives in Woodacre, California on unceded Coast Miwok territory.
Anandi S.
Program Facilitator
Anandi approaches facilitation with curiosity, mindfulness, and a love of process design. Anandi has spent almost the last decade engaged in social justice movements at a grassroots level, through popular education, space holding, and dance. Much of her skillset has been sharpened through organizing with a trauma-informed peer counseling collective that provides informal mental health care for people of color, centering queer and trans folks in its practice. Her experiences organizing in a non-hierarchical, consensus-based collective have deepened her interest in supporting other groups and movements to create values-aligned, sustainable structures that can expand their capacity for transformation. At present, much of Anandi’s work resides at the intersections of racial justice, economic justice, and healing justice.
As a facilitator for Gather Well, I bring the tools I've honed through supporting groups to center trust, non-extractive relationships, and their values while moving through strategy and visioning processes. From my work as a trauma-informed peer counselor, I bring a passion to helping individuals unearth and honor the wisdom they have within them.
Ollie Gillett
Program Facilitator
I’m joining Gather Well because I believe the deepest healing happens in relationship with each other and the land. I bring 15 years of experience facilitating groups of multiple shapes and sizes: peer groups on gender and sexuality; community co-design processes for racial and economic justice in NYC; grief and meditation at senior centers; a Buddhist group at a NY state prison; and parent groups at a summer camp for trans youth.
I want to live in a world in which no part of any sentient being gets cut out or left behind. My current path is pursuing a dual MDiv/MSW at Union Theological Seminary and Hunter College. My sun is in social movements, my moon is in chaplaincy, and my rising is integrating it all.
I am attempting to become a surfer, and I never stopped rollerblading after the 90s.
Sonya Robin
Program Facilitator
Sonya Robin is gratefully nestled into a web of relations on Kalapuya Ilihi as a multi-racial queer femme using they/she pronouns. Their offerings are rooted in diasporic lineage praxis and the notions of non-binary becoming, interconnection, and magic. These integrations, combined with a knack for supporting transformational change, are foundational to their facilitation practice.
As a seasoned steward and forever student of the art of gathering, Sonya brings embodied presence, deep attunement, and nuanced listening to her spaceholding. Devoted to interconnection, Sonya honors the multiplicity of our experiences as bigger than ourselves: as weather patterns of the micro↔macro biome that we are situated within as individuals, and as one.
Her teachers include ocean, forest, mountain, lichen ancestors, parents Josephine Michiko and Gary Leacroft, Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Bayo Akomolafe, and an expanse of others unnamed and unknown. Sonya is a tender of Jamaican Maroon and Japanese diasporic lineages, in community, through art and ceremony. They also tend Jewish lineage in their household, with their partner and children. Together they are weaving a stunning tapestry of queer survivor brilliance.
As a facilitator with Gather Well I bring forth gifts from my wellspring of lineage and rich life-experience in service to tending complexity and multiple truths. I am here to compost modernity and work much like our mycelial allies do: by weaving networks of interconnection, both seen and unseen, that fortify our taproots.
Kalil Cohen
Relational Learning & Development
Kalil Cohen (ze/they) is a genderqueer birth parent, Jewitch ritualist, and teacher with a Masters in Education. Ze is trained in mediation, The Resilience Toolkit somatic modality, Internal Family Systems (IFS), transformative education, and social justice organizing. Kalil has two decades of experience in building community across diverse identities, with a current focus on IFS-informed somatic coaching rooted in ancestral and cultural healing. Kalil helps individuals and groups to understand the mind and body, the nervous system and intergenerational trauma, so that we can better work together toward shared visions of a sustainable and beautiful future for all Beings.
Through Kalil's trauma-responsive facilitation style, ze helps us engage with hard questions by increasing our capacity to be with the unknown. We do this together through establishing the felt sense of safety in our nervous systems that allows us to tolerate the stress of the gray. What possibilities open for us when we unshame uncertainty? What shifts when we can be with grief and fear and rage and heartbreak together, muddling through the multiple overlapping global crises in connection and collaboration rather than in polarization and dehumanization? The format for these spaces varies from to somatic workshops, to Jewish-rooted grief rituals, to cohorts of creative exploration. May we all be supported by the sacred mushrooms that expand our ability to explore the unknown with curiosity and courage.
As a facilitator for Gather Well, I bring gifts of somatic healing and Internal Family Systems (IFS) as practices of liberation, as a tool for time travel to heal old traumas lodged in our bodies, and as a place of play and delight - especially for those of us who are multiply marginalized, carriers of ancestral and personal trauma. I believe that mushroom medicine offers a portal into this work, and that we are magicians with incredible power to heal ourselves, our communities, and our world. My life’s work is to be one thread weaving connection in this world: to integrate our fractured selves, our fractured human communities, and our fractured environments so that we each shine our unique light as a sacred part of the Oneness.
Mollie Crittenden
Program Facilitator
As a facilitator for Gather Well, I draw from my background as a life coach, facilitator, trainer, and educator for more than 20 years. My deep commitment to my own physical, emotional, and spiritual evolutionary process informs all of the facilitation and coaching work I engage in. As a certified integral life coach, I draw from my understanding that our own internal transformational process expands our capacity to live into our full potential as uniquely gifted individuals who can lead a life of purpose, empowerment, and fulfillment. My purpose is rooted in the understanding that our holistic healing and growth in community with others is essential for the sustainability of our society and planet. I infuse my work in healing from racism and different aspects of oppression from my experience as a lead teacher with The UNtraining in my facilitation. I draw from a variety of somatic, reflective, integrative, and mindfulness practices, tools and exercises. I am committed to embodying love, compassion, healing and connection in all the work I do. You can learn more about my work at www.molliecrittenden.com.
Program facilitators are the main staff for Gather Well programs. They support our program cohorts by providing a learning and process container that stimulates a variety of intelligences. They facilitate exercises and discussions and attend to, and are responsive to, what arises in the group in regards to individual emotion and group dynamics.
Anandi S.
Program Facilitator
Anandi approaches facilitation with curiosity, mindfulness, and a love of process design. Anandi has spent almost the last decade engaged in social justice movements at a grassroots level, through popular education, space holding, and dance. Much of her skillset has been sharpened through organizing with a trauma-informed peer counseling collective that provides informal mental health care for people of color, centering queer and trans folks in its practice. Her experiences organizing in a non-hierarchical, consensus-based collective have deepened her interest in supporting other groups and movements to create values-aligned, sustainable structures that can expand their capacity for transformation. At present, much of Anandi’s work resides at the intersections of racial justice, economic justice, and healing justice.
As a facilitator for Gather Well, I bring the tools I've honed through supporting groups to center trust, non-extractive relationships, and their values while moving through strategy and visioning processes. From my work as a trauma-informed peer counselor, I bring a passion to helping individuals unearth and honor the wisdom they have within them.
Ollie Gillett
Program Facilitator
I’m joining Gather Well because I believe the deepest healing happens in relationship with each other and the land. I bring 15 years of experience facilitating groups of multiple shapes and sizes: peer groups on gender and sexuality; community co-design processes for racial and economic justice in NYC; grief and meditation at senior centers; a Buddhist group at a NY state prison; and parent groups at a summer camp for trans youth.
I want to live in a world in which no part of any sentient being gets cut out or left behind. My current path is pursuing a dual MDiv/MSW at Union Theological Seminary and Hunter College. My sun is in social movements, my moon is in chaplaincy, and my rising is integrating it all.
I am attempting to become a surfer, and I never stopped rollerblading after the 90s.
Sonya Robin
Program Facilitator
Sonya Robin is gratefully nestled into a web of relations on Kalapuya Ilihi as a multi-racial queer femme using they/she pronouns. Their offerings are rooted in diasporic lineage praxis and the notions of non-binary becoming, interconnection, and magic. These integrations, combined with a knack for supporting transformational change, are foundational to their facilitation practice.
As a seasoned steward and forever student of the art of gathering, Sonya brings embodied presence, deep attunement, and nuanced listening to her spaceholding. Devoted to interconnection, Sonya honors the multiplicity of our experiences as bigger than ourselves: as weather patterns of the micro↔macro biome that we are situated within as individuals, and as one.
Her teachers include ocean, forest, mountain, lichen ancestors, parents Josephine Michiko and Gary Leacroft, Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Bayo Akomolafe, and an expanse of others unnamed and unknown. Sonya is a tender of Jamaican Maroon and Japanese diasporic lineages, in community, through art and ceremony. They also tend Jewish lineage in their household, with their partner and children. Together they are weaving a stunning tapestry of queer survivor brilliance.
As a facilitator with Gather Well I bring forth gifts from my wellspring of lineage and rich life-experience in service to tending complexity and multiple truths. I am here to compost modernity and work much like our mycelial allies do: by weaving networks of interconnection, both seen and unseen, that fortify our taproots.
Kalil Cohen
Relational Learning & Development
Kalil Cohen (ze/they) is a genderqueer birth parent, Jewitch ritualist, and teacher with a Masters in Education. Ze is trained in mediation, The Resilience Toolkit somatic modality, Internal Family Systems (IFS), transformative education, and social justice organizing. Kalil has two decades of experience in building community across diverse identities, with a current focus on IFS-informed somatic coaching rooted in ancestral and cultural healing. Kalil helps individuals and groups to understand the mind and body, the nervous system and intergenerational trauma, so that we can better work together toward shared visions of a sustainable and beautiful future for all Beings.
Through Kalil's trauma-responsive facilitation style, ze helps us engage with hard questions by increasing our capacity to be with the unknown. We do this together through establishing the felt sense of safety in our nervous systems that allows us to tolerate the stress of the gray. What possibilities open for us when we unshame uncertainty? What shifts when we can be with grief and fear and rage and heartbreak together, muddling through the multiple overlapping global crises in connection and collaboration rather than in polarization and dehumanization? The format for these spaces varies from to somatic workshops, to Jewish-rooted grief rituals, to cohorts of creative exploration. May we all be supported by the sacred mushrooms that expand our ability to explore the unknown with curiosity and courage.
As a facilitator for Gather Well, I bring gifts of somatic healing and Internal Family Systems (IFS) as practices of liberation, as a tool for time travel to heal old traumas lodged in our bodies, and as a place of play and delight - especially for those of us who are multiply marginalized, carriers of ancestral and personal trauma. I believe that mushroom medicine offers a portal into this work, and that we are magicians with incredible power to heal ourselves, our communities, and our world. My life’s work is to be one thread weaving connection in this world: to integrate our fractured selves, our fractured human communities, and our fractured environments so that we each shine our unique light as a sacred part of the Oneness.
Mollie Crittenden
Program Facilitator
As a facilitator for Gather Well, I draw from my background as a life coach, facilitator, trainer, and educator for more than 20 years. My deep commitment to my own physical, emotional, and spiritual evolutionary process informs all of the facilitation and coaching work I engage in. As a certified integral life coach, I draw from my understanding that our own internal transformational process expands our capacity to live into our full potential as uniquely gifted individuals who can lead a life of purpose, empowerment, and fulfillment. My purpose is rooted in the understanding that our holistic healing and growth in community with others is essential for the sustainability of our society and planet. I infuse my work in healing from racism and different aspects of oppression from my experience as a lead teacher with The UNtraining in my facilitation. I draw from a variety of somatic, reflective, integrative, and mindfulness practices, tools and exercises. I am committed to embodying love, compassion, healing and connection in all the work I do. You can learn more about my work at www.molliecrittenden.com.
Dr. Diana Quinn
Guest Facilitator
Diana Quinn, ND is a licensed naturopathic doctor, culture worker, and healing justice practitioner with over 20 years of service to marginalized communities including people of the global majority (BIPOC), 2SLGBTQIA+, and people living with disabilities and chronic illness. She holds a Doctorate in Naturopathic Medicine and a Bachelor of Arts in Cultural Anthropology, with a focus on ritual, religion, and ethnobotany.
Dr. Quinn is the former Director of Clinical Education at the Naropa Center for Psychedelic Studies, where her work in psychedelic education centered historically excluded communities within an anti-oppressive model. She is a mentor for the Psychedelic Facilitation Certificate Program at the Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics. Dr. Quinn has served on numerous advisory boards with an emphasis on ethical integrity, equity, accessibility, and Indigenous reciprocity in the psychedelic field.
Meenadchi
Guest Facilitator
Meenadchi is a somatic healing practitioner, TEDx speaker, and communications expert whose work centers social change and embodied transformation. Having developed a unique framework for Non-Violent Communication that incorporates a decolonial and trauma-informed lens. Meenadchi supports socially conscious organisations and changemakers in developing clear and intentional communication that prioritises the intuitive wisdom of our bodies along with our ability to build bridges across difference with empathy and dignity. She is the author of Decolonizing Non-Violent Communication (2019) and a faculty member with the Trauma of Money.
Camille Sapara Barton
Guest Facilitator
I am a Social Imagineer who is dedicated to creating networks of care and liveable futures, through creative practice, somatics and organisational development. I work as a writer, facilitator, consultant and curator across the realms of embodied social justice, grief, harm reduction and the arts.
I cross pollinate ideas and approaches from various fields, whilst weaving in trauma informed, care based practices. Alongside my visionary imagination, I am able to inspire and support people and organisations to build new infrastructure that can support liveable futures.
For me the journey is as important as the end-goal. I prioritise weaving in pleasure, body awareness and rest into working practices. One of my strengths is my holistic and interdisciplinary approach.
I am a writer, consultant, embodiment facilitator and movement artist that supports organisations to flow through transitions. My work creates relational wellbeing by increasing connection to the body, care practices, grief and imagination. I support teams, as well as individuals, to reduce stress and enhance resilience, while navigating change. I also offer trauma informed facilitation and consultancy to support cultural workers, funders or those working with socially engaged topics.
I am the author of Tending Grief: Embodied Rituals for Holding Our Sorrow and Growing Cultures of Care in Community (2024). Based in Amsterdam, I designed and directed MA Ecologies of Transformation (2021 – 2023) which explored how embodiment and socially engaged art making can create change through the body, into the wider world.
My approach is rooted in Black feminism, ecology and harm reduction. I am also certified in the Resilience Toolkit – a somatic framework to reduce stress, increase resilience and create capacity to change harmful conditions.
As we look to the future of the organization it feels important to us that the spirit of our organization and our prayer for healing, be well attended to. Thus, we have decided to form a Vision Council for this purpose. This council is an advisory council that meets on a regular basis and has the sole focus of reflecting on and advocating for the maintenance of the spirit of the vision and prayer, deepened learning around the organization's values and impact, and advising or guiding the appropriate people or groups in the organization as needed.
Jennalise Abridge
Head of Strategic Initiatives
Vision Council, Strategic Initiatives, Co-founder
Jennalise comes to Gather Well Psychedelics with experience as a community organizer, heart-centered strategist for the expansion of yoga studios across the Hawaiian islands, and facilitator of numerous training programs within the realms of movement and mindfulness. A dancer at heart, Jennalise is inspired by Earth and moves with the rhythm of change, allowing her to thrive in ambiguity and maintain space for emergence when developing and executing operational strategies. Since childhood, she has felt the urge to be of service to the healing of humanity through the restoration of interconnectedness within community. Jennalise feels that her life's purpose aligns deeply with organizational mission and is thrilled to be part of such an inspired effort.
Naama Grossbard
Ceremonial Lead Guide
Founder, Vision Lead, Board member, Vision Council, Program Team, Ceremonial Lead Guide
I am a guide, mother, partner, artist and creator of containers for personal and cultural change. I identify as a white, cis-queer, woman, first generation American of French and Israeli descent and also raised by the redwood forests of California’s central coast. I am committed to love and a future in which everyone has the opportunity to know their goodness and thrive. I have apprenticed in expanded states of consciousness work and psychedelic healing modalities most of my life with my mother, Francoise Bourzat and for the past 12 years with the Casimiro-Estrada family, a family of Mazatec ceremonial healers in the Oaxacan region of Mexico. I studied at the Hakomi Institute and hold a certificate in permaculture design with a special interest in social permaculture principles. I received my Bachelors of Fine Arts with a focus in conceptual and interactive art. Since 2018 I have turned my creativity towards building this organization in the service of healing, growth and collective systemic change. I am a Co-founder of Gather Well, and currently hold the Vision Lead position where I co-lead in the vision and trajectory of the organization, co-create programs and curriculums and serve on the Vision Council and Board of Directors. I live in the area known as Nevada City, the unceded land of the Nisenan, in the Sierra foothills of California with my partner, Bear, and our two young sons. Here I enjoy getting my hands in the dirt, growing plants, and being in community.
Nikiya Schwarz
Community Engagement
Communications, Vision Council, Co-founder
Nikiya is a guide, artist and mama with twin passions in the creative and healing arts. She has a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies weaving Eastern Religion, Sociology & Ecology and is a certified Skills for Change coach, a Holy Fire Reiki practitioner, has studied Hakomi, the Rosen method, Relational Somatic Healing (RSH) and Buddhist meditation. She is also an interior designer and a certified BTB (Black Sect) Feng Shui Practitioner. She enjoys exploring the relationships between people and the spaces they inhabit. She lives on unceeded Nisenan land in the foothills of Northern California.
Bear Thomas
Vision Council
Bear Hart Thomas is a deep thinker who likes to identify patterns and challenge assumptions. He holds graduate degrees in Cultural Theory, Creative Writing, and Linguistics. Bear then pursued a law degree, but found himself feeling deeply disconnected and unfulfilled, so he abruptly reformed himself to a life of living off the land and learning about plants, healing, and himself more deeply. He now lives in Northern California with his family where he enjoys following his interests in art making, cooking, plant tending, building, imaginative play with his kids, and in depth dialogues about the nature of reality and the social constructs of our world.
In my role as an advisor to Gather Well, I intend to offer dynamic perspectives to our dialogues in order to support GW in their steadfast commitment to their mission. My knowledge of cultural theory and systems thinking, along with my lifelong personal experience of attempting to understand human consciousness have provided me with much to share. Too much, some say. But it is my passion to overthink, to problem solve, and ultimately, to help create a safer, more gentle, more fulfilling human experience for us all.
The residential retreats and ceremonies with psilocybin will be staffed by ceremonial lead guides who have experience with the facilitation of groups in a ceremonial context. They are assisted by the program facilitators and other necessary and appropriate staff in order to provide a supportive environment for participants' transformative work.
Florie St. Aime
Program Development & Ceremonial Lead Guide
Program Team
Florie (she/hers) LCSW, is a Fat Black Queer Cis Woman born, raised, in Lenapehoking particularly the Canarsee peoples land, now known as Brooklyn NY one generation removed from Haiti, the land of the Taino’s and before that the landmass now known as Africa, people unknown. She describes herself as a liberation-based clinician. This label roots her work in naming and blaming social constructs instead of individuals; encouraging curiosity and sensing as resistance; and practicing human connection and care towards all beings as radical action. Florie invites others into liberation practices through organizing/activism, group facilitation/workshops, individual counseling, holding sacred space and clinical supervision.
Naama Grossbard
Ceremonial Lead Guide
Founder, Vision Lead, Board member, Vision Council, Program Team, Ceremonial Lead Guide
I am a guide, mother, partner, artist and creator of containers for personal and cultural change. I identify as a white, cis-queer, woman, first generation American of French and Israeli descent and also raised by the redwood forests of California’s central coast. I am committed to love and a future in which everyone has the opportunity to know their goodness and thrive. I have apprenticed in expanded states of consciousness work and psychedelic healing modalities most of my life with my parents, Francoise Bourzat and Aharon Grossbard and for the past 10 years with the Casimiro-Estrada family, a family of Mazatec ceremonial healers in the Oaxacan region of Mexico. I studied at the Hakomi Institute and hold a certificate in permaculture design with a special interest in social permaculture principles. I received my Bachelors of Fine Arts with a focus in conceptual and interactive art. Since 2018 I have turned my creativity towards building this organization in the service of healing, growth and collective systemic change. I was the founding Executive Director at Gather Well, a role now shifted into a leadership team where I hold the Vision Lead position. Here I co-lead in the vision and trajectory of the organization, co-create programs and curriculums and serve on the Vision Council and Board of Directors. I live in the area known as Nevada City, the unceded land of the Nisenan, in the Sierra foothills of California with my partner, Bear, and our two young sons. Here I enjoy getting my hands in the dirt, growing plants, being in community, and witnessing the ongoing and humbling process of the unraveling and recreation of myself as a person, mother, partner, friend, and being of this vibrant and complex world.
Tyger Blair
Ceremonial Lead Guide
Tyger has been gradually stepping into the role of “Elder” as the role was anciently held. Tyger's ceremonial work began with studying with Maildoma Patrice Some and some work with Sobonfu Some with their teachings of the Dagara traditions of Burkina Faso, West Africa. That work set the foundation of the working with the ancestors, grief ritual and the primary elemental rituals of the earth, and the magic of the worlds as the Dagara have held it for centuries. He has cultivated a multitude of skills and passions with a focus in holistic healing, creativity of various iterations and the inspiring of personal and spiritual development in others. He has learned with Naama Grossbard and Franciose Bourzat of the Mazatec cosmology of Mexico as well as how that cosmology translates into the learning of indigenous practices in this hemisphere. Tyger is a Restorative and Transformative Justice practitioner assisting organizational systems and individuals with finding and holding effective and non punitive options in addressing harm caused, generally urging toward some semblance of accountability and mutual equilibrium. When called, Tyger steps into the seat of a mediator, group ceremonial guide, integration coach and spiritual teacher. Tyger has enthusiastically studied Buddhism, Sufism, Judaism, Religious Science, Indigenous Systems, Family Constellation, Hakomi and Transpersonal Psychology.
This committee guides Gather Well in its mission to maintain ethical excellence in all its endeavors. Its primary objectives include advising on ethical practices, reviewing policies, fostering ethical culture and decision making practices and handling ethical queries and conflicts.
Learn more about the the Ethics Infrastructure they oversee.
Alexa Iya Soro
Ethics Committee Member
Alexa Iya Soro is a holistic transpersonal psychotherapist, psychedelic guide, & ritual facilitator who helps people reconnect with their vital essence, reclaiming of self-empowerment, ancestral wisdom, and earth connection with an eclectic practice of transpersonal, humanist, animist, and depth psychology. Alexa personalizes her approach with each person through focus on direct experience, the nature of consciousness, neurobiology of growth, education on cross cultural and cosmological perspectives in healing.
Her psycho-spiritual work has been informed by teachers like Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and Tibetan Buddhism holders via Naropa, by indigenous wisdom holders from Tz'utujil Tradition through Nana Marina, Martin Pretchel, Vision Toltec of her teachers in Mexico, and the Yoruba Culture through Daniel Foor PhD. Alexa honors the forces of the Sacred Fire, Holy Waters, & her own ancestral Allies
Alexa provides supervision for psychedelic integration therapists, as well as retreat curation, integration specialization and design with Sacred Counsel LLC with her husband Luke. Their location is based out of Mexico specializing at the intersection of functional health, healing, and ritual arts.
Anja Loizaga-Velder
Ethics Committee Member
Dr.sc.hum. Dipl.-Psych Anja Loizaga-Velder, is a German-Mexican clinical psychologist and psychotherapist, with humanistic orientation. Parallel to her psychological practice Anja has been learning from and collaborating with Indigenous entheogenic healing specialists for over 30 years. She also has extensive experience in supporting preparation and integration processes with psychedelics in individual and group settings.
She is Co-founder and director of research and clinical services at the Nierika Institute for Intercultural Medicine, in Mexico, a NGO dedicated to the preservation of indigenous traditions with sacred plant medicines and research around their therapeutic applications for mental health and personal growth. She has published several research articles and book chapters that explore the therapeutic potential of entheogens for the treatment of mental health challenges and has presented her work as speaker in many conferences. Anja teaches in diverse psychedelic therapy training programs. She also collaborates as board member of the International Society for Substance Assisted Psychotherapy.
Jessika Largarde
Ethics Committee Member
Originally from Brazil and based in the Netherlands, Jessika is a trauma-informed plant medicine facilitator, microdosing coach, educator, and Women On Psychedelics co-founder. Jess' work is focused on the creation of spaces that amplify avenues for self-expression, self-acceptance, and self-awareness.
Women on Psychedelics is an educational platform and event organizer committed to connection and community, fostering a culture of holistic healing and authentic self-expression for empowered female autonomy. Its mission is centered around ensuring access to psychedelic education, harm reduction, and safe spaces for women globally.
All of Jessika's work is informed by taking action in a way that serves the Earth and our human collective, in hopes of mobilizing inner healing towards outer action.
Frederica Helmiere
Ethics Committee Member
Frederica Helmiere is a complexity enthusiast and an aficionado of transformational learning experiences. Fascinated by the ways that consciousness, worldviews and discourses change and expand, she has spent the past twenty years exploring the tools available to respond to civilizational crises, especially the modern West’s loss of the sacred. Frederica currently serves as Head of Workshops and Programs at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, CA. Prior to this, she served as Director of Psychedelic Practitioner Training at The Synthesis Institute. Frederica holds masters degrees in ethics from Yale Divinity School and in the eco-justice movement from the Yale School of the Environment. She has served as a Peace Corps volunteer, taught at the University of Washington and Seattle University, and worked as a global interfaith peacebuilder at the United Religions Initiative. A first generation American, child of Belgian immigrants, she lives in Seattle with her partner and two daughters.
The Board of Directors brings their skill and passion to stewarding the organization in its mission, supporting the direction, and helping to make decisions at the broadest level for the organization’s health.
Naama Thomas
Ceremonial Lead Guide, Vision Lead, Co-Founder
Founder, Vision Lead, Board member, Vision Council, Program Team, Ceremonial Lead Guide
I am a guide, mother, partner, artist and creator of containers for personal and cultural change. I identify as a white, cis-queer, woman, first generation American of French and Israeli descent and also raised by the redwood forests of California’s central coast. I am committed to love and a future in which everyone has the opportunity to know their goodness and thrive. I have apprenticed in expanded states of consciousness work and psychedelic healing modalities most of my life with my mother, Francoise Bourzat and for the past 12 years with the Casimiro-Estrada family, a family of Mazatec ceremonial healers in the Oaxacan region of Mexico. I studied at the Hakomi Institute and hold a certificate in permaculture design with a special interest in social permaculture principles. I received my Bachelors of Fine Arts with a focus in conceptual and interactive art. Since 2018 I have turned my creativity towards building this organization in the service of healing, growth and collective systemic change. I am a Co-founder of Gather Well, and currently hold the Vision Lead position where I co-lead in the vision and trajectory of the organization, co-create programs and curriculums and serve on the Vision Council and Board of Directors. I live in the area known as Nevada City, the unceded land of the Nisenan, in the Sierra foothills of California with my partner, Bear, and our two young sons. Here I enjoy getting my hands in the dirt, growing plants, and being in community.
Nikiya Schwarz
Community Engagement
Communications, Vision Council, Co-founder
Nikiya is a guide, artist and mama with twin passions in the creative and healing arts. She has a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies weaving Eastern Religion, Sociology & Ecology and is a certified Skills for Change coach, a Holy Fire Reiki practitioner, has studied Hakomi, the Rosen method, Relational Somatic Healing (RSH) and Buddhist meditation. She is also an interior designer and a certified BTB (Black Sect) Feng Shui Practitioner. She enjoys exploring the relationships between people and the spaces they inhabit. She lives on unceeded Nisenan land in the foothills of Northern California.
Ty Blair
Board of Directors
"Being the bridge" is what calls me to Gather Well. Bridge-building relationally and spiritually appears to be the crux of my work in the world.
My distinctive set of skills have been honed and interwoven through project and program management, execution and direction, mediation and restorative/transformative systems, theater training, performance and arts administration, communications, healthcare systems, emotional intelligence coaching and pivotal knowledge of Learning and Development.
The particular emphasis on education within an experiential container that expands and sparks creativity, humility, grace and dignity while one takes up expanded states space holding is what invigorates me in partnering with Gather Well. Consulting on innovative strategic initiatives, performing as a Ceremonial Lead when called, serving on the Gather Well Board and Vision council are how I will be engaged with the Gather Well community.
Dimple Pajwani
Board of Directors
Dimple Pajwani is the Managing Director of Client Services at Mind Share Partners. She leads its workplace mental health strategic advising, culture transformation and training services, helping organizations to create mentally healthy cultures where everyone thrives.
Dimple is drawn to helping people and organizations flourish. She has over 15 years of experience leading strategy, operations, and innovation at nonprofit and for-profit organizations. In her roles as an executive, she has led organizational development, culture change, and diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging work. Prior to Mind Share Partners, she served as the Deputy Director at SupplyBank.Org and as the Chief Operating Officer at SPUR. As a management consultant at PwC, she built two innovative practices — HR Analytics and Healthcare Modeling. At Blue Shield of California and Stanford Children’s Health, she built portfolios of innovation programs that advanced patient outcomes in novel ways.
Previously, Dimple served as an independent consultant for the John Burton Foundation, the UK Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, the United Nations, and the UK Department for International Development, where she advised on national and international policy matters. Dimple started her career as a software engineer and brings the engineering problem-solving mindset to her work.
Dimple is a restorative practitioner and non-violent communication (NVC) coach. Since 2010, she has mediated community cases, led restorative processes, built restorative programs and systems for organizations, and trained and coached groups and individuals on restorative skills and NVC. She recently served as the Chair of the Board of Directors for SEEDS, a conflict transformation nonprofit, and as a strategic advisor for the Transformative Justice Institute, a restorative justice nonprofit.
Dimple holds an M.Sc. in Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science, an M.P.P. from UC Berkeley’s Goldman School, an M.Sc. in Operations Research from Strathclyde University, and a B.Sc. in Computer Engineering from the University of Houston.
Advisors contribute their expert advice and perspective and make recommendations to the core executive team or members of the Board of Directors on key areas of development to help support the mission and activities of the organization.
In my experience advising Gather Well over the past few years, I have been impressed by the sincerity and thoughtfulness. Through an extended process of deep reflection, the team has managed to preserve the invaluable elements of their lineage, while also effecting a transformation into a new and vital organization that responds to learnings from the past and is designed to meet the specific challenges of our time. I believe that there is great potential for this evolving project, and I am grateful to have the opportunity to contribute to its development.
Damon Horowitz
Advisor
Damon works with individuals and organizations to help them identify their fundamental vision and purpose, articulate their culture and values, and develop a strategy for manifesting their potential. His distinctive approach combines elements from the humanities, technology innovation design, and mindful somatic psychology.
As a professor, Damon teaches courses in philosophy and related areas at Columbia, Stanford, U. Penn., NYU, and San Quentin State Prison (now Mt. Tamalpais College). He has a special interest in leading "Great Books" seminars to bring the history of Western thought to life for contemporary students.
As a technologist, Damon has co-founded three successful startup companies -- including the social search engine Aardvark, where he was CTO -- and led teams at each through acquisition. He was the first "In-house Philosopher" at Google, where he was also a Director of Engineering leading a breakthrough cross-company AI research initiative. He now consults with mission-driven companies on strategy, with a particular specialty in AI and ethics.
Damon has extensive experience in public speaking at venues ranging from TED to academic conferences to large corporate events. He has semi-professional experience in theatre (as a director) and music (as a classical pianist). He earned a BA from Columbia, a MS in Artificial Intelligence from MIT, and a PhD in Philosophy and Cognitive Science from Stanford. He has also completed comprehensive training in Hakomi Experiential Psychotherapy, which he integrates into his advising and coaching work. Damon has served on the Board of Directors for several arts and humanities non-profits, ranging from the Del Sol String Quartet to California Humanities.
In my role as advisor to Gather Well I support the development of regenerative practices for delivering psychedelic-assisted mental healthcare. This role aligns with my personal mission to foster the emergence of a regenerative economic system.
Bennet Zelner
Advisor
Bennet researches, teaches, and advises on regenerative economics, psychedelics, and leadership. Current projects include ongoing work on the Pollination Approach – a regenerative economic approach to delivering mental health treatment – and research on the effects of psychedelic-assisted, consciousness-expanding experiences on decision-making by organizational leaders.
Bennet serves as Associate Professor of Business and Public Policy at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, College Park. He also serves as a director or advisory board member for Usona Institute, Nautilus Psychedelic Medicine Institute, Brooklyn Psychedelic Society, and the Intercollegiate Psychedelic Network.
Bennet is a frequent keynote speaker, conference panelist, and podcast guest. Links to talks and writings can be found on his LinkedIn page.
Matt Elkin
General Outside Legal Counsel
Matthew Elkin focuses his practice on advising tax-exempt organizations and other businesses and high net worth families with their charitable and social goals. He regularly advises on the formation of investment funds by both nonprofit and for-profit sponsors, the acquisition and disposition of program-, mission- and impact-related and other investments, joint ventures, sponsored research, mergers and acquisitions, and financing and licensing arrangements. He also counsels boards of directors on fiduciary duties, conflicts of interest, risk oversight, board and committee structures, affiliated entities, internal investigations, board evaluation processes, executive compensation and compliance with other regulatory and governance best practices. His extensive experience with and practical approach to corporate transactions and governance matters are valuable assets to the clients he represents. In addition, Matt shares his knowledge with students as an Adjunct Clinical Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School International Transactions Clinic.
Deborah Sharpe
Advisor
Deborah Sharpe (pronouns: she/her/hers) is a board-certified, registered art therapist and received her Ph.D. in Art Therapy from Dominican University of California in May 2023.
Deborah has been a practicing art therapist for over 30 years and teaches full-time at Saint Mary’s College of California in the Graduate Counseling Department. Deborah is also a certified life coach and hypnotherapist and is currently pursuing training as a Reiki practitioner. Deborah lives in San Pablo, in Northern California, with her spouse of 30 years, as settlers on the land unheeded land of the Ohlone, the Miwok, the Muwekma, and the Confederated Villages of the Lisjan. They have a beautiful son and daughter-in-law who bring much joy to their lives. Deborah enjoys being creative and making art. She is nourished by nature and travel, loves cooking for family and friends, and practices meditation, yoga, and walking for self-care.
In advising Gather Well I bring a background in therapeutic work with clients of all ages, identities, and backgrounds, a passion for serving individuals and communities, and a commitment to nurturing the light that resides in all beings by facilitating and supporting life-enhancing experiences and spiritual awakenings that can be accessed through the expressive arts, plant medicine, energy medicine, mindfulness and meditation, breath work, and movement. As an educator, I understand the importance of nurturing the next generation of change-makers. I thrive in working within and through a shared community and deeply value the healing that comes from being deeply involved in the beauty of service to the planet.