Jenn Alise

Director of Operations

Staff, Vision Council

Rooted in a background of yoga, meditation and energy work, Jenn Collotta has spent much of her life exploring the inner workings of the human psyche and the mystery of the human spirit. From an early age, Jenn has held a deep desire to help alleviate human suffering in the world around her. Following an impactful experience with psychedelics, she was inspired to explore a more holistic approach to living and decided to pursue a career teaching yoga as a way to guide others back home to themselves. Jenn is now the project manager for Center for Consciousness Medicine. She is elated to be a member of this soulful team who is bringing psychedelic assisted therapy to the world and whose mission to alleviate human suffering is deeply aligned with her own.

Florie St. Aime

Program Development

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.

Dimple Pajwani

Advisor

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.

Nikiya Schwarz

Communications

Staff, Board of Directors, Vision Council

Nikiya is part of the communications and visionary team. She has been on a lifelong journey of bringing interior states into external expression, with twin passions in creativity and healing. This has taken form in the realms of art, design, marketing, writing, movement and parenting. She has a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies weaving Eastern Religion, Sociology & Ecology. She has a training certificate as a Skills for Change coach, has studied Hakomi, the Rosen method, Relational Somatic Healing, meditation, community supported agriculture, and is an interior designer and a certified BTB (Black Sect) Feng Shui Practitioner. She enjoys exploring the relationships between people and the spaces they inhabit, with a special interest in creating sacred space. Her greatest joys are co-parenting her two daughters, her godson, having her hands in the soil, creativity in all its forms, and the watershed she calls home. She lives on Nisenan land in the foothills of Northern California.

Alicia Liu

Board of Directors

Alicia Liu was previously the President of Healing Advocacy Fund, a nonprofit focused on the public-private implementation of state-legal breakthrough mental health therapies, starting with psilocybin therapy in Oregon and Colorado. She has managed strategic projects in psychedelic-assisted therapy at Evolve Foundation, built a purpose-driven 7-figure startup, served in COO roles with several social impact organizations, helped build a global center of excellence for entrepreneur mental health, and helped incubate work seen by millions of people on making artificial intelligence safe for humanity.

In advising Gather Well, I bring expertise in entrepreneurship, systems change in the legal psychedelic therapy ecosystem, strategy and operations for mission-driven teams, and a deep dedication to helping humanity blossom in this extraordinary era of history.

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.

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. 

Yecenia Miranda

Vision Council

There’s a tender place in my heart for our human family. I feel a deep longing to be a force for goodwill and healing on our planet.  In my role on the Gather Well Vision Council, I intend to collaborate with the stewards of this organization to co create a healthy and thriving program, drawing from my perspectives as a mother, woman, and multiracial being. My personal mission is to heal legacies of trauma and to have a positive impact on the families and communities that I am part of. My prayer is for us all to remember our Goodness and to feel held in this interconnected web of Life.

Dianne Woods

Vision Council

I am retired but still love being of service. I convene Women’s Circles and Wisdom Circles in the Bay Area. I have a few mentees who find my pragmatic and heartfelt counsel useful. I am a 20-year student of the Ridhwan Spiritual School and champion Cultural Consciousness within the community. I continue to open to new ways of being a good friend, neighbor, and responsible human being.

Before retiring, I was on faculty at New Ventures West Coaching Academy, an

Adjunct Professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies and at SFSU-Extended Learning in San Francisco. Prior to starting my own coaching practice, I served as Vice President of Global Strategies and Organization Development at Levi Strauss. Before arriving in California, I was Director of Human Resources at Public Service, Electric and Gas Company in New Jersey.

I have a BS in Psychology from Kalamazoo College and a Master’s Degree in Organization Development from American University. 

As a child, I developed leadership and public service skills in the Black Baptist Church. While in college, I co-led the Black Student Organization which garnered a tenured Black professor and a Black Studies Program. After moving to California, I participated in Race Conversations, DEI training programs in many corporations and nonprofits. I live in Oakland with my partner of over 30 years.

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 currently identifies as neuroqueer; specifically as a trans masculine ADHDer. 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.

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.

Teresa Ceja

Accounting

Staff

Teresa Ceja provides accounting support to the CCM team. Teresa has over 15 years experience managing accounting activities for a diverse range of clientele. She has worked in the nonprofit community since early 2020. She enjoys working for the nonprofit sector – this experience has given her a deep appreciation for how nonprofits seek to improve the quality of life for our region.

In her personal time, Teresa enjoys participating and volunteering at her daughter’s dance studio. She hopes to travel more in the upcoming year.

Alan Bisarya

Strategic Financial Planning

Staff

Alan is a Strategic Planning professional with extensive experience in helping companies better define their strategy and also make sound resource allocation decisions in the implementation of that strategy. Specifically, Alan has led a comprehensive pro-forma valuation that rationalized the acquisition of a $4B oncology drug pipeline, as well as built the central forecasting model used by a large biotech company to value their entire drug portfolio. Alan also is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) and has taught psychology courses as an Instructor at UC Berkeley Extension and as a Teaching Fellow at Harvard University. Alan holds a BA in Economics from Stanford University, an MA in Education from Harvard University, and an MA in Integral Counseling Psychology from California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco.

Anandi S.

Program Facilitator

Broderick

Program Facilitator

Broderick, PhD ND E-RYT is an educator whose passion and calling is to aid others in the art of practicing a life well-lived. He sees his role as guide to those interested in acquiring the knowledge, skills, and practices that will enable them to develop the characteristics that are conducive to self-realization, wellbeing, and flourishing. He currently teaches Nutrition and Anatomy and Physiology part-time at Laney College. He is a yoga practitioner and teacher that embraces a broad spectrum of truth claims from past to present over various traditions and disciplines. Capoeira, a Brazilian dance/martial art, is also one of his teaching instruments for developing character and building community.

As a facilitator for Gather Well, Broderick brings years of experience in teaching and facilitating programs in the sphere of wellbeing and personal development. He is committed to doing all he can as an educator to encourage a more loving, kind, and compassionate world.

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.