Daniela Peluso is a cultural anthropologist who has worked over the last several decades in Lowland South America, mostly with communities in Peru and Bolivia. She has been actively involved in various local efforts on issues relating to health, gender, indigenous urbanization and land-rights and works in close collaboration with indigenous and local organizations. Her publications focus mostly on indigenous ontologies, urbanization, violence, empathy and relatedness. She received her PhD in 2003 from Columbia University and is an Emeritus Fellow in social anthropology at the University of Kent. She sits on the Advisory Board of the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines.

Dr. Monnica T. Williams is a board-certified licensed clinical psychologist and Professor at the University of Ottawa, in the School of Psychology, where she is the Canada Research Chair in Mental Health Innovation and Equity. She is also the Clinical Director of the Behavioral Wellness Clinics in Connecticut and Ottawa, where she provides supervision and training to clinicians for empirically-supported treatments. Dr. Williams’ research focuses on BIPOC mental health, culture, and psychopathology, and she has published over 250 scientific articles on these topics. Current projects include the treatment of racial trauma, improving cultural competence in the delivery of mental health care services, and addressing structural racism. For over a decade she has been involved in psychedelic research and clinical care, with a focus on culturally-informed approaches for people of color. She served as Chair of the Board of Directors and currently sits on the Advisory Board for the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines. She co-founded a pioneering Masters program in Psychedelic and Consciousness Studies at uOttawa, where they are enrolling their third cohort in September 2026.

Dawn D. Davis is a Tribal person belonging to the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes. She holds a master’s degree from the University of Arizona where she researched the conservation and sustainability of Peyote, a Native medicine, within its natural habitat. She continues to discuss endangerment levels of Peyote and preservation efforts nationally and internationally. Dawn also holds a PhD from the University of Idaho studying her first medicine, water, with an emphasis in Law, Management, and Policy. She is actively working with the current administration of the Native American Church of North America including a role with the National Congress of the American Indian regarding Peyote legislative issues. She sits on the Advisory Board of the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines.

René Alvarado Martínez is a visionary artist from the Sierra Mazateca, Oaxaca, Mexico. His art explores ancestral knowledge surrounding sacred mushrooms, Mazatec culture, and language, emphasising the innate wisdom of women and the transformative power of symbolic connections to the self, nature, and spirituality. With a 20-year artistic journey, René draws inspiration from pre-Hispanic art, Expressionism, Pop Art, Abstract Art, and Surrealism. He employs diverse materials, including natural pigments, cochineal, clay, threads, ant stone, and obsidian blades. His works have been featured in over 60 exhibitions worldwide, including Madre Tierra at St. Teresa University in New York and Future Visions in Denver, Colorado, alongside renowned artists. René’s latest solo exhibition, El Despertar de la Conciencia (2023), was held in Loyola Donostia. His acclaimed piece Simbiosis is part of Mexico’s National Museum of Anthropology’s collection. He sits on the Advisory Board of the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines.

Dr. Sonya Faber graduated with a Masters in Neurobiology from Brown University after completing her undergraduate work at the University of Pennsylvania. She continued her graduate studies at New York University earning a PhD in molecular genetics with a thesis concentration in signal transduction. Over the course of the last 15 years, she has had the opportunity and privilege to contribute equally to both academic research institutes and commercial pharmaceutical development. She has worked in clinical operations for companies including, IQVIA, Covance and Sanofi-Aventis. Her interests lie in creating innovative solutions for projects which could benefit both patients and the scientific community, in part by connecting with top scientists, industry and regulatory agencies.In her academic roles, she assessed novel ideas and supported scientists in making these commercially viable while contributing to several original grants and research papers and patents. Her interest in protocol design, medical writing and project management, which she utilized in both pharma and biotech firms, included pre-clinical and clinical activities for phase II and III trials across multiple indications. She has a special interest in training the next generation of clinical researchers and has designed courses to teach scientific writing and Good Clinical Practice.. In the past three years, she has started an international collaboration with researchers at the University of Ottawa in Canada on several projects in the area of mental health disparities and social justice. Dr. Faber sits on the Advisory Board of the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines. Her engagement on Chacruna is on a volunteer basis and is based on her personal interest in the science of psychedelics, which has long been an interest of hers before taking her current position at Angelini Pharma.

Regina Randall is from Holy Cross, Alaska, an Athabaskan village located on the Yukon river, where she is an enrolled Tribal citizen. Gina works as an Indigenous rights advocate and political organizer in Alaska. She is the Founder and Chair of the Alaska Entheogenic Awareness Council and directs Arctic Visions, Alaska’s annual psychedelic conference. In the spring of 2007, Regina traveled to Peru where she was introduced to the world of shamanic healing. Inspired by her experience, she moved to Peru in 2009 where she spent three years training with indigenous curanderos in the Amazon rainforest. Regina has a deep reverence and respect for the Shipibo-Conibo tribe and resonates strongly with their healing practices. She has organized and facilitated many healing retreats in Peru and is passionate about sharing the wonders of entheogenic plant medicine with the world. Gina is currently pursuing an MA in Political Psychology at Arizona State University. She also serves on the Advisory Board of the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines.

Leopardo Yawa Bane is the son of a traditional chief of the Huni Kuin (an indigenous group also known as the Cashinahua). Leopardo Yawa Bane is an international and national advocate of the preserving the ecological heritage of the native lands of his people. Born in the Cashinahua Reserve of the Jordan River in the State of Acre, Brazil, Bane and his brother Fabiano were sent from the villages to Brazilian cities at a young age by their father and chief, in order to learn new knowledge of the world outside the forest and to represent their people in tradition, heritage, and politics. Since then, Bane has completed his university studies, learning to speak Portuguese fluently, and has begun to represent his people nationally and internationally as an ambassador and healer. Bane and his people see the mystical and natural duality of the plants and how the spiritual world can be accessed through the plants found in their native areas. As is common with indigenous tribes around the world, and particularly in the Amazon, the Huni Kuin have a unique worldview, from creation to the beyond, derived from the wisdom of plants and their shared history. Bane grew up using and being trained in the use of medicinal plants by his grandfather. Twenty years ago, he started using different medicinal plants with non-indigenous people. Bane brings the knowledge of his ancestors, of his people, and of the forest.

Artionka Capiberibe obtained her doctorate in social anthropology from the Museu Nacional-UFRJ in 2009. From 2006–2007, she was a visiting researcher at the Centre d’Enseignement et Recherche en Ethnologie Amérindienne (Paris X-Nanterre). Since 1996, she has been working with the Palikur people, an Amerindian people living in the Amazon region on the border of Brazil and French Guiana. The main themes of her research are corporalities, cosmologies, social changes, and religious conversions. This last theme is the focus of her book, Baptism of Fire: The Palikur and Christianity (2007). Capiberibe has also conducted research and published articles on Amazonian development issues. She is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at Unicamp (State University of Campinas), São Paulo, Brazil. In 2022, she was a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley and a visiting professor at at the University of Paris Nanterre. She sits on Chacruna’s Advisory Board.

Dr. Nicholas Powers is a poet and novelist, journalist and associate professor of literature. He has published five books. The most recent, “Black Psychedelic Revolution: From Trauma to Liberation” by North Atlantic Books in 2024. His first major talk on psychedelics was in 2017 for Horizons. He is a proud father and believes plant medicine can make the world a better place for the next generation. He  sits on the Advisory Board of the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines.

Martha J. Hartney is a private practice attorney in Colorado. She has a J.D. from the University of Denver College of Law. Her firm, Hartney Law, is a Boulder favorite, receiving the “Best of the West/Law Firm” award six years in a row. She was named a SuperLawyers Rising Star in 2020 and has published and presented on the art and science of death and dying for more than a decade. Martha is the first attorney to graduate from the CIIS Certificate in Psychedelic Therapies and Research program. She found plant medicines later in life—becoming a drug policy reform advocate after experiencing profound spiritual healing through our plant teachers. She champions the religious use of ayahuasca and served on the legal team that settled the Church of the Eagle and the Condor case, permitting the first church in the U.S. to import and serve ayahuasca since the UDV in 2006 and the Santo Daime in 2009. She advocates for excellent standards of care, best practices, integration work, and weaving of modern trauma science with powerful multicultural practices taking root in the western world. She was the first steward of the Religious Use Subcommittee of the Psychedelic Bar Association, and served on its Board of Directors. Martha also sits on the Advisory Board of the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines. Martha lives in Boulder with her husband and has two grown sons.

Erika Dyck is a professor and a Canada Research Chair in the History of Health & Social Justice at the University of Saskatchewan. She is the author or co-author of several books, including Psychedelic Psychiatry (2008); Managing Madness (2017); The Acid Room (2022); and Psychedelics: A Visual Odyssey (2024). She is the co-editor of Women & Psychedelics (2024) and Expanding Mindscapes (2023). She is the president of the Alcohol and Drugs History Society. Currently, she is working with First Nations communities in Canada on preserving the history of the Native American Church and its associated ceremonies involving peyote. Erika sits on the Advisory Board of the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines.

Diana Negrín is a geographer, writer and curator based in the Bay Area and Guadalajara. She is the author of Racial Alterity, Wixarika Youth Activism and the Right to the Mexican City (University of Arizona Press 2019) and Grandes maestros del arte wixárika (Secretaría de Cultura Jalisco; Wixarika Research Center 2019). Currently, Negrín is a professor in Geography at UC Berkeley. She is the Associate Director of the Wixarika Research Center, a non-profit that supports archival, cultural and ecological projects with Wixarika communities. She sits in the Advisory Board of the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines. Since 2018, Negrín has actively participated in discussions surrounding psychedelics, Indigenous territorial rights and cultural extraction.

Justin Natoli, JD, LMFT (all pronouns) is a psychotherapist, retreat facilitator, and psychedelic educator. In their private practice in Los Angeles, Justin specializes in trauma, addiction, somatic and psychedelic-assisted therapies, and supporting kink, poly, and LGBTQIA+ communities. Justin sits on the Advisory Board of the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines and contributed to Chacruna’s book, Queering Psychedelics. They founded the Queer Medicine Community and together with their husband operate the Sun & Moon Ranch, a retreat space in Joshua Tree, California. Justin received a JD with honors from the UCLA School of Law and a Master’s in Depth Psychology from the Pacifica Graduate Institute. They completed the CIIS psychedelic therapy and research program, the MAPS MDMA-assisted therapy training, and the AWE Foundation’s three-year psychedelic and transpersonal therapy training. For more information, visit JustinNatoli.com.

Jesse Gould, Founder of Heroic Hearts Project, was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico and grew up in New Smyrna Beach, FL. In 2009 he graduated from Cornell University with a degree in Economics. After working in investment banking for a short time he enlisted in the Army and became an Airborne Ranger for four years and three combat deployments. After struggling with severe anxiety for many years, he finally decided to go to an ayahuasca retreat which has had a profoundly positive effect on his anxiety and daily life. During the week-long retreat, he instantly saw the healing potential of the drink and knew that it could be a powerful tool in healing the mental struggles of his fellow veterans. This experience inspired him to found Heroic Hearts Project, an organization that connects veterans in need of healing with ayahuasca therapy. Since its founding, Heroic Hearts Project has quickly become one of the most prominent veteran voices pushing for psychedelic based therapies. He sits on the Advisory Board of the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines.

NiCole T. Buchanan, PhD, is a professor and licensed clinical-community psychologist. She serves on the Board of Psychedelic Medicine and Therapies and the advisory board of the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicine. Dr. Buchanan has trained as a psychedelic-assisted therapist with the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), the Polaris Insight Center and the California Institute of Integral Studies’s Certificate in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies and Research (CIIS-CPTR). She is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, four divisions of the American Psychological Association and has received international awards for her contributions to the field. An accomplished writer and scholar, she has 120+ publications focusing on equity and inclusion (in psychedelics, training, and organizations), harassment, organizational climate and professional development. Her work is highlighted in hundreds of media outlets and she is a featured international speaker, including TEDx and National Public Radio.

Dr. Harry McIlroy is a medical doctor, Institute of Functional Medicine Certified Practitioner with extensive training in traditional herbal medicine, and integrates his deep knowledge of both Eastern and Western medicine to serve every patient’s health and vitality. His training in traditional Chinese herbal medicine introduced him to cannabis medicine and he has been using it clinically and in research settings for more than 20 years. More recently, he was a member of the MAPS Expanded Access team for MDMA and is currently involved in a clinical trial using 5-MeO DMT for the treatment of depression. He continues to use ketamine both in office and remotely to help support individuals with mood support. Dr. Harry enjoys utilizing his knowledge of Functional Medicine and herbal expertise to help guide patients to the most effective ways to use traditional medicine and regenerative interventions to empower them on their journey of health and healing. He sits on the Advisory Board of the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines.

Matt Zemon writes about psychedelics and direct spiritual experience. With a Doctor of Ministry from Pacific School of Religion and a Master’s in Psychology and Neuroscience from King’s College London, he serves an entheogenic faith community and has spent years documenting best practices for risk-reduced, sacred ceremonial practice. Author of five books, Matt’s work is grounded in the conviction that personal healing contributes to collective healing. He approaches direct spiritual experience as a serious subject worthy of careful study, religious tradition, and constitutional protection. He sits on the Advisory Board of the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines.