I was born in Kirkland, Washington, in 1992. My family moved coast-to-coast several times with my father's military assignments until 2002 when we landed in St. Mary's County, MD. I went to the University of Maryland College Park in 2010 and became involved in student advocacy to end the drug war with an organization called Students for Sensible Drug Policy. After graduating with a B.S. in Plant Sciences, I worked for a nonprofit policy organization called the Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP).
For seven years, I led LEAP’s media relations department. I was responsible for coordinating their media communications and strategy to push commonsense policies on dozens of public safety issues including ending the War on Drugs, curbing the use of civil forfeiture, ending the use of cash bail, minimizing our reliance on incarceration, and redefining the role of police. My ghost-writing has been submitted as testimony and published hundreds of times in over two-dozen states and in U.S. Congress. I left LEAP in 2021 to pursue clinical social work.
I live in West Hyattsville, a few minutes from my office in Takoma Park.
Formal Education, Training, and Other Work
I have a masters degree in Clinical Social Work and licenses to practice in Maryland, DC, and Virginia.
I completed a 7-week ketamine therapy provider training program created by Alchemy Therapy. I also completed the Psychedelic Liberation Training, a 10-week program for psychedelic facilitators rooted in decolonial ethics, liberation psychology, and indigenous wisdom.
I've spent over 1,000 hours in meditation, including personal practice and formal training in Buddhist contemplative traditions. From 2021-2023, I completed the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program (MMTCP), created by the Awareness Training Institute and the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley to carry the teachings of Ajhan Chah, Jack Kornfield, and Tara Brach.
In 2019, I founded Drug Education Consulting, which provides harm reduction-based drug education and coaching services for nightlife, families, and schools. Clients include the Bryn Mawr Girls' School, the #1-ranked private school in Maryland; and The Nueva High School, the #3-ranked private school in California.
I am the Vice President of the board of directors for DanceSafe, a nonprofit supporting public health in the nightlife world.
Lived Experience
I aspire to create a uniquely responsive and nurturing environment that holds people with unconditional acceptance. If you work with me, rest assured that wherever you go within yourself, you are still safely anchored to someone who has been to psychedelic hell and back more than once and returned stronger, more empathetic, and more discerning.
The criminalization of certain drugs has contributed to a gap in education and support resources for people who use drugs. Because of this, public health services are lacking in party spaces, including raves and music festivals. For nearly 15 years, I have been part of an incredible network of people in the DC-Baltimore area who help fill this gap at the local level.
Some of us are mental health, medical professionals, and direct service professionals. Others have no professional training yet have an encyclopedic knowledge of pharmacology, neuroscience, or harm reduction strategies. Most of us end up in this role by accident and by word-of-mouth when friends reach out for help.
We prepare people for first-time journeys. We are present during drug experiences as a “sitter.” We provide support during and after a crisis. We help people who are struggling to understand what happened or is dealing with unexpected symptoms. We are called at all hours with tricky questions. We counsel people whose drug use becomes problematic, especially when they don't feel comfortable going to rehab or 12-step meetings. This is how I learned to meet people where they are.
Psychedelics have also played an important role in my personal journey dealing with PTSD, ADHD, depression, and anxiety. After first trying psychedelics in 2011, psychedelic-assisted therapy -- and ancient ways of using altered states for healing -- became endlessly fascinating to me.
Participating in the movement that made psychedelic therapy possible, while supporting people who use psychedelics outside the clinical context, and at the same time having my own relationship with psychedelics, gave me a deep understanding of this work that no training program could possibly provide. It is a privilege to be one of the few licensed facilitators with my background offering psychedelic-assisted therapy in our region.
The most important lessons I've learned from supporting psychedelic users and working through my own experiences with psychedelics have been around discernment and expectations. Psychedelics alone don't "fix" people; they are pure potential. They can remove barriers, allow for cathartic release, and give us access to forgotten memories. They can reduce the time and money spent on therapy over the long term by speeding up the process. They can show us the truth by shining a light on what we feel unable to face. In doing so, they can unfortunately amplify our delusions and most destructive qualities. They can also make us feel worse before we start to feel better. Without support from people who have traversed these confusing and sometimes chaotic states, we risk harming ourselves and others.
As serious and challenging as this process can be, it can also be fun, beautiful, lighthearted, and soft. Humor has an important role to play, too. If all we ever did was make it easier for you to tolerate pain and suffering, I wouldn't be doing my job.
