Community Council
“Leo” Leonora Russell is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who has worked in the field of Social Work and Mental Health for the last 18 years. She previously worked for DSHS for 11 years as a State Social Worker with the Martin Luther King, Jr Office, Indian Child Welfare, and Family Treatment Court. Prior to her work with the State she worked with United Indians of All Tribes doing cultural-based counseling in the Native American community.
Leo currently works with chronically mentally ill people facing civil commitments and recently volunteered with Seattle Indian Health Board and Prostitution Survivors in the King County area. She has a keen interest in integrating psychedelic research/modalities in the fields of mental health and chemical dependency.
Georgette is the host of the Psychedelia podcast which takes a unique lens to psychedelic education by combining storytelling and cutting edge research from diverse voices. She graduated from UT Austin with a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Communications. She is very passionate about educating people on the healing power of Psychedelics and removing the stigma surrounding them.
Her personal goals in life are to remain curious, never stop learning, read everyday, continuously work on self-improvement, live a positive and balanced life, and to always make time for tea and dessert. She has a white shepsky whom she loves spending time with and lives an active life which includes yoga, running, and hiking.
An enrolled tribal member of the Tlingit Nation, Raven Clan, Ellany is a workshop presenter, keynote speaker, traditional drummer, singer, dancer, and activist.
Over the course of her career, she worked as a cultural consultant, event planner, coordinator, facilitator, trainer, curriculum developer, and fundraiser.
She has lifelong experience working with Alaska Native, Native American, and First Nations communities and industries.
Cloretta is an attorney working for the Office of Public Defense. She cares deeply about the impact of racism and bigotry on the most vulnerable and seeks justice for those who have been afforded so little.
She supports the right of individuals to heal themselves responsibly with plant medicines, especially in light of what is allowed (specifically the horrific opiate crisis in this country which is pharmaceutical-based).
Anthony is a small business owner in Seattle. He believes the healthy mind and body of the human is the integral ingredient for a free society.
Right now, society is in chains. These chains are kept in place with carefully placed information detrimental to the evolution of human health. With available technology, humans have become sicker, more dependent, and less capable of recognizing actual value in the health of the body and mind. The decriminalization of mind expanding psychedelics is a step in achieving the true health of the human mind and body.
Kris Shaw received a Master’s degree in philosophy studying political theory and world religions. After receiving a law degree, he moved to Seattle and became a public defender.
He benefitted early in life from the transformative power of hallucinogens, leading him to an interest in Buddhism since 1990.
He is married with two beautiful daughters, Alexis aged 3 and Olivia aged 6.
Berry worked as an adult addiction and forensic psychiatrist and retired after 35 years of practice. He was also a New York City Police Surgeon. He’s the past President of the WA State Psychiatric Association and publisher of behavenet.com.
Barry believes competent adults have a right to decide what to put in their bodies. The “war on drugs” harms those it claims to protect, kills tens of thousands of Mexicans, fails to achieve what it promised, and props up the cartels.
He enjoys playing saxophone and harmonica, watching movies, and yard work.
Sheila Teleios is an dream interpreter, existential therapist, and intersex individual who respects and honors all forms of expression in human behavior (as long as it is non-harmful to others). She is a survivor of early religious indoctrination, physical and emotional abuse, rape, and was kicked out of her home at 13 and has been homeless most of her life. She has also suffered the horror of the persecution of being intersex.
Sheila believes psychedelics are visionary doorways which bring healing and reintegration and the ability to touch the numinous and the transcendent.
“There are so many people who need healing
Who need understanding
Who need to work through their trauma. A lot of these medicines can be very gentle in helping someone work through that trauma.”
Yasmeen Waheed is a healer, psychic, and medium working in the Seattle area. She advocates for holistic medicine and is a firm proponent of spiritual and metaphysical healing. She has lived experience in the inadequate mental health system in King County and is part of a think-tank activism group through Entheo society that focuses on an alternative commitment process for civil commitments which focuses on holistic and plant medicine. Yasmeen is an Entheo society executive board member.
Steve’s a glossy magazine editor and columnist now at the University of Exeter, studying on the world’s first psychedelic psychology postgraduate course under Drs Celia Morgan and Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes.
His research considers what services and society can learn from men seeking psychedelic treatments, plus other individuals turning to the space for connection, healing and meaning too.
Steve’s volunteered a little with Heroic Hearts UK and worked on the ground-breaking critical psychedelic studies edition of academic journal ISR published 2024 by Taylor Francis. His recent media work includes Milkblood, a multi-media project for director JJ Abrams’ new record label alongside Saturday Night Live’s Mike Diva. He’s written major feature for The Times, The Guardian, Dazed & Confused and many more, plus worked in many magazine roles ranging from dating columnist at Marie Claire to editor-at-large of THE FACE, and editor in chief of international MMA title Fighter’s Only.
Steve steals time hiking on nearby historic Dartmoor, visiting its abundance of ancient druidic sites.
Brian is a dedicated advocate for mental health reform who combines his academic background in neuroscience research with professional experience working in the mental health care and social work fields. Having personally faced treatment resistance within conventional psychiatry and psychotherapy, Brian legally qualifies as a person with a disability due to mental illness. His lived-experience of the broken mental health system drives his conviction in the need to explore the use of entheogenic medicine to facilitate psychotherapy for underserved populations. Brian believes that legislative reform is essential to inform standards of practice and provide access to potentially life-saving medicines within a clinical context.