Co-founder, Co-director, Strategy and Operations Lead

Anya is a community organiser, educator and a documentary filmmaker. She co-founded PsyAware, shaping organisational strategy and support systems with a strong emphasis on ethics and community involvement.

From June 2018 to June 2024, she served as co-director of the Psychedelic Society UK, spearheading psychedelic education, harm reduction initiatives, and overseeing strategic planning, administration, and finances. As a safeguarding officer, she played a crucial role in handling reports and establishing safe practice guidelines. She has curated and produced many talks and panels on psychedelic research, therapy, drug policy, and ethics, and organised numerous large-scale events such as the Ayahuasca Symposium (2018) and Psilocybin Symposium (2021) and Drug Policy Symposium (2022).

From 2019 to 2022, she curated the educational programme for Anthropos Festival, and she also serves as a consultant for the Polish Psychedelic Society and an advisor to Global Psychedelic Society.

In her filmmaking, Anya explores themes of psychedelics, mental health, drug advocacy, social justice, and regenerative living. She has collaborated with organisations such as ACER Integration, Beckley Foundation, Small Pharma, King's College Psychedelic Trial Team, The Hemp Trading Company and BDS Movement. Her latest project, The Psychedelic Chronicles, captures the resurgence of the psychedelic movement in the West, highlighting the intersection of indigenous practices, the mental health crisis, and Western capitalism.

Co-founder, Co-Director, Finance Lead

As the Director and Finance Lead at PsyAware, Wiktor brings a wealth of expertise and a deep commitment to fostering sustainable, community-focused initiatives. With a background as a fully qualified accountant and nearly a decade of running his own modern accounting practice, his experience is instrumental in driving the financial integrity and operational efficiency of PsyAware.

Over the past five years, Wiktor has focused on working with sustainable and community impact organisations and businesses, a journey that aligns perfectly with PsyAware’s mission and vision. Over the last two and a half years, he also worked as Finance Manager for Symbiota Collective, the organisation behind The Psychedelic Society in the UK - a role that saw him significantly enhance budgeting and financial processes. His insight ensured the organisation operated on a sustainable business model while integrating automation to streamline operations.

Wiktor’s expertise in financial management and commitment to ethical, sustainable practices help build strong, legally compliant processes that are both trustworthy and professional. Wiktor's modern approach ensures that these processes remain approachable and aligned with the organisation's forward-thinking vision.

Head of Marketing & Communications

Ayeza is the founder of a creative marketing and communications agency specialising in supporting alternative brands. Her aim is to shape new-wave organisations to authentically connect with audiences who share their vision, grow their authority, and help them convert. While completing her degree in International Business with Arabic at the University of Edinburgh, Ayeza launched her agency in 2022 and has since worked with numerous brands across a wide range of industries including festivals, tech, and psychedelics.

Her journey in the psychedelic space began with The Psychedelic Society, where she grew their social media following and engagement by over 40%, launched viral campaigns with over 1M impressions, and led a comprehensive rebrand of the Society's marketing and visual identity, aligning their image with their evolving vision. Ayeza has since worked with many other prominent psychedelic organisations like ACER Integration, founded by Dr. Rosalind Watts. She helped refine email marketing systems, automating workflows, improving segmentation, and boosting recruits for their community. Working alongside the PsyAware team, she has led the branding and launch strategy, from ideation to design and execution, to create a robust brand identity that reflects their mission of harm reduction and community support. She is now an active team member managing the organisation’s marketing and communication efforts.

She is inspired to help drive more conversation around safe use and de-stigmatisation of psychedelics, by working with organisations in the space to amplify their message and mission.

Co-Creator, Writer, Event Curator

Mercedes (she/her) is a queer femme witch, writer, activist, community organizer, and trauma-focused yoga teacher and somatic breathwork clinician apprentice. She practices on the island of T’oq qaymexʷ in the territory of the Klahoose, Tla'Amin, and Homalco First Nations. She is dedicated to creating dynamic, inclusive, and accessible educational spaces that support somatic and spiritual healing, integration, unlearning, and the exploration of ancient and emergent technologies for new ways of being with each other and the natural world.

She holds 500 hours of yogic education focused on trauma recovery through a disability justice lens, and has facilitated workshops on substance abuse and addiction recovery through Ayurvedic yoga therapy within a harm-reduction framework. She is completing a 1000-hour trauma-focused Somatic Breathwork Clinician certification.

Educated in journalism, creative writing, and documentary filmmaking, she has produced, directed, and written films and supported communications for independent projects. Her writing explores death, drugs, grief, healing, politics, magick, and Collapse, with bylines in The Daily Beast and DoubleBlind.

Since 2015, she has worked in psychedelic and plant medicine spaces, offering communications leadership, crisis management, event production, and harm-reduction and decolonial education for organizations including The Psychedelic Chronicles, the Psychedelic Psychotherapy Forum, The Psychedelic Society UK, Therapsil, the Spirit Plant Medicine Conference, and PsyAware.

Co-Creator, Event Curator

Hattie Wells is a psychedelic therapy guide, ethnobotanist and drug policy reform advocate with over twenty years of experience researching and working with psychedelics. Her experience with clinical research includes LSD, ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT Phase I trials and she is currently working on Beckley Psytech's 5-MeO-DMT Phase II trials, both as a therapy guide and global advisor. She started working with 5-MeO-DMT in the early 2000s, carrying out independent research with the compound. At this time, she was also facilitating ibogaine treatments for addiction interruption, and has continued to support research into ibogaine’s therapeutic potential, most recently working on the Demerx Phase I ibogaine trial in London. Over the last decade, she has worked with non-profit organisations such as the Beckley Foundation, Transform Drug Policy Foundation and ICEERS, in an effort to support psychedelic science initiatives, challenge the needless criminalisation of people who use certain drugs, and chart an equitable path forward that minimises the risks and maximises the benefits of psychedelic drug use. Hattie is also an executive director of Breaking Convention, Europe’s largest conference on psychedelic consciousness.

Co-Creator, Writer, Event Curator

Jasmine Virdi (she/her) is a writer, educator, poet, activist, and harm reduction practitioner based in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Her writing centers on psychedelics, spirituality, and deep ecology and has been featured in DoubleBlind Magazine, Open Democracy, Psychedelics Today, Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines, Psychedelic Press, Synthesis Institute and Lucid News. Jasmine has an MSc in Transpersonal Psychology and offers private coaching and mentorship to clients. She is an advocate for decolonizing healing practices, and integrates earth-based wisdom, trauma-informed, and somatic approaches into her work.

Since 2018, she has collaborated with the independent publisher Synergetic Press, where her passions for ethnobotany, consciousness, and regeneration converge. Additionally, she volunteers for Fireside Project’s psychedelic peer-support line, aligned with their mission to provide compassionate, accessible, and culturally responsive support to all. Often breaking away into the wilderness, Jasmine can be found wherever there are birds singing. You can follow her work and find out about her offerings here.

Co-Creator, Writer, Event Curator

Emily is an anthropologist of ayahuasca shamanism. Her PhD research, focusing on developing gender dynamics and cosmology, was based in Iquitos, Peru, where she lived and worked as a centre facilitator, apprentice and anthropologist between 2014 and 2022.

She was a member of Chacruna Institute's Ayahuasca Community Committee and led their initiative to combat sexual abuse in ayahuasca contexts, co-creating their 'Guidelines for the Awareness of Sexual Abuse aimed at safeguarding participants in Ayahuasca settings.

As a single mother of three year old daughter Aeva, she is also now working in the field of 'Psychedelic Parenthood' and is interested in making our communities open to and safe for 'psychedelic parents' and their children.

Camille Sapara Barton is a Social Imagineer, multi-disciplinary artist and somatic practitioner, dedicated to creating networks of care and liveable futures. Rooted in Black feminism, ecology and harm reduction, Camille uses creativity, alongside embodied practices, to create culture change in fields ranging from psychedelic assisted therapy to arts education. Their debut book Tending Grief: Embodied Rituals for Holding Our Sorrow and Growing Cultures of Care in Community, was published in April 2024 by North Atlantic Books.

Based in Amsterdam, Camille designed and directed Ecologies of Transformation (2021 – 2023), a masters programme exploring socially engaged art making with a focus on creating change through the body into the world. They curate events and offer consultancy combining trauma informed practice, experiential learning and their studies in political science.

Description goes hereMichelle is an integrative psychotherapeutic counsellor based in London, where she has a private practice. Currently Michelle has an honorary contract with Kings College Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience working on Psychedelic clinical trials with substances such as 5 MeO DMT and Methylone. 

Michelle has been a member of Imperial College’s Psychedelic Research Group since 2015. She was a lead guide on Imperial College’s randomised controlled trial (Psilodep 2) comparing psilocybin to escitalopram in the treatment of depression. Michelle has recently been working as a lead therapist for Small Pharma’s clinical trials with DMT-assisted therapy for depression. This was originally a collaboration between Small Pharma and Imperial College London. She has contributed to the development of a therapist training programme for the DMT trials, having co-produced a psychedelic therapy framework for working with DMT. She also co-designed the Beckley Academy Foundations to Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy training course. Michelle is also an advisor for PsyAware and to PsyCare UK. 

Michelle also offers individual psychedelic integration for people who are struggling to process psychedelic experiences. She co-facilitates the psychedelic integration specialist interest group for The Institute of Psychedelic Therapy, drawing on her experience of facilitating integration groups over the past five years.

Lorraine Langham is retired and works voluntarily as a mentor, coach, and climate activist.

Most recently, Lorraine served as CEO of an education charity for three years, leading transformational change during and immediately following the pandemic. Prior to this, she was a member of the Rotherham Child Sexual Exploitation Inquiry team and held the position of Chief Operating Officer at Brent Council.

From 2007 to 2014, Lorraine was a Senior Civil Servant at Ofsted. Before that, she worked in the private sector, where she established and led a successful joint venture company following a career in local government management. She served at the board level for a decade in various inner London boroughs.

Lorraine’s early career was in local government communications, where she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and was made a Fellow of the Institute. She is also a past Fellow of the Institute of Directors and a qualified Chartered Director.

Dr Oliver Bashford is a Consultant Psychiatrist with Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (SABP), where he has worked since 2016. Initially, he split his time between the East Surrey Older Persons Community Mental Health Team and liaison psychiatry at East Surrey Hospital, moving to a full-time role in older adult liaison psychiatry in 2019. He is currently acting as Associate Medical Director for Specialist Services at SABP.

Dr Bashford has a keen interest in psychedelic-assisted therapy. In 2015–16, he served as an honorary research associate at Imperial College London, contributing to a psilocybin study for treatment-resistant depression. He co-founded the Maudsley Psychedelic Society to support healthcare education in this field and volunteers with Psycare UK, where he also serves as an advisor. He frequently presents on psychedelic therapy, collaborating with organizations like the UCL Society for the Application of Psychedelics.

Dr Bashford completed his medical degree at the University of Edinburgh in 2008, training in West London and later specializing in psychiatry through the South London and Maudsley training programme. He became a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 2012 and holds a Diploma in Geriatric Medicine from the Royal College of Physicians, awarded in 2014. His work focuses on bridging physical and mental health, especially in neurodegenerative conditions.

Passionate about mental health innovation, Dr Bashford created SABP’s first Physician Associate post and, from 2019 to 2022, served as locality tutor for East and Mid Surrey. He is an award-nominated clinical supervisor recognized by Brighton and Sussex Medical School. Dr Bashford has also supported quality standards in mental health, advising the Care Quality Commission in 2014 and 2015.

Dr Rosalind Watts is a clinical psychologist and an influential voice in the psychedelic field. Her research focuses on how psychedelic therapy can increase ‘Connectedness to Self, Others and World’. Her 2017 Ted talk about psychedelic therapy had more than a million views but she has critiqued her earlier ideas, realising that these ways of working cannot be safe or effective until we create community infrastructure of care around them.

In order to start building a web of connectedness for people after psychedelic sessions, she co-founded a global online integration community, ACER (‘Accept, Connect, Embody, Restore’) which takes a collective approach to personal growth, and encourages re-alignment to the wisdom of nature.

After years of focusing on the importance of Psychedelic Integration, Dr Watts is now also developing infrastructure for ‘Psychedelic Outegration’, and exploring this within the ACER community. Some members become Elders who are supported to share some of the ACER practices free of charge in their local ecosystem. You can find out more about ACER and how to join the community at acerintegration.com .

For free open access to therapy and research tools, such as the ACE manual, ‘pearl dive’ audio for psychedelic preparation, and the WCS psychometric tool for measuring Connectedness, please visit drrosalindwatts.com goes here

Daan Keiman (they/he) is a psychedelic and Buddhist chaplain, educator, and community builder. They are the Educational Lead of the OPEN Foundation, where they collaborate on the development of ADEPT; a comprehensive two year psychedelic therapy training program for psychiatrists and psychotherapists. They are a co-founder of the Communitas Collective Foundation, a psychedelic think-and-practice tank that explores, refines, and disseminates ethical approaches, community-based models, and best practices to psychedelic care. 

And they are a curator and co-founder of the Psychedelic Salon Ruigoord, an initiative and community that explores what the mainstreaming of psychedelic care could look like. Daan has more than 17 years of experience supporting people preparing for, moving through, and integrating psychedelic journeys, teaches in a range of international psychedelic practitioner training programs, and has shared their work at Psychedelic Science ‘23, ICPR, Breaking Convention, Chacruna, Harvard Divinity School, and various podcasts.

They live near a Dutch nature park with their life partner, best friend and a dog. Daan practices an eclectic mix of Mizhong Buddhism, Soto Zen and Umbandaime, and thoroughly enjoys dancing to electronic music.