I am an ethicist who specializes in issues related to psychedelics, altered states, and the facilitation of transformative, profoundly meaningful, and even “spiritual,” “religious,” or “existential” experiences. In my work, I focus on suggestibility and suggestion, power and vulnerability dynamics, conflicts of interest, undue influence, manipulation and exploitation, protecting autonomy and cognitive liberty, and respecting cultural/religious diversity.
I was trained at the New York University Center for Bioethics, receiving my Master’s degree in 2020. My perspective as an ethicist in the psychedelic space has also been greatly informed by my undergraduate education - I studied philosophy and religious studies at University of California, Davis, receiving a Bachelor’s degree in each in 2016.
I currently serve as the Chair of the Psychedelic Advisory Committee on Ethics for the SHINE Collective, and as an Advisory Board Member for the William G. Nash Foundation. From 2021-2024, I served as a Community Health Commissioner for the City of Berkeley. In that role, I worked on Berkeley’s psychedelics decriminalization resolution, re-writing and amending the proposed policy to prioritize health, safety, ethics, and harm reduction. I have been involved in state-level psychedelic policy conversations as well, in California and elsewhere. Recently, I wrote a two-part article series about psychedelic decriminalization policy, the first installment of which was featured on the Microdose newsletter.
I have delivered numerous presentations on psychedelic and altered states ethics, including at the American Society for Bioethics & Humanities 2021 annual conference, the 2022 the International Congress of Bioethics in Mexico City, the Psychedelic.Support 2022 webinar series, and the conference “Nest Presents: An Ethical Journey Through Altered States.” I have been interviewed by the Microdose newsletter, and have been featured on two podcast episodes.
I have written for DoubleBlind magazine, and more recently for the Ecstatic Integration newsletter (see this piece I co-wrote about the ethics of psychedelic fundraising). I am currently working on a series of articles titled “Psychedelics and the Ethics of Suggestibility,” and the first installment of the series is now available on Ecstatic Integration.
All of my publicly available work can be found on the “works” page (button below).