Psychedelic leadership retreat

Dr. Akua Brown is a physician specializing in psychedelic medicine, with a deep commitment to accessibility, education, and safety in the field. Rooted in a community-focused approach, she brings a unique perspective informed by her identity as a Black American, queer, nature lover, and abolitionist.

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Fluent in Spanish and English, Dr. Brown embraces the power of culturally responsive care, ensuring that psychedelic therapy is inclusive and accessible to diverse communities. Her dedication to holistic health and patient empowerment has shaped her work, strengthening her connection to community, spirit, and the joy of healing through psychedelic therapies.

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As Medical Director at Alchemy Community Therapy Center, Dr. Brown actively expands access to psychedelic-assisted therapy, particularly for underserved populations. She has trained extensively in Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy at Polaris Insight Center and shares her expertise through speaking engagements, including her panel discussion at MAPS PS2023: "Building Community-Oriented Therapy Practices."

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Her leadership in the field was recognized in 2024 when she was featured as one of the "100 Grassroots Psychedelic Community Leaders You Need to Know."

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Dr. Brown earned her Doctor of Medicine from the Latin American School of Medicine, where she gained firsthand experience in global and integrative approaches to healthcare. She remains deeply committed to helping others find fulfillment and empowerment in their therapeutic journeys.

Rosalind is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. Roz is interested in supporting those concerned about their relationship with alcohol and other drugs. Fully aware of how substance use can be used to deal with pain, grief, and self-medicate. Roz is passionate about helping people explore the roots of their substance use and seek ways to decrease the harm substances are causing in their life.

In addition, Roz works with BIPOC same gender loving women who express themselves as masculine-of-center.  Roz provides a space for folks to recognize, build and maintain self-acceptance and a positive self image. Those who present as masculine of center often feel undervalued and unseen for the fullness of their multifaceted fierceness.

Roz provides an atmosphere of validation through the reclamation of inner power thwarted by the weariness of micro-aggressions from society’s devaluation and homophobic ideals. She is excited to embark upon issues of race, sexual orientation, gender identity, and historical and familial trauma to cocreate a  healing environment to resurrect strength from within to achieve an ongoing positive identity.

Leticia Brown (she/her/hers) is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Black queer femme whose practice engages various healing modalities at the intersections of harm reduction, sexuality and social justice. She prioritizes work with BIPOC & QTNBIPOC communities through a liberatory lens that values communual interdependence and affirms the inner healer we all hold within.

Constantly exploring ways to decolonize her relationship to healing, she incorporates intergenerational exploration, spirituality, ritual, the use of the body, and reconnection to intuition in her practice, and sees her role as co-creator with those she walks beside on their healing journeys.

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Leticia has been trained in a variety of Psychedelic-assisted Therapy modalities, including Ketamine-assisted Psychotherapy trainings with Sage Institute, Polaris Insight Center, Healing Realms and Doorway Therapeutic Services, where she maintains a small private practice. Leticia was also a trainee of MAPS’ first-ever MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy Therapy Training for Communities of Color, in August of 2019.

Additionally, she is a therapist with the MAPS expanded access program, using MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for treating severe PTSD. In her harm reduction consulting and training, Leticia encourages both self-introspection and challenging discourse.

In her work supporting therapists with engagement of anti-racist and decolonizing practices, she aims to offer a sense of groundedness and purpose to the work.

In her work with clients and therapists around issues of sexuality and (other) altered states of consciousness, she holds a sociopolitical lens, and aims to cultivate a safe relationship to the body. In all of this work, Leticia aims to be guided by Fannie Lou Hamer’s mantra that “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free”, particularly in her work with QTBIPOC folx.

Ayize Jama-Everett has been in various relationships with plants, substances, and communities since his birth.  Born into the conflicts surrounding the Black Power movement, Ayize comes from the lineage of the Lincoln Detox project, a community organization in Harlem New York that taught the formerly incarcerated to use acupuncture to help with heroin withdrawal. An early afrofuturist,  Ayize has published four books and one graphic novel.

He holds Master’s degrees in Divinity, psychology, and Creative writing.  Ayize has been holding space with Sacred Plants for nearly twenty years. He’s worked as a therapist, health educator, and educator from high schools to graduate schools. He’s spoken about his work at the Graduate Theological Union, The University of California, Berkeley, Kings College of London,  Howard University, the University of San Francisco, the Chacruna Institute, and the Society for Psychedelic outreach, reform, and education, to name a few.

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