About

Ifetayo Harvey is the executive director of the People of Color Psychedelic Collective. In 2022, Open Society Foundations named her a 2022 Soros Justice Fellow. Ifetayo’s experience of growing up with her father in prison brought her to drug policy reform work at the Drug Policy Alliance. In 2013, Ifetayo was the opening plenary speaker at the International Drug Policy Reform Conference in Denver, Colorado. Ifetayo briefly worked at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies in 2015 where she was inspired by Kai Wingo’s Women and Entheogens Conference in Cleveland, Ohio. Ifetayo worked at the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) for five years because of her passion for ending the war on drugs. While at DPA, Ifetayo penned the piece Why the Psychedelic Community Is So White in 2016 and began organizing other folks of color and allies in psychedelic circles. Ifetayo comes from a family of seven children raised by her mother in Charleston, South Carolina. She has a Bachelor’s degree from Smith College in history and African studies.

Lorena is an educator, working with environmental justice, urban forestry, community engagement, and data empowerment. Originally from Brazil, Lorena moved to Portland, OR to pursue a Ph.D. in Urban Studies. In her dissertation, she described the Western criminalization, acculturation, and cultural appropriation of Black and Indigenous values regarding cultural ecosystem services. Cultural ecosystem services include knowledge systems, spirituality, and recreation, such as the values promoted by entheogen substances. These values have been perpetuated in Black and Indiginous ancestrality, but law enforcement and drug war criminalized traditional rituals in communities of color. Lorena’s interests in the drug policy field include safe entheogen accessibility and equity on the regulation of psychedelics to rescue ancestral values in communities of color. As a geospatial data analyst, she is looking for opportunities that include education, research, and support of new narratives for entheogen accessibility.

Soma Phoenix is the board president of the People of Color Psychedelic Collective. She is a psychedelic researcher and integration consultant who works with individuals seeking healing from trauma and spiritual transformation. Soma provides private integration support services and is the founder of Psillygirls.com, a site devoted to community building, spiritual support, and discourse around psychedelic experiences and insights.

Thomas Stanley (a/k/a Bushmeat Sound) is an artist, author, and activist deeply committed to audio culture in the service of personal growth and noetic (r)evolution. Bushmeat Sound deploys speculative soundscapes in an effort to accelerate our subjective experience of history and its exhaustion. Dr. Stanley has spent three decades studying Alter Destiny, Sun Ra's coinage for a just and sustainable AfroFuture, and in 2014 he authored The Execution of Sun Ra (Wasteland Press), the first book devoted to exploring the late jazzman’s thought and philosophy. He has written and lectured extensively on the sociopolitical implications of emergent musical culture and is co-author of George Clinton and P-Funk: An Oral History (1998, Avon Paperback). He hosts Bushmeat's Jam Session, a weekly radio collage of heard on WPFW-FM. He has released 25 solo and collaborative recordings, each offering a unique take on Blackadelic sound culture. He has performed with Marshall Allen, Moor Mother, Luke Stewart, William Hooker, Susie Ibarra, Bill Cole, On Davis, and Jean-Paul Bourelly.