Biographies of Speakers From the 2007 Women's Visionary Congress
Speakers for the 2008 Women's Visionary Congress To Be Announced

Kimberly Booth

Kimberly Booth L.Ac. graduated from the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine in 1997. She has been providing acupuncture to the poor and destitute since 1999 in public health clinics. Currently she facilitates the acupuncture program for the Multnomah County Drug Court in Portland, Oregon. The majority of her patients are recovering from methamphetamine addiction. The clinic provides acupuncture treatment as well as massage and herbal medicine. Booth believes that a comfortable, soothing environment enables the client to reach profound states of relaxation during their treatment sessions. She feels that this discovery is vital in achieving long-term recovery.


Val Corral

Valerie Leveroni Corral is the director of the Wo/Men/'s Alliance for Medical Marijuana WAMM, a Santa Cruz, California-based patient's collective. For 14 years, WAMM has served seriously ill members of their community with medical marijuana at no charge. They are the only collective of their kind in the U.S. The members of WAMM have witnessed the death of at least one person in their collective each month from terminal illness. Some WAMM members are alone and without resources. In these cases, and whenever asked, other WAMM members organize into caregiver teams to help their friends greet death with as comfortable and noble a transition as possible.

The work of the WAMM collective has revealed a great need for support and professional care during this time of human transformation. Corral believes that the language we speak, and the effect that our environment has on consciousness at the time of death, are essential elements in providing exemplary care. These insights have spurred the creation of the WAMM Guesthouse, Raha Kudo, meaning "the pathway to heaven."

"Maybe destiny has offered me the privilege to be companion to a remarkable number of people as they face their ultimate journey," writes Corral. "It is on the basis of these extraordinary experiences that I feel compelled to share these gifts."



Amy Emerson

Amy Emerson graduated from Washington State University in 1992 with a BS in Genetics and Cell Biology. She began working in the biotech industry in 1993 in HIV research. For the last 12 years she has worked in vaccine clinical research managing Phase 1, 2 and 3 clinical trials for Chiron/Novartis. Four years ago she began applying her knowledge of pharmaceutical clinical research to psychedelics by volunteering with MAPS. Since then she has helped MAPS to develop standards for clinical data collection, monitoring practices and training for sites and staff working on global FDA studies conducted under US IND.


Earth Erowid

Earth Erowid co-created The Vaults of Erowid in 1995. This non-commercial web site collects data and publishes original research on the topic of psychoactive plants and chemicals. The site boasts more than 40,000 content pages and over 50,000 individual visitors each day (9 million each year). Earth has written and edited hundreds of documents published on-line; his writing has also appeared in print publications such as Trip magazine. The Entheogen Review, and Erowid Extracts. He also oversees the development of the technical side of Erowid and coordinates its research activities. Along with his partner Fire, Earth has lectured at numerous conferences and events.



Fire Erowid

Fire Erowid co-created The Vaults of Erowid. She has been the primary designer and chief editor of the Erowid site since its inception. Fire has innovated and developed drug information designs that have been emulated across the web. Her work has been cited by newspapers, books, scientific articles, school education programs, college classes, and professional seminars around the world. As a self-described "photo geek," she is responsible for countless images posted online at the site. Fire has lectured at conferences and events that including Mind States, the gathering celebrating Dr. Albert Hofmann's 100th birthday, and recently the North American Congress of Clinical Toxicology.


Micah Frazier

Micah Frazier is the founder and director of TrinityWolf Network, a social enterprise that furthers social justice work through program development, training/education, and event production. She is a Harm Reduction specialist and focuses much of her work on exploring the intersections between oppression, trauma, and drug related harm. Micah has worked with youth and young adults for over 15 years in a variety of settings including residential/group homes, adolescent sexual offender programs, street outreach, and youth development programs. Micah has presented her work nationally to community organizations, schools, public agencies, and youth as well as being invited to speak at the National Outreach Workers Conference, the National Harm Reduction Conference 2004 & 2006, and Breaking the Chains 2004.


Carolyn (Mountain Girl) Garcia

Carolyn Garcia first encountered the world of psychedelics while working in the organic chemistry department at Stanford University. She later joined a group of psychedelic pioneers called "The Merry Pranksters," and climbed on the Great Bus "Furthur" where she lived until 1967. Garcia and her family settled down in San Francisco with her future husband, Jerry Garcia, of the Grateful Dead. In 1976, Garcia published her classic book on organic marijuana cultivation, The Primo Plant, which is still in print. In 1987, she joined the Rex Foundation founded by the Grateful Dead. Garcia is also a member of the Threshhold Foundation and sits on the board of the Furthur Foundation.


Adele Getty

I first became fascinated with psychedelics in 1967. Since then I have sought out indigenous peoples who use various forms of plant medicines. My primary interest was in the ceremonial use of various substances and how they have functioned as a psychic glue to hold cultures together. From these experiences, I have sought to find ways that we as contemporary people could begin to revitalize our own culture and community. My interest now is in what I call "engaged psychedelicism." By that I mean eyes open experiences where we learn new ways to become social beings without falling into various forms of shamanic/psychedelic fundamentalisms.

I am also interested in the second generation of psychedelic travelers and how they have faired with us as parents and elders, where we have failed and where we have succeeded as role models. I have written two books: Goddess-Mother of Living Nature and A Sense of the Sacred and published a number of essays on psychedelics. I am looking forward to some lively cross-generational conversations at this gathering.


Shona Gochenaur

Shona Gochenaur is the educational director of Axis Of Love SF, a patient advocacy organization. Axis of Love advises the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and city government on national, state and local medical cannabis issues and their impact on medical cannabis patients.

Gochenaur is a founding member of the San Francisco Women's Medical Cannabis Collective which has provided free, high grade medical cannabis to San Francisco women since 2000. The collective is one of the few culturally diverse women's organizations which meets regularly to discuss cannabis health issues and policies. Gochenaur is also the chair of the Cannabis Caucus at the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club established after the assassination of gay San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978.


Debbie Goldsberry

Debbie Goldsberry became a medical cannabis activist in 1986. In 1989, she helped found the non-profit Cannabis Action Network (CAN) and has organized more than 1,500 events for cannabis reform and education. Together with Steph Sherer and Don Duncan, she co-founded Americans For Safe Access (ASA) to protect patients and dispensaries and resist efforts by federal law enforcement to suppress the medical cannabis movement.

Founder of the Berkeley Patients Group medical cannabis dispensary, Goldsberry established statewide best practices for a dispensing cooperative. Goldsberry firmly believes in the power of hemp to save the planet. She is currently working on a "know your rights" campaign, to educate cannabis users about their legal rights and to stop the ever increasing number of annual cannabis arrests.


Wendy Grace

Wendy Grace's passion for personal growth began in high school after reading Huston Smith's books on comparative religion. She earned a BA in the History of Art, Anthropology and Religion and began exploring growth modalities including Kundalini yoga , Arica, and Inner light Consciousness. After a life threatening illness in her early twenties, she became involved with Christian healing and mysticism. Grace then discovered acupuncture and holistic medicine. As she recovered, she journeyed through many forms of massage and therapy trainings which led her to a bodywork practice. Her studies included Rosen Bodywork, Mier Schneider's School of Self Healing, Psycosynthesis and Process Oriented Psycotherapy and about eight years with Stuart Cubley and Michell Cassou in the Painting Experience.

In 1996 Grace discovered the Santo Daime Church and went to Brazil. This began an amazing walk that continues today with music, writing, sacred plants, ritual and the healing traditions of Brazil and Peru. She is currently finishing a collaborative CD, "The Healing Light of the Amazon", hymns of the Mother, inspired by the Santo Daime.


Allyson Grey

An accomplished visionary artist, Allyson Grey's paintings invent a symbol system representing chaos, order and secret writing. Allyson co-founded the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors in New York City, is the wife and partner of internationally renown artist, Alex Grey, and the mother of film actress Zena Grey. Born in 1952, Allyson received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Tufts University in 1976. She has edited and co-written a dozen books and journals, taught art for decades, and has exhibited widely, with paintings in public and private collections throughout the U.S.


Kathleen Harrison

Kathleen Harrison is an ethnobotanist who studies the many-faceted relationship between plants and people. For over thirty years, she has examined the folk uses of plants and mushrooms in ritual, art, medicine, materials and food, with a special emphasis on the beliefs and practices that illustrate indigenous peoples' recognition of nature. Her fieldwork has focused on the cultures of Mexico, Amazonian Peru, Ecuador, and the twentieth-century psychedelic sub-cultures of the western United States.

Kat teaches independently at two universities and many conferences. She is co-founder and director of Botanical Dimensions, a non-profit organization that has supported ethnobotanical fieldwork and living plant collections in various countries since 1986. BD helps support traditional healers and their families in an effort to encourage the transmission of their special knowledge to members of their own communities. Kat's home base is in rural Northern California, where she raised a son and a daughter. She also lives part-time on the Big Island of Hawaii, where she helps steward native forest and a collection of tropical medicinal plants.


Sandra Karpetas

Sandra Karpetas is the program director of the Iboga Therapy House, an ibogaine-based therapy program in Vancouver, Canada. She has a keen interest in healing approaches that utilize the benefits of visionary plant allies and the creation of safe settings for therapeutic and transformational psychedelic experiences. Her inspirations are drawn from harm reduction psychotherapy, transpersonal psychology, cognitive liberty, permaculture, holistic healing, rites of passage, and whole systems approaches.

Sandra will discuss the uses and potential benefits of a holistic ibogaine-assisted therapy program that employs a harm reduction and health promotion approach to facilitate recovery from addictions. This program model also offers a venue for personal psychospiritual and other therapeutic explorations. Ibogaine is a potent psychoactive and traditional healing plant medicine from West Africa. It provides an experience that can facilitate transformative insights and also has the capacity to significantly reduce the symptoms of withdrawal from substances that cause chemical dependence such as alcohol, crack/cocaine, heroin, methadone and other opiates.


Rosaura M. Kenyon

Rosaura M. Kenyon has been an active medical marijuana advocate since being diagnosed with degenerative tissue disease in her spinal column. Plagued with pain, nausea and pancreatitis, damage to Kenyon's liver and pancreas make it difficult for her to stabilize on prescription pharmaceuticals. Choosing to forgo conventional procedures and medications, Kenyon returned to her roots and embraced the plant known as la yerba buena or cannabis.

In Kenyon's traditional Mexican-American culture, cannabis is used in salves, poultices, teas and, the most common application, a jar of alcohol with cannabis added periodically which is kept in the medicine cabinet and used for body rubs and physical therapy. Kenyon is the co-chair of the San Francisco Women's Medical Cannabis Collective and an advocate for the rights of the disabled. She is also a member of the mobility caucus of Axis of Love SF, a medical cannabis patient advocacy organization.


Jennifer Kern

Jennifer Kern is a research associate at the Drug Policy Alliance's Office of Legal Affairs in Berkeley, California. Ms. Kern serves as the national campaign coordinator and organizational point person for DPA's "Student Drug Testing Fails," public education project. Prior to joining DPA, Ms. Kern interned for the city and county of San Francisco on policy recommendations to prevent homelessness, which evolved out of her own volunteer work on homelessness and other social issues in the Bay Area. She holds a B.A. in sociology and a B.A. in rhetoric concentrating in public discourse from the University of California-Berkeley.


Mariavittoria Mangini

Mariavittoria Mangini PhD has been a family nurse midwife for the past twenty-five years. She has written extensively on the impact of psychedelic drug experiences in shaping the lives of her contemporaries, and has worked closely with many of the most distinguished investigators in this field. In her clinical practice with Frank Lucido MD, she has investigated the standard of care for medical cannabis patients and worked to increase the acceptance of cannabis as a legitimate therapy. As part of the home birth movement, she participated in a revolution in women's health care and in obstetric care particularly, which reshaped the way that women give birth to accommodate consumer demands and preferences.

Her current project is the development of a "death midwifery" practice providing services to dying patients and their families. As in the birth attendant model, the death midwife would be the patient's and the family's trusted and experienced companion through a transformative process. The death midwife would provide bedside clinical care including pain and symptom management for the dying person; perform the last offices; prepare the body for burial, cremation or viewing; arrange for the care of remains; and assist families in memorializing their dead.


Hilary McQuie

Hilary McQuie is the Oakland, California-based Regional Director for the Harm Reduction Coalition which fosters alternative models to conventional health and human services and drug treatment. The HRC challenges traditional client/provider relationships and provides resources, educational materials, and support to health professionals and drug users in their communities to address drug-related harm.

A community activist with 20 years of experience in non-violent direct action organizing, McQuie helped found the Prevention Point needle exchange in San Francisco which successfully advocated for legalization and public funding, while providing direct services. She has a Masters degree in urban political geography, with research on police territoriality and its effects on public health.


Annie Mithoefer

Annie Mithoefer is a Registered Nurse who is co-therapist for the ongoing FDA approved Phase Two Study of MDMA Assisted Psychotherapy for PTSD which began in March 2004. She is a Grof certified Holotropic Breathwork facilitator and has been facilitating breathwork groups with her husband, Michael, since 1995. They also work with individuals and groups in their psychiatric practice using a variety of experiential and mindfulness-based approaches. She is currently enrolled in Hakomi body-centered training.

Mithoefer will make a presentation entitled, "MDMA Assisted Psychotherapy for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder - An Ongoing Clinical Trial." She will give a brief overview of the protocol and the preliminary outcome data, followed by some discussion of the range of participants' experiences while processing trauma using MDMA. Mithoefer's talk will emphasize the importance of support and integration surrounding work with non-ordinary states. She will conclude with some thoughts about the challenges and lessons this work has brought.


Valerie Mojeiko

Valerie Mojeiko has studied and worked in the field of Drugs for the past six years. She is the Director of Operations at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) where she facilitates the main office next door to her home in the Santa Cruz, California mountains and coordinates psychedelic research projects around the globe. Most recently she has returned to school to complete an undergraduate degree at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS).


Mikki Norris

Mikki Norris has been an activist for drug policy reform since 1989 when she formed the American Hemp Council along with her husband Chris Conrad. Over the years, they have traveled extensively to educate the public on the many uses of hemp, and to network and strategize with activists and businesspeople on how to advance the movement. In 1993, the couple moved to Amsterdam to design exhibits for and curate the Hash Marijuana Hemp Museum, which they updated in 2000. As community action co-coordinator along for Californians for Medical Rights, she helped organize petitioners to qualify the medical marijuana initiative (Prop. 215) for the 1996 California ballot, with Chris.

Mikki is director of the Cannabis Consumers Campaign, which advocates for cannabis consumers to come out of the closet to stand up for their equal rights (see cannabisconsumers.org). Since 1995, she has worked to put a human face on the injustice of the Drug War with her photo exhibit project, Human Rights and the Drug War (see hr95.org) and her book, Shattered Lives: Portraits from America's Drug War (1998, 2000). In 2006, she was a consultant on the California Cities Campaign, working with the Next Generation, political consulting group, (with backing from the Marijuana Policy Project), which successfully ran three initiative campaigns in Santa Barbara (66%), Santa Monica (65%), and Santa Cruz (64%), and two city ordinances in West Hollywood and San Francisco. They all make adult, marijuana offenses law enforcement's lowest priority. (See taxandregulate.org.)

Cindy Palmer

Cynthia Palmer is a writer and photographer from San Francisco. In 1970 she was part of a small group of neuronauts who founded The Fitz Hugh Ludlow Memorial Library in North Beach. Over the next 30 years the library became the world's largest collection of literature, research, art and artifacts of drug history. Drug classics were reprinted from the collection, and with Michael Horowitz, she co-edited MOKSHA: Writings on Visionary Experience and Psychedelics, 1931-1963 by Aldous Huxley (1977, 2000) and SHAMAN WOMAN, MAINLINE LADY: Women's Writings on the Drug Experience (1981, 2000--updated and renamed SISTERS OF THE EXTREME).

Archiving the art and literature of drugs and transformation is Palmer's dedicated obsession. Her recording of psychedelic history through video, photos and interviews for 20 years has led to a documentary of present day shaman women in their multitude of permutations.


Angel Raich

Angel Raich is a seriously ill 41-year-old mother of two. In 2002, Raich sought an injunction allowing her to use cannabis to alleviate intense pain and relief from a life-threatening, wasting syndrome. She prevailed in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. But in 2005, the Supreme Court, in Raich v Ashcroft, rejected her argument that the application of the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) to the personal cultivation, possession and use of state-authorized cannabis for medical purposes was unconstitutional because it exceeded the power of Congress to regulate commerce among the states. Justices O'Connor and Thomas, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist, passionately dissented.

On remand, Raich argued that a complete ban on the medical use of cannabis violated her fundamental right to preserve her life, as protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. In March 2007, the Ninth Circuit rejected this claim but held out some hope that, if criminally prosecuted, Raich qualified for the defense of "necessity." According to this doctrine, when a person is forced to choose between her life and disobeying a criminal law, she may not be punished for preserving her life.

Raich suffers from an inoperable brain tumor and seizures. Confined to a wheelchair from January 1996 to August 1999, Angel regained her mobility with the help of cannabis. Raich is the founder of Angel Wings Patient Outreach, a nonprofit organization that fights for the rights of medical cannabis patients, their caregivers and their physicians.


June May Ruse

June May Ruse, Psy.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist with 24 years of experience assisting individuals, couples, and families with creating a deeper understanding of self, others, and the world. Initially working with an indigent alcoholic population in 1982, Dr. Ruse works with an individual's strength to make significant changes in life. This approach has allowed Dr. Ruse to help others who have struggled with a wide range of psychological and emotional issues.

Dr. Ruse's interest in the psychology of women and trauma led her to become the Clinical Director of a women's residential treatment center in Tucson, Arizona. While in Tucson she studied Native American healing techniques with members of the Pima tribe. Her appreciation for alternative healing methods was integrated into her view of her psychological services. Dr. Ruse is currently studying Equine Assisted Psychotherapy.

Dr Ruse is lead author for a treatment manual which outlines MDMA - Assisted Psychotherapy for the treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). She worked closely with Dr. Michael Mithoffer and Dr. Lisa Jerome to articulate the skills and process for this type of pyscho-active drug therapy. Additionally, she presented the content of this manual twice to the Israeli Minister of Health and other interested parties. This has led to the Israeli MDMA study of individuals who have war and terrorism related PTSD.


Lizbeth Rymland

Lizbeth Rymland commenced her exploration of threshold or liminal states of consciousness after an intensification of a petit mal and grand mal epilepsy condition in 1991. This condition became the basis of investigation of the nature of mind (and the mind of nature) and the ground for an increasing intimacy with creation energy. Since that time she has traveled and studied with indigenous and visionary medicine teachers and facilitated an entheogen study group of medicine professionals.

A student of metaphysical foundations of science, psychospiritual alchemy and shamanic religions since high school, her path was further informed after 1976 by dialogue with her older sister, Allyson Rymland, after Allyson joined with Alex Velzey, (later known as Allyson and Alex Grey). Her new book, Strange Evolutionary Flowers, published by Spuyten Duyvil of New York, describes her odyssey through this terrain and these subjects: (Liminality, liminal personae, quantum consciousness, epilepsy, psychospiritual alchemy, fugue states, shadow work, entheogens, deep ecology.) In 2003, she fell in love with the dynamic meditation practices, music and kinship found amongst the international community of the Santo Daime Church and became a "Daimista" in 2005.


Steph Sherer

Steph Sherer is the founder and executive director of Americans for Safe Access (ASA), a coalition of patients, doctors and scientists working to create safe and legal access to cannabis for therapeutic use and research. With offices in Oakland, California and Washington D.C., ASA is working to establish federal legal protection for medical cannabis patients and growers. ASA develops policies to remove barriers to research and create access plans for medical cannabis patients at the state and federal levels. ASA also seeks to implement current medical cannabis laws and the rights of patients under these laws.


Annie Sprinkle

Annie Sprinkle, Ph.D. is the prostitute/porn star turned artist/sexologist. She has been outspoken about how her experiences with psychoactive substances have influenced her life and work in sex, art, and spirituality. Her visionary films, Sluts and Goddesses, Rites of Passion, and her newest film, Annie Sprinkle's Amazing World of Orgasm reflect this. She is currently touring a new theater piece, Exposed; Experiments in Love, Sex, Death and Art with her partner Elizabeth Stephens. Annie's passion is teaching college students the Art of Making Love. For more about Annie and her work see www.loveartlab.org, and www.anniesprinkle.org.


Anjuli Verma

Anjuli Verma is the Advocacy Director of the American Civil Liberties Union's (ACLU) Drug Law Reform Project, located in Santa Cruz, California. The Project's goal is to end punitive drug policies that cause the widespread violation of constitutional and human rights, as well as unprecedented levels of incarceration. Mrs. Verma oversees and manages the Project's communications and advocacy strategies, which include national campaigns to reduce the number of people of color incarcerated for drug offenses, to reform marijuana laws and defend medical marijuana users, and to reduce the harms associated with both drug addiction and the drug war.

Through her work at the ACLU, she co-authored "Caught in the Net: the Impact of Drug Policies on Women & Families," which was the first comprehensive report devoted specifically to the negative effects of the drug war on women's lives and health. In addition, Mrs. Verma co-authored a revised edition of the educational booklet, Making Sense of Student Drug Testing: Why Educators Are Saying No with the Drug Policy Alliance and authored an article criticizing student drug testing in the American Journal of Bioethics. She also collaborates with film producers and entertainment industry professionals on multi-media representations of the harms of current drug policies, including Robert Greenwald's The ACLU Freedom Files: Drug Wars and Off-Center Production's Hearne, Texas: Scenes from the Drug War.

Mrs. Verma comes to the Project from the Homeless Advocacy Project and the Glide Crisis Center for the homeless and those addicted to drugs in San Francisco. She also worked as the Community Affairs Assistant at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama in 2001 and at the National Human Rights Commission in New Delhi, India in 2000. Mrs. Verma earned her B.A. in the Political & Social Thought program at the University of Virginia in 2002.


Karen Vogel

Karen Vogel co-created with Vicki Noble the Motherpeace Tarot Deck in 1981. With over 250,000 decks in print, this tarot deck has become a fundamental part of women's spirituality and Goddess culture. Karen's training is in anthropology, shamanism and art. Her Goddesses are featured in Jennifer Berezan's Praises For the World performances and DVD. Karen's writing includes the Motherpeace Tarot Guidebook and soon to be published novel: Coyote Tails. Her other work includes: tarot reading, teaching, and leading camping trips to the Southwest.