Raven is the program director for Beal University’s Medicinal Plants & Cannabis Science programs and teaches medicinal plant science. He has worked extensively within the medicinal plant space. With a Master’s in Medical Cannabis Science and Therapeutics from the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy and a Bachelor’s in Biology from Alderson Broaddus University, Raven has committed his career to educating others about plant medicines. Raven is the Program Director for Beal University’s Medicinal Plant and Cannabis Science Programs. Raven is the founder of Entheo Wellness. He organizes the Annual Advocacy Against Stigma Conference to foster public understanding. Raven’s journey is driven by a desire to create a more ethical, knowledgeable, and compassionate industry. 

RavenAriola1@gmail.com

Charles received a B.S. in Community Planning and Development from UC Davis. He presented at the 2012 Planet under Pressure Conference in London. He presented on Climate Change Adaptation and Transformation Through an Ecoregion Placemaking Approach at an international conference in Copenhagen. Charles is a systems thinker. He knows we can move further than reactive resilience and adaptation to a transformative state. He authored the book “Space Mission Earth – Equitable Social-Environmental Stewardship of Planet Earth”.  https://www.amazon.com/dp/0692160744 A current thesis of study is “When Nature, Spirit, Landscape and Humans were One,” following the archaeology, geography, rituals, and when these were one element of human consciousness. Charles has worked with the Sacred Teacher Medicine Plant Ayahuasca in the Peruvian Amazon and he continues to participate in Shamanic ceremonies using the Sacred Teacher Medicine Plant Cannabis.

synthesisiii@gmail.com

Victoria is a mystic, Master Shaman, visionary leader, transformational teacher, poet, artist, and author. Her work in mysticism, consciousness, shamanism, and entheogenic medicine plants has taken her from the American Southwest to the jungles of Mexico, to Europe, Mongolia, Egypt, Greece, Tunisia, and to the Peruvian Amazon.  She apprenticed in Ayahuasca Shamanism in the Peruvian Amazon. Upon completion, she was given the title Maestra. She was a Shaman at a major Ayahuasca center in the Peruvian Amazon before establishing her own shamanic center, The Mother Eagle Shamanic Center, in Arizona. Victoria guides people to the profound visionary, spiritual, healing, and transformational properties of the Sacred Teacher Medicine Plant Cannabis. Victoria has written a book titled Journeys An Exploration of Being. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1542303354/# It is an exploration of consciousness. It is a journey, one insight, into what it means to be a fully aware being. 

mothereagle@gmail.com

Orlene Marie Carlos is a PhD student in the School of Sustainability in the College of Global Futures. Since 2021 Orlene has been working with the Kuntanawa Tribe whose home is the rainforests of Acre, Brazil. In her work with the Kuntanawas she is inspired by their mission to heal themselves, the forest and the globe through their project Transform and Illuminate. Orlene’s research centers around the concept of Healing for Sustainability—expanding environmental consciousness through sharing the practices and traditions of indigenous guardians of the land. Each person’s healing contributes to heal and sustain the world and the natural systems we live in and are deeply connected to.

Victoria Desimoni, from Buenos Aires, Argentina, is a Ph.D. student in Education Policy and Evaluation at Arizona State University. With a background in education, religious studies, and philosophy, her research explores how formal and non-formal education can foster the inner transformations needed to collaboratively design sustainable planetary futures. She envisions an education that honors diverse ways of knowing and learning, preparing students for more than a modern/capitalist way of life.

Brian Grant is a recent Ph.D graduate from ASU’s School of Sustainability where he focused on qualitative explorations of inner-outer transformation through inner work, ceremony, and spirituality. He is a white settler of mixed European ancestry born and raised in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona where he and his family still reside. His work aims to deepen human-nature relationships through relationality and relational practices, primarily guided by Indigenous and decolonial scholars and practitioners. His interests in ritual and ceremony revolve around their capacity to facilitate healing relationships across personal, collective, and systemic scales. He is specifically interested in approach academic research as reconciliation because, form a relational perspective, reconnecting with nature and healing relationships with land necessitates healing relationships between peoples.

Adriene Jenik is an artist, educator, scholar/activist and end-of-life doula who resides in the desert. In her work, she develops and shares creative systems and processes that support personal introspection, social critique, community building and cultural transformation. Her computer and media art spans 3 decades, including pioneering work in interactive cinema and live telematic performance.  Jenik’s current creative research projects include “data humanization” performances, experiments in extreme experiential learning, and street performances reading “climate futures” with her ECOtarot deck. 

She currently serves as Professor of Expanded Arts in the School of Art at Arizona State University, where she is a Senior Global Futures Scientist at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, affiliate faculty with the Desert Humanities Initiative and a PhD Candidate in the School of Sustainability.

Rooted in Earth-based practices, Jai explores art as an extension of life and a remembering of ancestral and indigenous ways of being. Their work engages natural materials and intuitive processes as acts of reverence, weaving personal ancestry with collective memory. Drawing from backgrounds in indigenous stewardship, social systems design, meditation, and transpersonal communication, Jai’s practice honors water, land, and ancestral stewards while addressing the cultural and political ruptures of colonization. Since 2015, they have shared creative processes in schools, alternative spaces, and communities, integrating mental health advocacy and environmental justice. Their projects include residencies in New Mexico, Arizona, and Oregon, with support from organizations such as the Public Arts Advisory Council of California, Arcosanti, and Arts Connection CA. Jai is also the author of House Oracle Bibliomancy (2023).

In his work, David explores how entheogenic uses of ayahuasca in settings co-produced between Indigenous and Western knowledges can foster relationality and sustainability transformations. He suggests that these practices can help individuals cultivate a deeper sense of connection with nature and with themselves, leading to a more profound understanding of their role in the web of life. This enhanced relationality can, in turn, support the inner transformations necessary for sustainable living.

Sound: Immersive audio and spatial sound design; field recording and sonic ethnography; sound perception; film and extended realities (XR); PhD research in auditory neuroscience; Assistant Professor of Sound  at ASU Sidney Poitier New American Film School and Director of Sonora Immersive Audio Lab.

Born in Brazil and raised in a spiritually rich household shaped by her mother’s psychic work in Mesa Branca and Umbanda, she developed a deep connection to spiritual realms from a young age—a journey reflected in her acclaimed short film The Summer of Gods. After moving to the U.S. in 2008, she was initiated into the Ifa and Lucumi traditions, receiving guidance from Orishas and spiritual mentors. Alongside her work as a university film professor, Eliciana studied neuroscience for therapy, metaphysics of health, sacred geometry, and energy healing. She later founded Nascimento Energy Healing Therapies and created RISE, Heal & Manifest—a transformative system designed to clear energetic blocks, activate spiritual connection, and reprogram the mind. Today, she dedicates her life to helping others heal, thrive, and step into their highest potential.

www.nascimentohealing.com

E-mail: eliciana@nascimentohealing.com

Chiara Piovani is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Denver in Colorado. Her academic research and consulting experience—particularly with the Gender, Trade and Development Programme at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva—focus on the complex social, economic, and ecological challenges of the global economy, viewed through a feminist and political economy lens. Recognizing that the pursuit of just and sustainable societies requires more than institutional reform, she advocates for the need for a profound shift in both individual and collective consciousness. In both her personal practice and academic work, Dr. Piovani explores how spirituality and Indigenous knowledge systems can inform and inspire the transformative changes needed to restore ecological balance and rebuild relationships of kinship—among people and with the Earth.

chiara.piovani@du.edu

Iveta traces the entanglements of memory, imagination, and planetary futures. Her work dwells in the cracks and along the borders—those porous spaces where the past seeps into the present and other ways of knowing begin to stir. Rooted in collective biography and animated by ecofeminist and decolonial thought, her research explores how memory stories—shared, embodied, more-than-human—can open portals to other worlds. Her inquiries move through thresholds and fragments, asking not what is to be remembered, but how we remember, with whom, and toward what kinds of futures.

She is a co-creator of Mnemo ZIN, a collective of memory and friendship formed with Zsuzsa Millei and Nelli Piattoeva. Inspired by Mnemosyne—the Greek goddess of memory, daughter of Gaia, and mother of the Muses—Mnemo ZIN reclaims remembering as a collaborative, relational, and multispecies practice of becoming otherwise.

His acclaimed book, The Fellowship of the River, explores the role of spiritual healing in modern healthcare. Dr. Tafur currently offers integrative medical services virtually and provides telemedicine services to individuals in Arizona and California. 

Tafur offers fascinating stories–medicine songs–of his own and numerous others’, including spirit-opening encounters, together with a chronicle of the past 30+ years of scientific breakthroughs known as the Psychedelic Renaissance.

“Medicine Song,” his second book, serves as a powerful teaching tool, bridging the worlds of Sacred Ceremony and Psychedelic Therapy in these transformative times. Through a series of personal stories, Dr. Tafur explores the practical value of spirituality and its profound connection to the mysterious nature of our universe. Learn more.

Katie Thompson is a PhD candidate in the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University. Her work focuses on religion as a mechanism for social transformation for sustainability.  She is interested in how religion fosters shared goals, worldviews, and community practices that lead to positive changes in the world.  For her dissertation, she is working with an individual church community, as well as interfaith organizations using participatory action research, focus groups, interviews, content analysis, and participant observations.

Daniel Warner explores the intersection of psychology, spirituality, and transformation through the lenses of eco-depth psychology and mythic storytelling. His work investigates how deep inner exploration—through approaches such as dreamwork, deep imagery, and other contemplative and nature-based practices—can facilitate personal and collective shifts toward wholeness, soulcentric community, and sustainability.

Daniel current works as a clinical intern focusing on developmental, intergenerational, and shock trauma. He is also the host of The Fertile Dark podcast.

– “There were four things the Master abstained from entirely: do not speculate, do not claim/demand certainty, do not be inflexible, do not be self-centered” (Analects, 9)

Yun (yoyo) is an associate professor at East China Normal University. She learns about interrelatedness and interdependency within and beyond human society from Daoism and Confucianism (hopefully one day, Chan Buddhism as well) and myriad things that embody the Dao (道), and explores how this may reshape education and our ways of living.