Carrying Sheri's legacy forward

Nate is a systems-change organizer and nonprofit leader who has spent his career turning policy ideas into durable institutions, across voting rights, education, environmental justice, and now psychedelic healthcare. As a senior strategist behind Oregon's Measure 109 and SEF's director, he is a central architect of the world's first legal, government-regulated psilocybin healthcare model, and co-created InnerTrek, the first state-licensed school for psilocybin facilitators.

Through SEF he has helped catalyze and fund dozens of training scholarships, hundreds of direct services, and several IRB-approved studies inside Oregon's program. He originated ORCHID, the foundation's flagship real-world research study, while building SEF over the past five years, and serves as its Research Project Founder and Senior Advisor, and a Senior Strategist on Oregon's Psilocybin Services Initiative, guiding its finances, provider partnerships, and strategic direction.

Before psychedelics, he led a decade of high-impact democracy and public-policy work. As Executive Director of the Bus Project (now Next Up), he led the coalition that won the nation's first Automatic Voter Registration law, a model since credited with enfranchising some 25 million voters. As Chief of Staff to State Senator Mark Hass and later Oregon Senate Finance Director, he helped shape the Oregon Promise community-college grant, opening tuition-free pathways worth more than $100 million; and as Deputy Campaign Manager and then Senior Policy Advisor to the Mayor of Portland, he led the Mayor's agenda on housing, climate, and public safety.

Born and raised in Southeast Portland, Nate holds a B.A. in City Planning, Public Policy, and Nonprofit Management from the University of Oregon, and remains committed to building practical, ethical, and scalable models, especially in psychedelic healthcare, that other states and countries can adapt.

Lorena is dedicated to expanding access, fostering education, and supporting transformative healing. As SEF's Director of Operations and Development, and Vice President of the Board of the Brooklyn Psychedelic Society, she has advanced projects including the Psilocybin Access Fund and the Psilocybin Therapy Insurance Initiative.

For five years she produced Horizons PBC's psychedelic-research conference, growing it into two week-long bi-coastal events and introducing classes for medical and mental-health professionals. As a death doula at Mount Sinai, she brings compassionate care to people moving through life's most profound transitions.

Sam is one of the country's leading experts on state-based psychedelic policy and access programs. He served as Campaign Manager for Oregon's Measure 109, the nation's first successful ballot measure to create a legal framework for psilocybin therapy, and then guided early implementation as the founding Executive Director of the Healing Advocacy Fund. Over the past decade he has advised lawmakers, regulators, advocates, and philanthropists across the country.

In 2025 he founded the Center for Psychedelic Policy to tackle one of the field's most urgent and overlooked challenges, affordability, and launched the National Psychedelic Landscape Assessment, the first comprehensive analysis of state psychedelic legislation and policy trends. His work rests on a simple conviction: real-world healing requires real-world access, and affordability must be the foundation of any scalable model.

What I learned is anyone that has contact with the justice system is holding trauma and stress.

A trauma-informed healing practitioner, justice-reform advocate, and licensed psilocybin facilitator, Henry L. Fields is devoted to transforming lives on the margins. As founding Program Lead of the Inward Dive Fund, he connects justice-impacted people, from formerly incarcerated adults to attorneys and family members, with compassionate, legal psychedelic therapy and integration support.

A certified hypnotist, meditation coach, shamanic practitioner, Registered Yoga Teacher, and lifelong musician, he founded Inward Dive Hypnosis and Intuitive Counseling in 2019, drawing on hypnotherapy, breathwork, somatic techniques, and ceremony to help people move through trauma, addiction, and limiting patterns. His work is rooted in lived experience: nearly two decades ago he overcame substance use disorder and narrowly avoided incarceration, and as a Black man who faced early adversity he carries an intimate understanding of how trauma and injustice intertwine.

In 2025 he established the Inward Dive Temple, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and partnered with the Sheri Eckert Foundation to launch the Inward Dive Fund, pioneering one of the nation's first programs offering subsidized psychedelic healing to justice-impacted communities. He was a featured speaker at the 2023 Horizons Northwest conference.

MFT, M.A. Existential-Phenomenological Counseling Psychology

A philanthropist and psychotherapist, T. Cody Swift originated the Community Leaders Resilience Fund and helped bring it to life. He is founder and co-director of the Riverstyx Foundation, which provided the fund's initial backing, and has been one of the most consistent supporters of psychedelic research since 2008, helping seed landmark studies at Johns Hopkins and beyond.

Trained in existential-phenomenological psychology, he served as a guide in Johns Hopkins' psilocybin cancer-anxiety study, and brings a deeply relational approach to philanthropy at the frontiers of healing.

“Early in life, I already had a tendency to question convention, and was especially drawn to the ‘abnormal.’ In 4th grade I refused to participate in D.A.R.E.’s hypocrisy of labeling some drugs as bad and others good; at 13, my father gave me Krishnamurti’s Freedom from the Known and Becker’s Denial of Death; and at 16 I developed an intellectual fascination for psychedelics — tools for augmenting and understanding consciousness. In my twenties, I worked for three years as a hospice caregiver in low-income communities, sitting with those at the end of life. Since 2008, I have been directing the Riverstyx Foundation and working as a psychotherapist — both venues to support others in discovering what gems may be lying in the shadows of life. In addition, I have a long-standing passion for working with film and qualitative research, both means for more deeply understanding and communicating the subjective nuance of the mystical and healing process.”

Nikia is a wide-ranging administrative powerhouse who keeps the foundation's many trains running on time, from data management and funds administration to communications and process improvement. (She partners with us through Magical Teams.)

A rapid learner and strategic problem-solver, she thrives under pressure, brings meticulous attention to detail, and consistently lifts the team's energy. Over the past several years she has taken on every new program and task with grace and diligence, even well beyond her prior experience.

Alex Canedo is a senior operations strategist with nearly two decades of experience in high-growth environments, having scaled customer-experience and global teams across SaaS, tech, and service-focused companies.

Known as a strategic integrator for mission-driven founders, she turns messy ideas into clean systems built for sustainable impact, and supports the foundation's operations and programs through our partner Magical Teams.

Mercedes Ballard is a people-operations strategist focused on building high-performing, values-aligned teams, with experience spanning startups and a venture she co-founded.

She brings a strong bias for action and a collaborative style, aligning people, process, and culture to support sustainable growth, and partners with the foundation through Magical Teams.