• Meet Our Board Members

    Regina Randall

    Founder & Chair

    Regina is a from Holy Cross, Alaska, an Athabaskan village located on the Yukon river. She grew up in rural Alaska where her mother, Marie Demientieff, worked as a traditional healer and substance abuse counselor. In the spring of 2007, Regina traveled to Peru where she was introduced to the world of shamanic healing. Inspired by her experience, she moved to Peru in 2009 where she spent three years training with indigenous curanderos in the Amazon rainforest.

     

    Regina has a deep reverence and respect for the Shipibo-Conibo tribe and resonates strongly with their healing practices. She has organized and facilitated many healing retreats in Peru and is passionate about sharing the wonders of entheogenic plant medicine with the world.

     

    Regina works as an indigenous rights advocate and political organizer in Alaska. She has a BA in psychology from the University of Hawaii at Hilo and is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in political psychology at Arizona State University.

    Betsi Oliver

    Vice Chair

    Betsi is a life coach and integration specialist in Anchorage, Alaska. Her professional background includes science communication, wilderness guiding, and community development. She first learned about entheogens in an immersive course with Dennis McKenna and Kathleen Harrison in 2010, and later had her own awakening experiences, first at Burning Man and later in Peru at an Ayahuasca retreat center, where she was in service for several months. She is dedicated to creating containers, both one-on-one and in groups, where people can heal and grow.

    Scott Taylor

    Secretary/Treasurer

    Scott has a Master’s degree in Social Work from Boise State University. He is a proponent of psychedelic-assisted therapy, which has been shown to be effective in the treatment of PTSD, trauma, depression, anxiety & addiction. In psychedelic-assisted therapy, the role of the therapist is to assist people in setting an intention for their work with entheogenic plant medicines and then integrating the experience into their lives to enable them to make lasting changes leading to holistic wellness.

     

    In 2018, Scott attended the Spirit Plant Medicine Conference (SPMC) in Vancouver, Canada, where he was introduced to many influential thought leaders in the entheogenic plant movement. Scott became inspired by the decriminalization movement after learning about Decriminalize Nature and the work of Sheri and Tom Eckhart, who spearheaded the Psi2020 initiative to successfully legalize psilocybin for therapeutic use in the state of Oregon.

     

    Scott currently works as a Clinical Social Worker in Wasilla, Alaska.

    Markian Babij

    After completing a degree in psychology, Markian travelled through Africa, Mexico and Indonesia studying indigenous botanical medicines and entheogens for two years prior to starting Naturopathic medical school. He was raised amongst botanicals and later in life studied the complexities of varied phytochemicals in his Naturopathic training. To further his education, Markian completed a fellowship with the American Board of Naturopathic Oncology. In oncology, the importance of mind/body medicine became apparent in confronting end of life issues with his patients. To find God "within" became an important aspect of his medical practice.

     

    In Oncology practice, integrative medicine treatments of post-traumatic stress have evolved to include entheogens. Dr. Babij supports further education and research to better understand how entheogens can be safely used to improve quality of life through cancer survivorship and mental health issues.

  • AKEAC Advisory Board

    Candace Lewis

    Candace aims to revolutionize mental health care by exploring dynamic environmental and genetic influences on brain-behavior relationships. A native of Alaska, she earned a Bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Alaska Anchorage. Next, she earned a PhD in Behavioral Neuroscience at Arizona State University on a Harry S. Truman Scholarship while investigating the effects of early life stress on addiction behavior and neuroepigenetics.

     

    Candace received a Fulbright Fellowship to learn advanced neuroimaging and psychedelic research methods at the University Hospital of Zurich. She was also awarded the Science Foundation Arizona Bisgrove Fellowship to investigate the interplay between early experiences, epigenetics, physiology and behavior.

     

    Taken together, her research centers around the age-old question of nature versus nurture with a modern twist. Candace seeks to unravel how genetics and experiences continuously interact to shape neurobiology and behavior.

    Carlos Plazola

    Carlos is the cofounder and chair of Decriminalize Nature, a psychedelic education organization focused on decriminalizing natural entheogens at the local level. Previously, Plazola served as chief of staff to the Oakland city council president as an advisor on economic development issues. He has a bachelor’s in anthropology and biology from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a master’s in environmental science from Yale.

     

    Carlos is an advocate for the decriminalization of entheogenic plants and fungi. His mission is to ensure that they become accessible to all communities, especially to low-income communities which experience the highest levels of life- inhibiting trauma.

    He is currently building a financially self-sustaining healing center called The Haven Community, a co-living, co-working consciousness community in Oakland, CA.