Journalism and Public Education

Denver, Colorado
@AnnAwad

Ann Marie is an award-winning independent journalist and podcast producer with more than a decade of experience in local news. Their work has appeared on NPR, Here & Now, and Life of the Law. As the creator and host of the podcast On Something, Ann Marie spent three years exploring the effects of rapidly changing drug policy on people’s everyday lives. They’re now working on a new podcast about psychedelics.

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Clayton is a writer and physician. He has written about the promise and peril of ibogaine for Wired, the complexity of medical testing for The New Yorker, exponential growth for The Guardian, iron metabolism for Nautilus, hospital overcrowding for Undark Magazine, and more. He hopes to never write about COVID-19 again. Clayton has a medical degree from Columbia University and trained at Harvard University. He lives in New Mexico with his wife, where he works in rural hospitals serving Indigenous communities. Clayton is working on a magazine story about psychedelics and a new paradigm of psychiatric treatment.

South Africa
@kimondegreef

Kimon is a freelance journalist from South Africa who has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, Guernica, National Geographic, and other publications, including a story on 5-MeO-DMT, a hallucinogenic substance derived from Sonoran Desert toads, for The New Yorker. He coauthored a book on abalone smuggling with a poacher who began writing a memoir in prison. He holds a conservation biology masters from the University of Cape Town and a journalism masters from New York University. He’s currently working on a book about psychedelics.

Brooklyn, New York

Kenya is the cofounder and creative director of Domino Sound, a new production studio creating innovative, educational, and provocative multimedia. She wrote, directed, and executive produced the narrative audio drama The Cheat Code, and she was audio ep on photographer Naima Green’s prototype digital archive of queer New York, Skin Contact. For Kenya, imagination and experimentation are key. Due to relocation after Hurricane Katrina, she grew up in both New Orleans and the DMV. She is a disabled Scorpio who hates racism. She is also a psychonaut who throws amazing parties and currently resides in Brooklyn, NY.

Los Angeles, California
@OliviaGoldhill

Olivia is an investigative reporter at STAT who has been reporting on psychedelic research and drug development since 2016. She’s interested in exploring how psychedelics fit within the existing model of health care and holding the industry to high standards to create the strongest protections for patients. Her previous reporting in this space includes investigating a potential magic mushroom monopoly and exposing sexual abuse in a psychedelic clinical trial. She is a 2021 EPPY Award finalist and a 2020 Livingston Award finalist. Before joining STAT, Olivia worked at Quartz in New York and The Daily Telegraph in London. In 2022, Olivia began work on a book for Bloomsbury called Psyched, about how emerging psychedelic therapies call into question the very foundations of the mental health industry.

Bridgeview, Illinois
@CraftOurStory

Tasmiha is an independent journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Geographic, and Vox, among others. Currently, Tasmiha covers a wide range of topics related to health, race, politics, culture, and religion. In 2021, Khan was named a Fellow for Knight Science Journalism at MIT, a Religion News Service/Interfaith America Journalism Fellow, and a Higher Education Media Fellow at the Institute for Citizens and Scholars and Education Writers Association. Most recently, her reporting has been supported by the Pulitzer Center. She is working on a story about psychedelics and American Muslims.

Brooklyn, New York
@manalkhan07

Manal is an independent journalist who tells stories in words, photos, and video. Her work has been at the intersection of gender, culture, cinema, and psychedelics. Her fellowship project dissects the relationship between queer identities and psychedelics in the megacity of Karachi. She is a Falak Sufi Fellow of the Near Eastern Studies and Journalism program at New York University.

Minneapolis, Minnesota
@londonoe

Ernesto is a journalist at The New York Times working on a book about the past and future of medicinal psychedelics that will be published by Celadon Books. Ernesto served as Brazil bureau chief at The New York Times from 2017 to 2022 and was previously a member of the Editorial Board, where he wrote about global issues. Before joining The Times, Ernesto worked at The Washington Post for nine years, where his assignments included covering the Pentagon, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Arab Spring. Born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia, Ernesto is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese.

Brooklyn, New York
@shayla__love

Shayla is an award-winning freelance journalist based in Brooklyn. Previously, she was a senior staff writer at Vice News for five years where she wrote about health, science, psychology, and psychedelics. She has a master’s degree in science journalism from Columbia University, and her work has appeared in Mosaic, STAT, Undark Magazine, The Washington Post, Kenyon Review, The Atlantic, Vice, Harper’s Magazine, Gothamist, and others.

Tulsa, Oklahoma
@michael_mason

Michael is a journalist and the author of Head Cases: Stories of Brain Injury and Its Aftermath (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008). He is the founding editor of This Land Press, and his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Believer, Discover, and elsewhere. His current project is the nonfiction book called Psychonaut, which explores the architecture of psychocosmic experiences through a psychedelic crime story.

Rome, Italy
@jonathan_moens

Jonathan Moens is an Eritrean-Belgian science and investigative journalist based in Rome. He studied brain sciences in London and Paris, where he worked as a neuroscience research assistant, before pursuing journalism in New York. As a freelancer, he covers science, health, and environmental stories, which have been published in National Geographic, Undark Magazine, The Atlantic, and more. Jonathan is writing about a series of experiments in Europe using psychedelics as a treatment for patients in vulnerable states. He’ll examine the ethical, political, and scientific ramifications of these studies and hopes to produce a multimedia project merging long-form writing and photography.

Brooklyn, New York
@RachelNuwer

Rachel is an award-winning freelance science journalist and author based in Brooklyn. She regularly contributes to The New York Times, National Geographic, Scientific American, and more. She often writes about conservation, ecology, and illegal wildlife trade, and more recently has expanded her beat to include psychedelic science as well. Her next book, I Feel Love: MDMA and the Quest for Connection in a Fractured World (Bloomsbury, June 2023), will explore the science, history, politics, and culture of MDMA. For the fellowship, Rachel wrote about ibogaine for National Geographic.

Thomas, West Virginia
@cassadyariel

Cassady is a writer from West Virginia and proud alumna of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. In addition to being a 2022 Ferriss-Berkeley Fellow, she is also the 2022–2023 Opinion Fellow for The New York Times. She’s been fascinated by psychedelics ever since learning about her Beat Generation namesake, Neal Cassady, and is especially interested in writing about how psychedelics are spreading to red states and rural places. Cassady’s fellowship story ran in Rolling Stone magazine in June 2022. Read it here: “These Mormons Have Found a New Faith—in Magic Mushrooms.”

Denver, Colorado
@bikejournalist

Chris is a freelance journalist based in the Mountain West who specializes in narrative, long-form reporting. Over the past decade his work has spanned four continents, ranging from investigative journalism to arts and culture writing. His research into drug policy includes the 2020 narrative podcast series The Syndicate, about the rise and fall of a cannabis-smuggling empire in Colorado. Walker’s work can be found on his website. For his fellowship, Chris reported a four-part podcast digging into what’s going on with the two competing psychedelics ballot initiatives in Colorado.

South Orange, New Jersey
@benwyatt78

Ben is a British-born storyteller. Formerly a multimedia journalist and development executive for over a decade with CNN, Ben now tells stories across print, audio, and video for outlets including the BBC, The Guardian, Fast Company, and more. A recent graduate of The New School’s creative writing MFA program, his work has explored the effects of sport-related CTE and potential solutions psychedelic medicines may offer to those living with the condition.