DanceSafe National
DanceSafe National
Executive Staff
DanceSafe’s Executive Staff is responsible for overseeing the operations and functions of the organization. The three operate linearly, occupying high-level roles and overseeing executive functions that are vital to the health of the organization. The Executive Staff works with the Board of Directors, other staff and outreach coordinators, Chapters, and contractors to create the living organism that is DanceSafe.
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Mitchell Gomez (he/him)
Executive Director
Fundraising, media relations, outreach negotiation services
Jessica Breemen, MSW, PSM (she/her)
Chief Growth & Impact Officer
Capacity building, organizational health and design, digital strategy, innovation, sustainability
Kristin Karas (she/her)
Chief Operations Officer
Programs, strategic planning, brand management, chapter development
Staff
Aisha Saleemi (any/all)
Outreach Coordinator
Systems development, outreach strategy, logistical & inventory magic
Steve Garza (he/him)
Vice President of Digital Media
Digital strategy & innovation, brand management, audience growth, media relations, marketing
Richard Hartnell (he/they)
Vice President of Outreach
Outreach program development, digital infrastructure, financial & ops admin, coalition building
Contractors
Josh (he/him) & Bex (she/her) Terry
Brand Managers
Brand development, creative strategy, production
Marcia Hofmann (she/her)
Director of Business Operations
Technical & financial operations, business process creation, operational policies
Rae Elkasabany (she/her)
FTIR Program Coordinator
FTIR analysis and strategy, drug checking, festival outreach, purple
Sloane Ferenchak (she/her), MEd, MA, PsyD
WeLoveConsent Program Coordinator
Program design & implementation, education & training, consent culture development
Stacey Forrester (she/her)
Conduct Liaison
Conflict resolution, transformative justice, consent education
Chelsea Rose-Pires, MA, LMFT (she/her)
Reagent Test Kit Program Manager
Customer service, program development, order fulfillment
Alexandre Pires (he/him)
Reagent Test Kit Program Manager
Customer service, program development, order fulfillment
Andrea Rodriguez (they/them)
Community Cultivation Coordinator
Jess Lipkin
Social Media Management
Merryn Gowhari
Outreach, Chapter Development & Engagement
Board of Directors
President – Monique Chavez, JD (she/her)
Monique Chavez comes to DanceSafe with over 16 years of experience in harm reduction, event production, project management and anything legal. Born and raised in Albuquerque, NM, Monique is a two-time graduate from the University of New Mexico, earning both a BS in Biology and a Juris Doctor. Monique’s passion for drug policy reform grew from her early experiences in the New Mexico nightlife community, as the former co-founder of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, through an internship with the Drug Policy Alliance, and as the former founding director of New Mexico NORML. Monique is passionate about providing honest and open drug education and awareness to the general public, where the stigma of drug use is still unscathed.
Vice President – Mikayla Hellwich (she/they)
Mikayla Hellwich, LMSW (she/they) has contributed to nightlife communities as a participant, artist, harm reductionist, and event producer for nearly 15 years. She has been involved in the drug policy movement for just as long. She is a former chapter leader, mentor, and alumni association president with Students for Sensible Drug Policy. From 2014 until 2021, she ran the media relations department at the Law Enforcement Action Partnership, a nonprofit advocacy organization focused on drug, incarceration, and policing issues. In 2019, she founded Drug Education Consulting, which delivers harm reduction-based workshops, curricula, and coaching to schools, families, and nightlife events. In addition to drug education, Mikayla provides holistic ketamine-assisted psychotherapy out of an office in Takoma Park, Maryland.
Treasurer – Steven Richmond (he/him)
Steven Richmond (he/him) brings 12 years of human resources experience to the DanceSafe board with a focus in the areas of compensation, performance management, and talent management. Steven grew up in Appalachia and has lived in Denver, CO since 2017 – where he was first introduced to DanceSafe. He looks forward to bringing a people-centered focus to support the DanceSafe community. Steven completed a BA in Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh, and subsequently earned an MA in Political Science and an MS in Industrial Relations at West Virginia University. He has been an advocate for pay equity, fairness, and competitive pay programs across several different industries.
Secretary – Wendy Maffie (she/her)
Wendy Maffie (she/hers) is a Senior Project Manager in the Commercial Real Estate industry and has over 25 years of project management, risk management, team building and event planning experience. She has worked diligently for diversity, compliance, and equity within both the workplace and her client projects. Wendy has lived in Colorado for over 30 years and currently lives in Denver with her husband, who is an Attorney specializing in drug policy reform and psychedelics, and her daughter, who happens to be the social justice warrior in the household. Her early academic background of Sociology and Criminology, her role as Mom, and her desire for advocacy has driven her to focus more time in community, participate and support harm reduction and peer support efforts, and support efforts in legalization of alternative therapy modalities as possible. She loves travel, outdoors, mountains, cooking, mentoring, music, and dancing.
Dina Perrone, MA, PhD (she/her)
Dr. Dina Perrone is an assistant professor in the School of Criminology, Criminal Justice, Emergency Management at California State University, Long Beach. She earned two BAs from the State University of New York at Geneseo, and both her MA and PhD in Criminal Justice from the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University-Newark. She was a NIDA-funded Behavioral Sciences Training Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the National Development and Research Institutes, Inc. Her research focuses on drug using patterns and harms with the goal of informing drug policy. Her book, The High Life: Club Kids, Harm and Drug Policy, describes drug use in NYC nightlife, and her other work investigates the use of novel psychoactive substances including salvia divinorum and synthetic cannabis.
Rhana Hashemi (she/hers)
Rhana Hashemi (she/hers) is a social scientist, public speaker, and drug educator specializing in youth harm reduction. She is the founder and Executive Director of Know Drugs, an organization that advises on youth drug education.
Through Know Drugs, Rhana supports schools in transitioning from “just say no” messaging to comprehensive, science-based drug education, collaborates on national harm reduction curricula like Safety First, and advises state governments on fentanyl education campaigns. Her work reaches thousands of students every year, leading to her moniker “the Drug Lady.”
In addition, Rhana is pursuing a doctorate in Social Psychology at Stanford University, focusing on relationship-based alternatives to punitive drug policies in schools. She holds an M.S. in Community Health Prevention Research from the Stanford School of Medicine and a B.A. in Social Welfare from UC Berkeley.
Danielle M. Herrera (she/hers)
Danielle M. Herrera (she/hers), LMFT has a long history working with “addictions,” recovery, and harm reduction in community mental health and private practice. Her love of people who use drugs inspired her to train in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy early in the field’s infancy. In her practice now, she works with “drugs — full spectrum” — from chaotic use to healing use. She currently runs her small group private practice, Tender Hearts Healing Arts, where she sees clients in Oakland (Ohlone land) and virtually in California, providing treatment in the form of psychedelic psychotherapy, psychedelic integration, harm reduction psychotherapy, and couples/family therapy. She is a course facilitator with Beckley Academy, a supervisor and clinical consultant for Alchemy Community Therapy, California Institute of Integral Studies, Center for Mindful Psychotherapy, and now serves on the Board of Directors for DanceSafe National. She facilitates training for practitioners in the foundations of relationally-centered psychedelic assisted therapies from a decolonized lens. Her framework is Jungian, emotion-focused, somatic, and spiritual, centering Indigenous epistemologies, ritual, and ceremony. Danielle focuses on careful attunement to systemic oppressions that impact the individual within a complicated ecosystem while helping clients with meaning-making. She has always been drawn to the “outsiders” and loves working with people experiencing spiritual emergence or emergency, exploring non-ordinary states of consciousness or mystical experiences, Queer & Trans BIPOC, people who use drugs, and others outside of the mainstream.
Advisory Council
Wendy Allison
Wendy is a New Zealand based harm reduction advocate who has been involved with harm reduction and drug policy reform since 2008. Over the last three years she has been instrumental in introducing substance checking at festivals and events in New Zealand, training a small team to use reagents and infrared spectroscopy, and sharing information with participants on drug related matters. Her academic background is in Social Policy and Criminology, with a focus on drug policy and the impact of changes to the legislation surrounding psychoactive substances on the drug using community.
Betty Aldworth
Betty Aldworth became Executive Director of SSDP in February 2014 and since led the organization through its most substantial growth. She served as spokesperson and advocacy director for Colorado’s successful 2012 Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, the collaborative committee responsible for legalizing, taxing and regulating marijuana for adults in Colorado, and was the Deputy Director of the National Cannabis Industry Association in 2013, the organization’s fastest year of growth.
Jag Davies
Jag has 15 years of professional experience working to establish drug policies grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights. As director of communications strategy at the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), where he has worked since 2009, Jag oversees the organization’s messaging, publications, and strategic communications. Prior to DPA, Jag served as policy researcher for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Criminal Law Reform Project and as director of communications for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS).
Rick Doblin
Rick Doblin, Ph.D., is the founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). He received his doctorate in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where he wrote his dissertation on the regulation of the medical uses of psychedelics and marijuana, and his Master’s thesis on a survey of oncologists about smoked marijuana vs. the oral THC pill in nausea control for cancer patients. Rick studied with Dr. Stanislav Grof and was among the first to be certified as a Holotropic Breathwork practitioner. He founded MAPS in 1986.
Richard Gottlieb (Wolverine)
Richard Gottlieb, R.N., Founder of RGX Medical, has been a leader in providing compassionate medical and mental health services to the festival community for eight years. Richard has served as medical supervisor for the Burning Man Emergency Services Department since 2010 and is the Medical Lead for over 30 events a year. His medical model is based on the principles of harm reduction with a focus on reducing unnecessary arrests and hospitalizations as well as closely collaborating with other harm reduction agencies such as The Zendo Project, DanceSafe, and The Drug Policy Alliance.
Carl Hart
Carl Hart is the Chair of the Department of Psychology at Columbia University. He is also the Dirk Ziff Professor of Psychology in the Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry. Professor Hart has published numerous scientific and popular articles in the area of neuropsychopharmacology and is co-author of the textbook Drugs, Society and Human Behavior (with Charles Ksir). His most recent book, “High Price: A Neuroscientist’s Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society,” was the 2014 winner of the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award.
Allen Hopper
Allen Hopper was a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Drug Law Reform Project. He represented Professor Lyle Craker in his appeal of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s denial of his application to grow research-grade marijuana for use in studies that aim to develop it into a legal, prescription medicine. At the ACLU, Mr. Hopper focuses on marijuana policy-related litigation. Mr. Hopper works with ACLU staff to conceptualize public education campaigns that aim to shift our nation’s punitive drug policies away from over-incarceration and towards a public health approach.
Android Jones
Lyons, Colorado born independent artist Android Jones began studying art at age 8. He attended the Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota FL, where he trained in traditional academic drawing/painting and animation. Jones interned at George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic and later founded Massive Black, an art development company based in LA. Android began his career as an independent artist in 2005. He now lives in his home town of Lyons, maintaining a large art studio in a repurposed barn.
Stefanie Jones
Stefanie served as director of audience development at the Drug Policy Alliance, based in New York. In this role she oversaw communication and outreach to specific communities on drug use and drug policy topics, including on novel psychoactive substances (NPS) and DPA’s youth drug education work. In her prior role within the organization as event manager she produced four progressively larger editions of the biennial International Drug Policy Reform Conference, as well as numerous local policy conferences, fundraisers and coalition-building meetings.
Kayvan Khalatbari
A leading executive in the cannabis industry, Kayvan Khalatbari co-founded Denver Relief, which was the longest-operating cannabis business in Colorado prior to its sale to Willie Nelson in 2016. Kayvan has been active in cannabis advocacy and government relations for over a decade and currently sits on the board of directors for the NCIA, Resource Innovation Institute, Minority Cannabis Business Association, Students for Sensible Drug Policy, Harm Reduction Action Center, and co-chairs a Committee within the Denver Department of Environmental Health to promote environmental stewardship in the cannabis industry.
Ethan Nadelmann
Described by Rolling Stone as “the point man” for drug policy reform efforts and “the real drug czar,” Ethan is widely regarded as the outstanding proponent of drug policy reform both in the United States and abroad. He founded and directed (from 2000 to 2017) the Drug Policy Alliance. He has played a key role as drug policy advisor to George Soros and other prominent philanthropists as well as elected officials ranging from mayors, governors, and state and federal legislators in the U.S. to presidents and cabinet ministers outside the U.S.
David Nichols
David Nichols is an American pharmacologist and medicinal chemist. Previously the Robert C. and Charlotte P. Anderson Distinguished Chair in Pharmacology at Purdue University, Nichols has worked in the field of psychoactive drugs since 1969. While still a graduate student, he patented the method that is used to make the optical isomers of hallucinogenic amphetamines. His contributions include the synthesis and reporting of escaline, LSZ, 6-APB, 2C-I-NBOMe and other NBOMe variants, and several others, as well as the coining of the term “entactogen”. Among pharmacologists, he is considered to be one of the world’s top experts on psychedelics.
The TeaFaerie
The Teafaerie writes stories, poems, movies, plays, and essays, makes videos, organizes flash mobs, and is one of the founders of Prometheatrics, a big, beautiful Esplanade camp at Burning Man. At various times she has been a writer, nanny, actress, flow arts teacher, childbirth doula, homeless person, aid worker, live-action storyteller, toy inventor, app designer, street performer, and party promoter. Her column “Teatime, Psychedelic Musings From the Center of the Universe” comes out regularly on the psychedelic information site Erowid.org.
Brian Vicente
Brian Vicente, Esq., is a partner and founding member of Vicente Sederberg LLC. He served as the co-director of the Amendment 64 campaign and was one of the primary authors of this historic measure, which resulted in Colorado becoming the first state in the nation – and the first geographic area in the world – to make the possession, use, and regulated distribution of marijuana legal for adults. In 2010, Vicente was elected the first-ever chair of the National Cannabis Industry Association, the only trade association in the U.S. that works to advance the interests of marijuana-related businesses on the national level.
Sara Gael, MA, LPC
Sara is a therapist, educator, and harm reduction specialist. She served on the DanceSafe board of directors (2020-2023) and as board president. Sara has worked at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) since 2013 where she held multiple roles including Harm Reduction Officer and Director of Harm Reduction, overseeing the work of the Zendo Project. Since 2015, she has worked as an Investigator for MAPS Phase 2 and Phase 3 clinical trials researching the safety and efficacy of MDMA-Assisted Therapy for PTSD and currently works as a MAPS Public Benefit Corporation Educator and Associate Supervisor. Sara has worked as the Course Director and Lead Facilitator for the Integrative Psychiatry Institute Psychedelic Assisted Therapy Training. She is the appointed harm reduction advocate representative on the Denver Psilocybin Mushroom Policy Review Panel.
Wilhelmina De Castro
Wilhelmina De Castro, LCSW (She/They) serves as PRATI’s Interim Executive Director and is trained in KAP (Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy) through PRATI and MDMA Assisted Psychotherapy through MAPS. They support organizations in building justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion initiatives, systems, and cultures. Wilhelmina also works as a lead therapist in a Psilocybin Phase 3 Clinical Trial for Treatment-Resistant Depression and sits on the Advisory Board for Thank You Life.
As a Queer, Filipinx, non-binary person, they are deeply committed to anti-oppressive work, diversifying the psychedelic space, and uplifting the voices of BIPOC and LGBTQIA2s+ people. Wilhelmina is currently practicing KAP with individuals, groups, and families, and offering low-cost/donation-based KAP. She specializes in the areas of anxiety, depression, trauma, and life transitions. She has significant experience in working with the Queer folx and People of the Global majority and communities that have been impacted by global and systemic oppression
