BTA Team
The BTA director and advisory team is comprised of a diverse group of professional individuals, including:
addiction specialists, clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, counsellors, mental health nurses, drug policy experts, human rights activists, philosophers, artists, musicians and historians.
BTA Director Team:
Diane's background is in alternative education and she has founded schools in Los Angeles and Scotland. Diane then went on to develop training programmes for Premier football clubs, cancer support centers and the US and UK armed forces.
Diane is also a certified NLP therapist, and was trained by founder Richard Bandler.
She has an MA degree in the Philosophy of Consciousness from the University of Buckingham.
She graduated with distinction from the Alef Trust, receiving a Professional Certificate in Psychedelics, Altered States and Transpersonal Psychology and enjoyed learning from her main instructor Dr David Luke and guest instructors, Dr Rosalind Watts and Professor Christopher Bache.
Diane is a trained End-of Life Doula. She believes Transpersonal Psychology is the new psychology for human potential and wellbeing.
Dr Jaazzmina Hussain
BTA Director
Jaazzmina is a consultant psychiatrist, specialising in the care of older adults.
Jaazzmina brings to the team, an open and enquiring mind, a joyful heart and the knowledge and skills developed over the last decade of medical training and practice.
Angelika Klosinska
BTA Director
Angelika is an integrative counsellor (Prof. Dip Psy C) who believes that no single approach is the right way for every individual. She is currently working primarily with victims of domestic abuse, exploring and integrating different ways and modalities to help the clients.
Phil Searing
BTA Director
Phil is mental health nurse, and a musician with King's Gambit. In his career as a carer spanning 20 years he has worked with all ages from 1 to 101. He believes strongly that everyone should have access to life changing medicines if they so wish and that legislation should be changed to sensibly reflect the mounting evidence within the research base globally, supporting the efficacy and tolerance of psychedelics.
Tibor Poor
BTA Director
Tibor is a Psychodynamic Psychotherapist and CBT Counsellor with training in Transpersonal Psychology and Therapeutic Group Facilitation. He taught psychodynamic theory on a post graduate level before changing course, following his calling to work with expanded states of consciousness and plant medicine. He is passionate advocate of Expended States Integration Therapy to be recognised as playing key part in the future of mental healthcare and the responsible use of psychedelics as a method to connect us with our innate healing intelligence.
BTA International Advisory Team:
Robert W. E. Laurie
Strategic Advisor
Robert is an international lawyer, qualified in England at the University of Oxford and is currently president of Ad Lucem Law Corporation in Vancouver.
Robert serves as a Board Advisor to the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) Canada and Steve DeAngelo’s Last Prisoner Project.
He is a legal advisor to the Heroic Hearts Project, a founder of the McKenna Academy of Natural Philosophy, and a director with the Ecuador Amazon Restoration Project.
Maya Albert
Strategic Advisor
Maya is an operations specialist and writer, bringing a thoughtful presence to all of her work and business practices. She has authored a compressive analytical report on the business of psychedelics, and is now co-authoring the book, Our Trip Together.
She has consulted for, and worked with, a number of other organizations in the space, including the Heroic Hearts Project, Synthesis Institute, and Tabula Rasa Ventures and has co-founded the annual psychedelic conference, Psyched.
Andrew Penn, MS, PMHNP
Strategic Advisor
Andrew is a UC San Francisco trained psychiatric nurse practitioner. He serves as an Associate Clinical Professor in the UCSF School of Nursing and practices at the San Francisco VA where he works with NP residents and students.
He has completed the CIIS, MAPS, and USONA trainings in psychedelic assisted therapy and has worked as a study therapist on a phase 3 MDMA-assisted therapy protocol for PTSD and is
Co-investigator the Usona-sponsored study of psilocybin assisted therapy for major depression.
An internationally invited speaker, he is the co-chair of Sana Symposium and a cofounder of the Organization of Psychedelic and Entheogenic Nurses (OPENurses.org), advocating for the perspective of nurses in psychedelic therapy and has published on psychedelic nursing in the American Journal of Nursing and The Journal of Humanistic Psychotherapy.
Andrew can be found at Andrewpennnp.com
Dr Dayna West
Strategic Advisor
Dayna earned her PhD in clinical psychology from Alliant University and it was whilst working as a staff psychologist in the Department of Psychiatry at Children’s Hospital in Oakland, California, that she fully realized how small our tool kit is for helping people heal from traumatic events and illness. In 2019 she earned a Certificate in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies & Research from CIIS (the California Institute of Integral Studies). She has also spent time at Synthesis in the Netherlands where she participated in a retreat and was also a retreat assistant.
BTA National Advisory Team:
Fiona Gilbertson
Fiona is a human rights activist with over 25 years of advocacy experience in policy development, lobbying and community development.
She is the founder of Recovering Justice, a drug policy reform organisation for people with lived and living experience of problematic substance use. They seek peaceful solutions to the war on drugs through policy change.
She has an MA in anthropology, foundation in person centred therapy and is a clinical hypnotherapist.
Dr Jake Hawthorn
Jake is a psychiatrist currently working as a specialty doctor in addictions and general adult psychiatry. He graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 2013 before completing his medical foundation training in Greater Manchester. He then worked in psychiatry in New Zealand for a year before applying to start core psychiatry training in South East Scotland in 2017. He passed the Royal College of Psychiatrists membership exams in 2019 and completed core training in 2020.
Jake is hoping to start a clinical research project on psychedelic assisted therapy in Scotland.
Xanthe E. Horner
Xanthe is a multidisciplinary artist, witch and intuitive tarot reader based in East London, UK. Her creative practice perches playfully on the intersection between art-making, visionary experience and mythopoesis. She draws on the archetypes of contemporary culture and historical narratives alike to spin new spells towards collective healing, reversing the hex of disenchantment by reimagining and reinventing the myths we live by.
Adam Knowles
Adam is an existential psychotherapist working in London, while researching the Amazonian plant medicine ayahuasca. His Master's research analysed what UK participants in ayahuasca ceremonies make of their experiences. Breaking Convention, Europe’s biggest psychedelics conference, awarded this research a prize in Social Sciences in 2019, and Adam is now continuing this qualitative research for his PhD.
Dr Jon Waterlow
Jon holds a DPhil (PhD) in History from the University of Oxford. He is a writer and podcaster based in Edinburgh. He is fascinated by the interconnections of psychology and spirituality and has worked personally with various plant medicines.
Jon has begun training in counselling and is interested in developing Buddhist perspectives as part of psychedelics-assisted psychotherapy.
He is the co-owner of The Island, a tattoo and wellbeing studio founded on 'biophilic' principles which seeks to reconnect us with the natural world in an urban setting.
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Dan Lawrence
Dan is professionally registered/accredited with the British Psychoanalytic Council, UKCP
(Jungian/psychoanalytic college), the College of Psychoanalysts, Eurotas and the Confederation of Analytical psychologists.
He has held NHS roles and undertook further postgraduate trainings allied to increasing clinical responsibility and senior roles. He blended NHS work with consultancy and private practice over many years until transferring to full-time private practice/consultancy in 2016.
His approach is post-Jungian/Transpersonal with a broad appreciation of psychoanalytic thought.
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Stefan Batorijs
Stefan is an Ecotherapist, a wanderer and explorer of remote terrains and feelings. He is also a Forest Bathing Teacher, and for 25 years has been an Associate Lecturer at Plymouth University teaching the benefits of wild Nature for recovery on the Clin. Psych. Doctorate. Stefan is passionate about the rights of Nature, reciprocity, and transpersonal experiences in Nature. Recently he has been the Director of Ecotherapy for a Therapeutic Psychedelics Organisation weaving Nature into preparation and integration processes within retreats.
Annette Kaye
Annette is a transpersonal/psychosynthesis therapist, spiritual director, and giver of the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises. She is also a ceramic and multi-media artist and occasional writer about the intersection between psychology, spirituality, and creativity. She grew up in South Africa and New Zealand, gravitated to London in young adulthood, and more recently, to the northern countryside of England - further north than she ever imagined she would live! - where she finds the close connection with nature there to be a wonderful gift and teacher. Although long acquainted, in herself and others, with transpersonal and spiritual experiences, her discovery of plant medicines has taken her deeper and more convincingly into an experience of the Divine.