Leadership

The people building access.

PMHA Alliance is led by systems-change practitioners and healing-justice advocates with deep experience across philanthropy, public health, and community-based care.

Dara Menashi, PhD

Dara is a systems reform expert with years of experience understanding how complex systems operate when they overlap local, state and federal jurisdictions. Her work focuses on field building in areas that intersect public, private non-profit, community and philanthropic actors.

She has held several leadership positions at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, where she spearheaded a state-based strategy to transform the structure, case practice and funding mechanisms of public child welfare systems — work that helped change the foundational funding mechanisms of an over $30 billion-per-year industry.

Dara has worked extensively with donors in the Psychedelic Science Funders Collaborative and brings her expertise in field building and system change to the evolving field of access to PAT. She holds a PhD and MPP from Harvard University.

Hanifa Nayo Washington (she/her)

Hanifa is a systems catalyst, psychedelic facilitator, and healing-justice practitioner with more than 30 years in the nonprofit sector and 15+ years in psychedelic facilitation. As Co-Director of PMHA Alliance, she works to bridge psychedelic-assisted care into public health systems — connecting academic institutions and community-based organizations, and integrating clinical care, peer support, and culturally grounded healing practice with the cost and data infrastructure that turns research into real-world access.

She serves as Founding Team Emeritus of Fireside Project, whose Psychedelic Peer Support Line has served 30,000+ individuals and trained 700+ peer supporters. A certified psilocybin facilitator trained through Oregon's state-regulated program, she is also a Lead Facilitator with Beckley Retreats, where she co-created the BIPOC Women's Sanctuary.

Hanifa contributes to New Mexico's Medical Psilocybin Advisory Board process and serves on the boards of the Zendo Project and Kindred Trust. Drawing from her roots in Afro-Indigenous lineage, mindfulness, and spirituality, her work bridges policy, practice, and beloved community — grounded in a single conviction: access is the work.

Consultant team

Subject matter experts.

Bringing heart and precision to the work — our consultants pair deep domain expertise with a shared commitment to expanding equitable access to psychedelic-assisted care.

Advisory board

Strategic insight, deep sector expertise.

Our Advisory Board unites leaders in health innovation, systems transformation, and philanthropy. Their guidance ensures our work is both credible and catalytic.

Guiding the strategy. Opening doors. Stewarding the field.