Jessie Roth (she/her) is IDHA's Director. She is a writer and activist with a decade of experience organizing at the intersection of mental health and social justice. She is a longtime organizer with IDHA, supporting the development of initiatives such as Mental Health Trialogue, a forum bridging the perspectives of peers, family members, and providers. Inspired by her family’s experiences with the mental health system, Jessie’s work is focused on the healing power of storytelling and the importance of cross-movement organizing for mental health liberation. Her writing has been published in the book We've Been Too Patient: An Anthology of Voices from Radical Mental Health, the Intima Journal of Narrative Medicine, and the Village Voice.

Veronica Agard (Ifáṣadùn Fásanmí) (she/her) is a poet, writer, community educator, and connector at the intersections of Black identity, wellness, representation, and culture. She experiments with creative healing modalities and puts theories learned into practice. She curated the Who Heals the Healer series and the conference of the same name and facilitates the Ancestors in Training educational project. Her initiatives are housed in her freelance platform, Vera Icon LLC. A joy defender and space holder for over 10 years, she wants to be remembered as a force of nature who created sites of healing.

Jacqui Johnson, LPC, ATR-BC, CCMHC, BC-TMH, PMH-C, RYT (she/her) is the visionary force behind Sankofa Healing Studio, where she is reshaping the landscape of mental health access and dismantling oppression within therapeutic spaces. With a passion for bridging the Black mental health gap, Jacqui's holistic approach combines art, play, storytelling, hip-hop, and evidence-based modalities to create a transformative healing experience. As an educator, Jacqui lectures widely, provides supervision and consultation, and leads international initiatives that increase training accessibility for Therapists of Color. Her expertise in trauma-responsive care and gender considerations informs her work, confronting the complex intersections of adverse childhood experiences, race, community violence, and the justice system. At the Philadelphia County Jail, she facilitates trauma-responsive art therapy groups for women and incarcerated youth, addressing the unique challenges they face. Jacqui is a certified Kemetic Yoga instructor, an Adjunct Professor, and an Emotional Emancipation Circle Leader. Her skill set spans a wide range of therapeutic modalities, including intensive sessions, perinatal mental health, child trauma, play therapy, Hip-Hop therapy, advanced EMDR interventions, Brainspotting, use of healing crystals, sound and energy healing, and Reiki.

Nia Nelson (they/she) is IDHA's Administrative Coordinator. They are an organizer, health educator, artist and activist. They have organized and facilitated in various cross-movement spaces, most notably at the intersections of Black and Queer liberation, mental health, Black spirituality and interfaith liberation theology. As a trauma survivor and person of Black and Filipino lineage, their lived experiences and innate gifts inform their unwavering commitment to building upon ancestral legacies of spiritual healing practices and colonial resistance. As a music curator, producer and herbalist, they also tenderly hold the healing, storytelling, and connective powers of music and the land close to them and incorporate them into their personal and community praxes.

Camille Sapara Barton (they/them) is a Social Imagineer who operates as a catalyst for social change, dedicated to creating networks of care and liveable futures. They work as an artist, facilitator, consultant and curator across the realms of embodied social justice, grief, pleasure and drug policy. Rooted in Black feminism, ecology and harm reduction, Camille uses creativity, alongside embodied practices, to create culture change in fields ranging from psychedelic assisted therapy to arts education. In 2022, Camille launched the GEN Grief Toolkit – a collection of embodied grief rituals to support personal and community grief work. They are currently based in Amsterdam, working as the Director of Ecologies of Transformation, a temporary masters programme at Sandberg Institute, that researches how art making and embodiment can create social change.

Jay Stevens (he/him) brings a unique combination of business and social services experience to IDHA. After years in finance and struggles with substance use (and a subsequent incarceration) opened his eyes to the systemic harms caused by structural racism, classism, patriarchy, and white supremacy, Jay decided to dedicate his life to help transform unjust systems while supporting those harmed by them. Jay now serves as an Assistant Vice President of Outreach at Breaking Ground – bringing a Harm Reduction and Decarceration lens to the work of supporting those who are unhoused. He believes in the foundational power of human connection, and in IDHA’s mission to create a new transformative mental health system - led by people with lived experience - that is community-based and free from surveillance and coercion.

Ana Florence is a clinical psychologist from Brazil who is committed to improving the treatment of people diagnosed with mental health challenges, especially young people experiencing psychosis. Her clinical work, research, and advocacy all focus on increasing the participation of people with lived experience in the work from start to finish. She is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Medical Psychology (in Psychiatry) at Columbia University.

Ben Cooley Hall (they, them) currently works as a licensed clinical psychologist with a priority on transforming “mental health care” from a pathologizing, disempowering, pharmaco-centric, professionalized model to a peer-focused, empowering, strengths-based, relational model that upholds people’s voice, choice, and meaning-making. Ben is trained in Internal Family Systems as well as Open Dialogue, Emotional CPR, and Hearing Voices Network group facilitation. In their previous career, Ben was a chaplain and director of pastoral care in hospitals and community mental health centers. Ben is married and is a parent of a 16 year-old teenager. To nourish and express themself, Ben paints, makes music, writes, moves their body, and communes with trees and other beings in wild spaces.

Chanika Svetvilas is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural worker whose practice focuses on mental health difference. Her work is an extension of her continued interest in using narratives as a way to challenge stereotypes in contemporary society and to create safe spaces. She has presented her work in a variety of spaces and contexts including the College Art Association Conference, the Society for Disability Studies Annual Conference, and the Pacific International Conference on Disability and Diversity. Svetvilas was born in Buffalo, NY to Thai immigrant parents. She earned her BS from Skidmore College and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College. She was the artist-in-residence at the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab at Princeton University for academic year 2022-23.

Noah Gokul (they/them) is IDHA's Program Manager. Noah is a Queer multidisciplinary artist and educator here to create liberated worlds through art, storytelling, and sound. They grew up in Oakland, CA/unceded Ohlone land, and identify as a trauma survivor with sensitivities to the world around them. They use music and art for meaning-making and the healing of others, integrating these passions into their work as a peer for young adults in a first-episode psychosis program. They have facilitated in a wide variety of settings, at the intersections of anti-oppression, trauma, incarceration, Caribbean ancestry, music, and mental health. Through their incantations they create spaces of radical imagination and possibility.

Denise Ranaghan shares a powerful personal story of recovery that has driven her 20-year record of service in the mental health field. She has held multiple positions including Residential Manager, Peer Specialist, Director of Wellness Services, Director of Assertive Community Treatment, and Director of Peer Services. In all of her positions she strove to include the peer perspective and vehemently called out oppressive practices, and eventually came to terms with how she was contributing to them. She was one of the first in several agencies who publicly identified as a Peer while in professional roles. She introduced and supported alternative peer run self help groups that challenged the “clinician knows best” belief. Denise has presented on Peer Support, Trauma-Informed Care, Voice hearing, Cultural Diversity, Suicide and The Human Canine connection. She is the author of multiple essays on recovery as well as the book Institutional Eyes which profiles her experience in the military where she was first psychiatrically hospitalized. Presently she has a private practice in Woodstock, NY, she serves on the Ulster County Community Services Board, the Mental health subcommittee and is a member a local Social Justice Committee. She says she has found community with a purpose at IDHA!