Our Community Advisors | Nowak Society

Community Advisors

Our community advisors come from a range of backgrounds and forms of expertise. Our work would not be possible without the network of supporters and advisors we depend on.

An educator in human sexuality since 2002, Elliott earned an M.A. in Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies and a B.A. in Political Science from Bryn Mawr college. Elliott is a therapist who specializes in polyamory, attachment, and relationship issues for couples and individuals. They also act as an occupational therapist to individuals in the sex industry. Elliott is on the community advisory panel for the Nowak Society, and a member of the St James Infirmary Speakers Bureau in San Francisco. Elliott maintains a physical practice in San Francisco and Toronto and is available for sessions via Skype, telephone and in person. Please email inrightrelationship@gmail.com

Elliot Valentino, MA

David Cohen, Ph.D. is a professor of Social Welfare at the University of California, Los Angeles, receiving his doctoral degree from University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Cohen seeks to understand prescribed psychoactive drugs and their effects as social and cultural phenomena “constructed” through language, attitudes, and social interactions. He is also interested in international comparative research on mental health trends, as well as efforts to implement non-coercive mental health practices. He has authored or co-authored over 100 book chapters and articles, and co-authored books including Your Drug May be Your Problem (1999/2007), Critical New Perspectives on ADHD (2006), and Mad Science (2013).

David Cohen, PhD

Michael Johnson MD is a retired psychiatrist/ psychopharmacologist in Burbank. He taught at Harvard Medical School for 15 years and received its highest teaching award. He was a research intern for Eli Lilly, and a principal consultant in psychopharmacology and substance abuse at Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates. He has been reading in psychedelics since medical school.

Michael Johnson, MD

Ron Bassman, Ph.D. has a private psychotherapy practice in Boulder and is a committed rights advocate. Once a twenty-two year old man, stripped naked, shackled in restraints and subjected to mind-numbing drugs and forty life-threatening insulin comas all in the name of treatment, Dr. Bassman painfully and slowly reconstructed his shattered life. Today a teacher, therapist, activist, and internationally sought after speaker, in his book “A Fight To Be,” Dr. Bassman takes you inside his extraordinary journey of recovery, challenges the medical community’s reliance on pharmaceutical solutions as the only path to healing, and explodes the myths of diagnostic certainties and limitations. You can read more about Dr. Bassman on his website and blog: www.ronaldbassman.com

Ron Bassman, PhD

Scott Shannon, MD is a child and adolescent psychiatrist and the founder of Wholeness Center, an integrative psychiatry clinic in Fort Collins, Colorado. Dr. Shannon attended medical school at the University of Arizona and completed a child/adolescent psychiatry fellowship at the University of New Mexico. He focuses on supporting young people to find wholeness and recover their full health in body, mind and spirit, and employing natural methods like nutrition, supplements, mind-body skills, and acupuncture. He is a leader in the new field of Integrative Psychiatry.

Scott Shannon, MD

Steven Morgan has worked in peer support for twelve years. He was originally trained as a Georgia Certified Peer Specialist and worked in traditional service agencies, where he became intimately familiar with the difficulties of practicing peer support within a medical model. This led to an interest in developing alternative supports, so in Vermont he helped create a peer-run respite, was Executive Director for four years of a peer-run agency called Another Way, and finally became project developer for Soteria-Vermont. Steven has provided many trainings in systems change at both a local and national level, and has served on several Boards of Directors for peer support organizations. In 2013, he joined Intentional Peer Support as a lead trainer and Operations Manager with a passion for creating instruments of social change, a love of organizational development, and a belief in the transformative power of community. On full moons, he enjoys writing, playing music, woodworking, and taking long long walks.