The Team — The Beckley Foundation

Beckley Foundation Team

Amanda Feilding

Founder and Executive Director

Since founding the Beckley Foundation, Amanda led the Scientific and Policy Programmes. By establishing key research collaborations with some of the world’s most prestigious academic institutions, she propelled the field forward over the last 27 years, conducting several landmark studies, such as the world’s first LSD brain imaging study. Read more about Amanda and the history of the Beckley Foundation here.

Sasha Frost

Communications Manager

As the Communications Manager for the Beckley Foundation, Sasha explores effective ways to tell stories about psychedelic science and drug policy reform. With a background in literature and psychology, he is keen to make use of emerging forms of communication to inform the dialogue around drug prohibition and the place of psychedelics in modern society. Most recently Sasha has been creating videos and animations to disseminate the work of the Foundation. He has presented on reframing psychedelics and about psychedelics in film, TV and the media.

Sam Gandy PhD

Scientific Researcher

Sam is a PhD ecologist, independent researcher, science communicator, and fungi cultivator. He is a nature lover with a lifelong fascination for living things, and has been fortunate enough to undertake ecological fieldwork in a range of ecosystems all over the world. Previously Scientific assistant to the director, Sam works as a researcher and advisor to the Foundation. He is also an independent researcher, working with academics and institutes, including collaborators from the University of Zurich, University of Virginia, University of Greenwich, the Centre for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London, Onaya Science, Beckley Psytech, and the Institute of Noetic Sciences. He has broad interests, researching altered states of consciousness, but his primary research interest is the capacity of psychedelic substances to influence human relationships with nature. He currently writes for EcoHustler, DoubleBlind, and the Chemical Collective.

Irene de Caso

Scientific Officer

Having always been passionate about life, consciousness and the human psyche, Irene first studied biology, where she specialised in neuroscience, followed by an MSc and a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging at the University of York.
During her PhD, she worked with Jonathan Smallwood at the Mind Wandering Lab, where she studied the relationship between excessive self-focused attention and impaired inhibitory control and how this relationship manifests in large-scale connectivity networks. In the latter stages of her career, she became fascinated by the therapeutic potential that altered states of consciousness such as meditation, holotropic breathwork or psychedelic experiences can have on the individual, leading her to complete a master’s in mindfulness applied to mental health and research. She is also the author of a popular science book titled “Psychedelics and Mental Health: The Neuroscience Behind a New Psychotherapy”. At the Beckley Foundation, she now assists Amanda, helping her advance the Foundation’s future lines of psychedelic research.

Beckley Collaborators

Matias Lopez-Portillo

Legal and Business

An Oxford University graduate, Matias has a background in public policy, business and consulting. Prior to working at the Foundation, he was a founder and director of a technology and public policy think tank focused on Latin America, and the VP of Business Strategy for a legal tech startup.

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