1_7 Sherry Rais: Social Impact, Psychedelic Therapy as Employee Benefit, and Finding Strength as a Female CEO

MTR Sherry Reis
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[00:01:00] 

SR: thank you Raad. So happy to be here. 

RS: We're really happy to have you and I'm super excited for this conversation because obviously you are clearly a very accomplished and multifaceted being. But there's one thing that's missing from your bio, which is the fact that you are a very nomadic being as well.

RS: And I think that probably has a lot to do with your life story. So why don't we start there? You are nomadic. Why do you think that is a reality you enjoy being in? 

SR: I think it's multifaceted like my life to start. I grew up traveling very often.

SR: Both of my parents worked in the travel. For my Canadian listeners, my dad works for Sunwing, which is a well known company in Canada. So I grew up going on three to four vacations a year. None of them were paid for. I was quite lucky in that sense and just had this curiosity about the world from those experiences.

SR: And I remember being, I think I was four or five, I went to Jamaica with [00:02:00] my parents. And I had an understanding because I am the daughter of immigrants and my parents talk about money all the time, , that the trip was free. And I remember telling my dad on the plane ride home that when I grow up, I wanna marry a pilot so I can continue to travel for free.

SR: And my dad told me, you can do that, or you can just be successful enough that you can pay for it on your own. Boom. And that lasted . I still think about that, so thank you, Dad, if you're listening for the good advice. And then as I continued to navigate in my career and my life I definitely chose positions and paths that allowed me to travel to continue that theme.

SR: And on a, more deeper level, something happened in my personal life that when I was around 18 or 19, so quite, quite an important age that forced me to lose all of my personal belongings and possessions. [00:03:00] Like everything, every yearbook, every item of clothing you could say, figuratively speaking, like my house was burned down.

SR: And I had no say in this and no chance to recover anything. And that for me was this reckoning of, okay, material things don't really matter. Whatever I can fit in a suitcase literally is what I have. And nothing else in terms of material things are important. So, that definitely cemented the nomadic lifestyle.

RS: That's such an important point I think. I don't wanna assume what you experienced, but I find that, when you talk to people usually about moving around a lot or being nomadic, I think sometimes it's hard to grasp what is very attractive about that, constant movement. Some might say, well, don't you feel exhausted by the fact that you don't ever have a place to rest? But often I find that people also are really talking about the sense of identity from a place of attachment to things, right? 

SR: Very much so. So the most common question I get is, don't you miss your bed? And for me, I'm like, I've never had a bed to call [00:04:00] my own as long as I'm an adult. And it's so nice for me to be able to make anywhere home, like wherever I go, as long as I can make a cup of tea, I can call it home.

RS: There's this beautiful Japanese philosophy, Wabisabi. I think it was a derivative of zen philosophy or something or came from like ancient tea ceremonies. The idea being that something is more beautiful, the more worn, the more travelled, something gets more beautiful with it's flaws, I'd say flaws in quotation marks. It's all relative, of course. But does any of that resonate with you? What's what is it now in this stage of your life that this constant motion that still feels very much you? 

SR: So with regards to my lifestyle, everything I own fits in a very large suitcase and a carry on. But I remain in close contact with the people that matter most to me. And thank God for WhatsApp wherever I go in the , wherever I go in the world, I'm definitely staying in touch with my friends and my family. What you were saying about not so much the flaws, [00:05:00] but I feel a sense of home wherever I go because I have these relationships where I've seen people transform over time.

SR: And that gives me meaning, Yeah. 

RS: Which is perhaps in a more fulfilling state of existence, being defined by your relationships, not by the things you have around you on the things you own, right? 

SR: Yeah, and we could do a whole thing about the nomad life, but , one of the things I do is I only shop at thrift stores basically, and whenever I acquire something new, I give something back.

SR: I don't know if that's part of the Wabisabi lifestyle, but that's definitely something I've, it's not definitely something I've adopted and it just makes you conscious of Oh, I don't need that much. Right. And when I get something new, I can definitely give something back. 

RS: I have this ritual where I, every city I go to, the first thing that I hit up is a vintage store or a thrift store. It's one of my favorite things to do.

RS: I don't care about the tourist bullshit, I don't care about going to the museums. I care about going to that awesome thrift store. What is, let's say one item that you found that is very dear to you and why [00:06:00] is that dear to you, if you still have that item? 

SR: An item that I found that's very dear to. Oh, well, I don't know about something that I found, but an item that's dear to me at the moment, is actually right beside me. . It's my ask me about psychedelics pin from MAPS. Thank you. Maps. Sorry. It doesn't go with your theme of having it for many years. I've had it about one year. But I make it a point now to wear it when I leave the house, and every time I do that, I get at least one random person asking me about psychedelics. I think I'm gonna keep it for the rest of my life. I can't see how I would not continue wearing it even as an 80 year old. So it will be very dear to me. It already is very dear to me. And then you didn't directly ask me this, but I like that the first thing you do is go to a vintage or a thrift store. For me, the first thing I do in a new place is go to a bakery and then a grocery store. 

RS: I like grocery stores a lot. I was in Paris two weeks ago, and of course like the, legendary bakeries, which, I'm gluten sensitive, but in Europe I can [00:07:00] eat everything. And Paris especially, I eat everything. It was pretty incredible. 

SR: Cause they don't use all the pesticides and stuff. 

RS: All the terrible things in the wheat. But that pin that is awesome. MAPS, if you're listening, I want one of those. 

SR: You can get it on the website now. 

RS: Oh, okay. Awesome. Doing it right, right after this. Awesome. I love that. I love that you're sending out a beacon and you're totally right. I think psychedelics are interesting because it is still very much stigmatized and yet the word is out.

SR: I kid you not. To go back to the pin, I wear this especially on planes and airports. First I was worried wearing it. I'm like, Oh, is TSA getting question, question me a little harder. But no, I get from people from all walks of life. I hear their stories. They share a lot. The word is out.

RS: And this is this through the entire. Theme of the podcast and hopefully people who are listening to sort of mobilize curiosity, if not anything else. Okay. So this is a, this is fantastic. 

RS: I wanna talk about your upbringing a little bit. You are a child of [00:08:00] Tanzanian and Pakistani parents. And... social impact has been very dear to you for a very long time. From a very early age, you were volunteering at shelters and retirement homes. A significant part of your adult life was spent working on cash transfer programs at UNICEF and World Bank.

RS: And of course you're work in psychedelics now, which is a continuing thread of that conviction and commitment to social impact. Where do you think this commitment and conviction came from and why does it continue to be important to you? 

SR: I think from a very young age, I had a strong sense of how lucky I was.

SR: The typical immigrant story, my parents reminded me many times that they came to this country, Canada with nothing. They had $20. They worked so hard so we could make it. And as they would repeat this story, which I still question whether it was still $20. Dad, if you're listening, I know... 

RS: I feel like it's controversial. It's $5 to $40. 

SR: [00:09:00] Right? But as they would tell me this story over and over, I would look around and there was such a stark contrast in how I was living, meaning, whatever they did, they ended up being very lucky. And I was kind of surrounded by privilege. I grew up in the suburbs, in new market, in a fairly white affluent suburb.

SR: And from a young age it was just clear to me like, okay, they're telling me this story of how much they struggled as children and yet we seem to have everything we want. Not that we were very rich, but we seem to have everything we want. And I live in this pretty white neighborhood and go to this fairly white school where everyone else seems to be doing well.

SR: And then on Fridays I would go to mosque or Kahne cause my parents are a Ismaili and see people like see a lot more color and a lot more diversity. Not just in ethnicity but also in socioeconomic background. And that was clear to me from a young age cuz then when I would hang out with my friends at Mosque and hear about their [00:10:00] lifestyles, I could contrast it to my own and sort of get the sense like, okay, things are not equal.

SR: And that lack of equality. Really got to me and really as a child, upset me that things were not equal. So I think this arc of my life was like, how do we make things more balanced. Also at a young age as I was traveling, my parents took me to Pakistan. They took me to India. So when you're exposed as like an eight or nine year old to all of the homelessness on the streets, you again are now conscious of okay, then you go back from a trip to India, you go back to your suburb life in New Market, Ontario, you're really aware as a child, like I'm lucky. At least that was my conclusion. And for me that meant I wanted to spend the rest of my life trying to balance things out. I did that somehow. I don't know where you did your homework route, but you're right.

SR: I just spent a lot of time volunteering and spending time in retirement homes, shelters, developing [00:11:00] programs to donate, lost and found at schools as a kid to shelters and something that was very important for me that you haven't read and that my parents don't know about. So I do hope they don't listen to this...

SR: is that when I was 16, I had to do a project for school. I think I was 15 actually, cuz it was grade 10. I had to do a project for school on a Bristol board, like some sort of independent project, pick a topic. I decided to do it on homeless people and this was not a requirement of the school, but I took it upon myself to sleep on the streets for a whole weekend, for two nights and pretend to be homeless and I lied to my parents, sorry, and told them I was gonna a sleepover... 

RS: which is not technically in. 

SR: well, I told him it was so and so's house. That was totally a lie. and I slept on the streets at 15. I think I went with $10 emergency money in [00:12:00] case I needed it. But my goal was to just beg like everyone else and see if I could do it. If I could feed myself just from begging. And I wanted to conduct these interviews with as many homeless people as I could. The conclusion of that experience was that every single person I talked to was struggling with mental health.

SR: For me, that meant okay, not only do I wanna spend my life balancing this inequality, I definitely wanna address mental health issues because this is absolutely crazy that everyone on the street that I'm talking to that's homeless, that gets judged for being homeless are experiencing mental health issues that are going unaddressed.

RS: That's a wild story. And hopefully your parents don't listen to this, but I kind of also hope they do because that means I'm doing my job well. That is a crazy story. And as you were talking about, having a sense that you were very lucky from an early age and knowing that your parents worked very hard to give you [00:13:00] the life that you have or at least a good baseline to start from or to leap from.

RS: Right. And I often think about it the same way. It's it's only an unimaginable hardships that our parents have had to go through. Just 50, 60 years ago was a very different reality for them. But I kept thinking about, privilege is, it's not a bad thing, but I think a lot of us don't have a sense of responsibility that comes with that freedom, with that privilege.

RS: Right? I think that's really the differentiator here. Where did that sense of responsibility, that sense of duty to humanity, let's say, to, to justice, to, equity, Where did that come from? 

SR: I don't know. I, obviously, I'm extremely grateful to my parents. Have so much gratitude for them for the way that they raised me. I can't specifically say that they didn't sit me down and say, Sherry, go dedicate your life to helping people. In fact, they [00:14:00] probably said, make sure you're making enough money. You seem to like charity work too much. 

SR: I think if I knew the answer, that would be the answer of this whole, like nature versus nurture. There's definitely something I think comes from within me whatever me means that had this desire, this constant desire to always want to help others and put others first. And then there is a cultural component of being exposed to the Ismaili community growing up. And in that community, volunteerism is so strong. For people listening who don't know what as Ismaili are, just Google it. But the whole network of is Ismaili rests on volunteers.

SR: They've created this entire foundation and global network of charity work based on volunteering. And so I saw like my aunts and my uncles and my cousins volunteering throughout my life. So I'm sure that had an influence. And yet, I don't know this other part that I think is just me, because I can also point out [00:15:00] people in my family who didn't choose this life, right?

RS: Well, service is a gift, right? Which is to express ourselves in many ways. And perhaps that's a that's a love language that I think I share as well, service to others ,community and so on. I wanted to make one reference point to, and I think we're gonna talk about this near the end of the podcast, which is the connection between poverty houselessness, homelessness, however you wanna talk about, and mental health. Years ago I read a book called Poor Economics, and the title was Poor Economics, Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty and it was by Abhijeet Banerjee, who is a MIT prof in economics. And he was also a Nobel laureate. And, it's a very dense book. It talks about the reality of poverty, but not from that sort of colonial, Eurocentric mindset. But really the question was, why are the poor the way they are? Not just economically, but behaviorally, right? So one of the studies that they did was, they asked themselves, Okay, what is the marginal impact on the calorie intake for [00:16:00] every dollar given in charity to a family, to a person?

RS: And of course you expect, okay, if somebody gets an extra dollar, that dollar probably goes to food, to rice, to maybe meat to protein. Cause you think physiologically our bodies need food and water first and foremost. Okay, Makes sense. But what was really curious is that after a certain amount, and it wasn't that much, they saw that excess dollar, obviously it's very differently spent between men and women as we expect, and Grameen Bank has talked about this a long time, but they saw that after a certain dollar, that extra bit of money went to things like television, cigarettes, leisure... and it's not people who are very well off. You don't have to be very well off to want that. But I think the fundamental point here is that I think the this sort of need to escape the body, to escape, the day in, day out, the dull drums, the pain, whatever it is that exists on all humans, but it also exists in people who are in dire circumstances, including the homeless. And I say [00:17:00] that because like, when somebody wants hey, can you gimme a dollar? Oh, what are you spending on drugs and alcohol?

RS: I'm like, well, that's what I'm gonna fucking spend it on. So what's the problem here? 

SR: I am so happy you said that. So from that experience, going back to 15 year old, me sleeping on the streets from that experience, another thing that's changed my life is I have spent I think every weekend since then feeding or giving money to the homeless wherever I am in the world. Just on my run on the weekends. And I've gotten so much criticism over the decades Oh, you're just giving them money.

SR: Why don't you just give them food? Because they're gonna spend the money on alcohol? Everyone has criticized me about this. I'm so happy you made that point, because that's exactly the realization I came to. If my friends are gonna go spend their weekends on drinking and relaxing and trying to rest from a week of hard work, imagine the things people are going through living on the street. Who are we to say, and I'm not saying alcohol is a solution and that's okay, I'm just saying their mental health needs are not being met [00:18:00] and so we should show more compassion and empathy towards why they might turn towards alcohol, because they're not addressing their, the cause of their problems.

RS: That's exactly psychic pain, right? Emotional pain. And to want escape from that suffering is not a bad thing. 

RS: But I'm gonna take a hard right now because there's another aspect that you've not shared very broadly. Well you haven't really told me about much about it, so I'm really excited for this part. You were involved for a amount of time in an e-commerce business that involved sex toys. Now this might surprise a lot of people already, but I am so curious about this experience you've had.

RS: Tell me about this ecomm business involving sex toys. 

SR: Okay. I will tell you about it. May I please back up a little bit in the story and tell you how I got to the sex toys in the first place? So I, backing up, had that experience in high school, went and did my [00:19:00] undergrad. I combined neuroscience with international development.

SR: I said I wanna address mental health in developing countries. I then did my master's, as you very nicely, read my bio, which still I'm uncomfortable hearing out loud. . And then I pursued a career, which was my dream consulting to the UN and the World Bank and working on these cash transfer programs. So sorry Raad I'm gonna get to the sex toys, I promise. 

SR: And so in that career, I went as a young 20 something year old with all this ambition to. Solve mental health, like how we address mental health issues in a developing world context. Of course, I had too much ambition and was very idealistic.

SR: I fell into this niche of cash transfers, which we can also talk about. But I essentially spent 10 years designing and implementing these cash transfer programs in all of these countries, mostly in Africa. Towards the end of, and there's a lot of synchronicity with why I'm now in the psychedelic space towards the end of the 10 years. There are a lot of personal [00:20:00] challenges in my life.

SR: That caused me to, after being a workaholic and never taking a day off, I actually didn't know what an out of office responder was. I'd heard of that this existed, but I've never used it. And after working that much for 10 years, I decided to take a little bit of time off and it actually worked out perfectly because I was set up for this new position at unicef which was a huge promotion for me.

SR: And the way contracts work at UNICEF is if you're a consultant, you kind of need to be out of the system for a little bit before you start a new contract. So I actually had this period of time where I could go back to Canada and focus on my own mental health and myself and my family, and things that needed attention and then go back to this great job already lined up.

SR: So there was this security. Okay. So I go home for the first time. I'd gone home for Christmas bar barely sometimes, but go [00:21:00] home back to Toronto and realize I've been working since I was 13. Never not had a job since I was 13. And no, I don't know what to do. Just sitting at home, it, it was, I think I lasted two or three days and I'm like, Oh, I can't do this.

SR: So this was before Covid, and I just googled temporary jobs working from home because I wanted to go back to the UN in six months. But I found two jobs that somehow were willing to hire me despite it, knowing it was temporary and knowing it was remote. One was an e-commerce sex toy company, something I knew nothing about. And the other was a real estate company, also something I knew absolutely nothing about. But I manage like budgets at the national level and hundreds of millions of dollars and done project management for all these cash transfers.

SR: So I had some skills that clearly made me semi [00:22:00] hireable. . Now check out the synchronicity of life. At this point, I've never had any psychedelic experience. I have not heard of psychedelics, aside from like random people, maybe sometimes mentioning mushrooms, but in an academic setting for sure.

SR: I've never heard of psychedelics. I've never drank alcohol, any alcohol. I've never done any recreational drugs. So I live this like very. Straight life, if you wanna call it that. And I start working for this sexter company. Amazing experience I wish I will talk about, but I took them through their series A of fundraising, something very useful for my life right now.

SR: Didn't think it would be useful, but it's been great to have that experience. And as I took them to their round of series a fundraising, their lead investor happens to be a huge investor in the psychedelic space. And I won't say his name in case he doesn't want his name being said, but huge [00:23:00] investor in the psychedelic space.

SR: He'll hopefully be listening to this podcast. And so he invests in the sex toy company. And of course now we're like meeting each other often. That's what happens when you have a lead investor. And this is all he's talking about psychedelics, right? And. I'm kind of dismissing it to be honest, because he's also the type of investor that's known to invest in vice markets and industries.

SR: So I'm like, Oh, he invested in cannabis. It's just like the thing he does. I'm also working for a real estate company and the CEO of the real estate company just had his first intentional psychedelic experience and you know this now is all he can talk about because he wants to share the experience with the world and honestly about it was this synchronicity.

SR: I sat there and said, How does a brown girl from Toronto who has lived like a very focused like this whole pathway from young age of volunteering, sleeping on the streets, then [00:24:00] working in the un, like this very clear pathway of being in the UN for the rest of her life, happened to have these two random jobs, sex toys in real estate, both talking all the time about psychedelics.

SR: I just told myself this is too much. I can't ignore it. And that's really what led me down this black hole of looking into what was happening in the psychedelic space. And five years later, here we are. 

RS: Wow. I dunno you say that, people may think it's disconnected, but it's not disconnected in any way whatsoever.

RS: I feel like sex, pleasure, psychedelics, all these things are, Yeah. Housing, they're all connected really. They're the states of, things that sheltered the mind or things that sort of help the mind or your realm of imagination, Right. Yeah. It's such an interesting story.

RS: I love that. I love how one thing led to the other and of course, transferable skills, right? Whether you're raising a round of financing or raising money or, helping companies. It's a it's very transferable in that way. That's a [00:25:00] wild story. Okay, so you've had this brief stint well, was it brief?

RS: How long was that? How long were you 

SR: with this? No, it ended up being two years. Yeah. And I ended up taking them from five employees to 65 employees and going through the round of fundraising. So it ended up being not that brief. I stayed with the sex toy company and the real estate company beyond the six months because I was trying to navigate like, how, what can I do in this field where I can apply my skills and be of value in the field of psychedelics? And as soon as I figured that out I left the sex toys and the real estate.

RS: I think often we get enamored by the tools, right? And whatever sector industry you're from, it's often the conversation about tools of empowerment. But we don't talk about the mindset of empowerment, right? The mind behind how these tools are supposed to be used, whether it's crash transfers, whether it's, software, whatever.

RS: My background's in molecular biotic cancer research. I worked on advanced renewable energies for a while, started a think tank in Toronto, grew it for six years that worked [00:26:00] on water and technologies and bringing government and VCs and municipalities together. And then I transitioned to tech and social impact and corporate philanthropy.

RS: But I think, when I came into psychedelics, it wasn't like, okay, here's the next thing. It was like the missing piece because ultimately, if people don't feel well, they cannot do well. And it does not just apply to the poor, it applies to everybody. So we have to work to bring our culture and our people and people who are underprivileged specifically to a baseline from which they can then think about peak performance and all that other stuff.

SR: I would love to be around where doing like a mental health checkup would be equivalent to doing a dental checkup. Like how common is it to ask your friends like, Oh, did you go to the dentist year? Or I went to the dentist, or you take time off to go to the dentist. This seems so normal to go to the dentist twice a year, yet we aren't doing that with our mental health. And that's a world I wanna live in.

RS: Totally. And I think and [00:27:00] it doesn't have to be psychedelics per se. If you go to a kid on the street in Bangladesh, right? Whether they're picking up trash and recycling and things like that, you ask them, what do you wanna be, they probably won't say an astronaut... maybe now they will with YouTube and stuff, but they likely say, I want to drive a truck, or I want to, do what my dad does and stuff like that.

RS: And that's not a bad thing, But I think we have to look at the realm of possibilities. Where is the imagination allowed to go? And I think when you're suffering, your imagination cannot go anywhere. It shrinks to a little box, and that is universal no matter what economic strata you're from.

RS: I wanna shift us closer to psychedelics a little bit. But before we get there, I think let's talk about your most meaningful, psychedelic experience in whatever setting you want to explore and why that was meaningful to you.

SR: Yeah, thanks for asking the question. This is a story I've never shared publicly but I'm happy to be sharing it with you. So for me, my most meaningful psychedelic experience was [00:28:00] actually an experience where I was sitting with someone who was going through their first psychedelic experience.

SR: This is someone I'm very close with to this day and who I've known for over a decade. And he started to learn about what I've been doing in this space. To be clear, at this time, I had not completed my CPTR training. I wasn't a certified guide. But he really wanted me to sit with him.

SR: And I was actually very resistant to doing this. And I called some people I respected in the space I don't know, I'm not trained this, that so much, so many blockers. There were so many blockers in hindsight. But the people I spoke, she said, Well, if he's not. Suffering from anything. And if he's about to go and do this alone in the park anyways, wish he was planning on doing

SR: Yeah, just sit with him. And they gave me some advice. And these 12 hours I saw firsthand a human [00:29:00] being just completely transformed. And it is nothing in comparison to like the amazing books we read and stories we hear, and journal articles we read, and videos we watch. Like actually seeing this transformation happen firsthand, I will say is to this day, one of the most beautiful experiences of my life, if not the most beautiful.

SR: This was a person who had a lot of. Built up anxiety that he wasn't, I don't think aware of. So wasn't even, he didn't even have the language to talk about his anxiety because he didn't know it was there. So it would come out in his behavior. So decades of that, of repressing his emotions.

SR: We are very close and I don't think I've, before this experience, I don't think I'd really heard him say the word love out loud. And now I can't count how many times he uses that word, . And I'd always seen him as this beautiful person with this [00:30:00] amazing light, but I also saw how dimmed it was, and sorry to use these kind of woo words.

SR: But in, in those hours that I sat with him, I saw him cry out all of his pain and fears and suffering that had been built in that he felt. Especially as I think, and I haven't talked to him about the gender perspective, but as a man, he felt like he couldn't share it with the world and he's just letting it out.

SR: So much pain. And then I saw that towards the end just like transform into joy and gratitude and love and within a month, I wanna say post that experience, just seeing the change in his behaviors afterwards is what really did it for me. He quit his amazing job, . I don't recommend that for everyone who has a transformative experience, but he had [00:31:00] an amazing on paper job at one of those big five or whatever companies you call them.

SR: And it was very high stress and not aligned with passion in life. So he quit that. He got a therapist and started talking to the therapist regularly. Something I didn't imagine him doing. And he spent the past few years really working on his relationships with his mother and his sister. And even that is so beautiful to watch and all of this, like from this one experience and now I don't, I really don't think psychedelics cures everything.

SR: It's not gonna solve all of the world's problems. It's not even for everyone. It's not meant to be used by everyone. At least that's my belief. A lot of people could benefit, but not at everyone. And it's not gonna do the work if you just do a session and you don't do all of the integration and work afterwards.

SR: Right. But just this experience of seeing this person who I had known for over a [00:32:00] decade come out of this like a butterfly, like it was like a caterpillar. And then they went into their cocoon and they come out as this butterfly. So loving, so grateful. And now it's been a few years since that experience.

SR: And even today he's still this loving, radiant human being. So yeah, that would be my most transformative or more, most important psychedelic experience. 

RS: Why do you think he was ready at that moment? What was it about the life before this that set him up to be ready? 

SR: My, my answer is gonna sound very self-centered. I apologize. 

RS: Okay. Bring it on. No judgment. No judgment. 

SR: I, well, some people might judge, I'm gonna make it about me and that's terrible.

SR: Well, the context of this was I was in Mexico and I fell down several flights of stairs again. I know, I'm so, I'm, I [00:33:00] can't believe I'm making this about me. 

RS: That doesn't sound like a good thing to make it about. You fell down a flight of stairs. That is, that sounds terrible. 

SR: Yeah, I, I fell down several flights of stairs, was in the hospital, had internal bleeding and fractured ribs and all of these things, and a blood clot.

SR: And anyways, I was misdiagnosed at the hospital and they told me that I had a perforation in my stomach. I had to go for emergency surgery and that I had a 50% chance of dying in the surgery. Wow. And I'm in Mexico. No family members, no friends. The perks of being a nomad. Right. Wow. And and I actually book the surgery and I sign a waiver saying that I accept that I might die 50% in the waiver, right?

SR: And I'm like, ok. And I don't wanna tell my family because they're gonna freak out. And like the surgery is like in a day. And so I'm texting one of my best friends, my will via WhatsApp. There's another plug in for [00:34:00] WhatsApp . And I'm just like, Okay, so I might die. So if I die, this is all of the information about my bank counts.

SR: Don't tell anyone I'm gonna die, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, that's the context of what was happening. She, of course, didn't keep it a secret and told people, including this person who I sat with and who had his first psychedelic experience, he came to Mexico without telling me, just booked a flight the next day or that same day when he heard Because he's very practical since we're talking about this is minority trip.

SR: He's Asian American and plays into this stereotype of Asian Americans being very practical. He came to Mexico. , I ended up being misdiagnosed, so I didn't go for the surgery and I didn't die. But we thought I was going we thought I was going to die. That's, that was the context. And he came and I asked him like, So why did you come?

SR: Cuz you haven't really been helping me with my recovery or anything. And he's Oh, I heard you were gonna die. And I figured it's covid who's gonna transport your body back home?[00:35:00] 

RS: It's important to consider that angle for sure. 

SR: That's like what, that was pre his psychedelic experience. It wasn't like, I love you and I care about you. It was like, Oh, I was just thinking about your body. 

SR: I came to transport your body. So I think actually we care a lot about each other. He's a close person in my life and. I think the context emotionally of the backdrop of we were preparing for me to die and making all of those preparations and then we found out I was misdiagnosed.

SR: And now we both happen to be in Mexico because I'm a nomad. I keep up with everyone over the phone, but I don't get too much in-person time with the loved ones in my life. So now he was like, Well, now I have this time with you in Mexico, . What are we gonna do with it? And I think it really did get him thinking about life, the fact that it can go at any moment.

SR: So that, I think that played a role, like that played a role in the set and setting. 

RS: The way I hear it is it's how we started this conversation, putting relationships at the center, the quality of relationships, and I think like your story's really beautiful because I [00:36:00] think it's it's a rare to hear about the sort of meta transformation.

RS: You are transforming while witnessing somebody else's transformation. So I think that's really spectacular and it's a really beautiful angle to that story. Moving on from that, I wanna make sure that we spend some time on around what you're doing now.

RS: Enthea is a phenomenal company. It solves a very specific problem. It's an angle that I think we often don't talk about. If you wanna mainstream psychedelics, you have to talk about this key question, who pays for this? I think Enthea is solving a very specific segment of that, which is employees.

RS: So before we talk about what Enthea is doing, tell us a little bit about what to me at least, feels like the messy hidden maybe overly complex world of insurance and employee insurance. So Enthea works on providing a path by which employers can pay for their employees to experience psychedelic assist psychotherapy [00:37:00] or therapy.

SR: Okay. I always answer your question with some background. 

SR: How I got even to Enthea was I was again, working for sex toys, working for real estate, but really just now curious about the space.

SR: And I first helped start the Boston Psychedelic Research Group which is a community of about 2000 people that meets every two months. And unlike other psychedelic societies, the BPRG focuses on above ground research. Like we have a prominent speaker like a Robin Carhartt Harris, or Rick Doblin, actually.

SR: I think you really agree with this Raad. It's so important to create community whatever we're doing, going back to the importance of relationships. So in that work with the BPRG, I started meeting more and more people in this space and who were doing phenomenal things. And I started meeting a bunch of providers who had this question [00:38:00] like, these were providers who want to eventually provide psychedelic assisted therapy at their clinics.

SR: And they were really worried about how this will be reimbursed by insurance companies cuz they know that insurance companies probably won't reimburse it. So, these seeds were being planted. I also care a lot in terms of the infrastructure of the psychedelic ecosystem training is really important to me.

SR: Not just insurance is really important, but so is training. So I started consulting with CI S and did my CPTR training. And even in that ecosystem, like the CIS ecosystem, I'm talking to again, more researchers, more providers, I'm getting this amazing network of people that I get to talk to all the time.

SR: And again, I'm hearing this theme of yeah, we can't wait till this and this becomes approved, but as a provider, I don't know how I'm gonna be able to give this to people other than the elite who can pay out of pocket cuz insurance is not gonna cover it. Even now in America, speaking about the [00:39:00] US specifically sorry to exclude Canada, despite that day where I'm from, most mental health work is done out of pocket. Forget psychedelics. Like most people, when they go to a therapist, they're paying out of pocket. And the reason that is, is because the insurance industry has done a really not so good job of negotiating rates with mental health practitioners and providers and reimbursing them on time.

SR: So, sorry if I'm offending anyone listening to this from the insurance industry. And most providers don't take insurance because they won't get reimbursed what they deserve and they won't get reimbursed on time. And if we continue that mistake, what with psychedelics and sorry to call it a mistake hope there's room for improvement there, but if we continue that pattern with psychedelics, then we're gonna have a world where the only people who can afford psychedelic assisted therapy are the people who can pay out of pocket. And you know the numbers as well. We're talking about if [00:40:00] MDMA assisted therapy becomes approved, it's not finalized, but let's call it $12,000 or so for a full treatment, who's gonna have that out of pocket?

SR: Right. So in the formed, my co-founders and I formed Enthea, in order to solve for this problem, who's gonna pay for psychedelic therapy? And the US is a country where 99% of companies have to have medical insurance, give that to their employees. That's required as long as they have more than a certain amount of employees.

SR: And 75% of those companies self-insure. So they're paying for the insurance for their employees and. That's where the bulk of people in America get their insurance coverage. They get it through their employer or through their spouse or parents' employer. Right. So what in the, is doing as a third party [00:41:00] administrator, so technically not an insurance company itself, is bridging this gap because the main insurance companies are not going to cover psychedelic assisted therapy, at least not for many years to come.

SR: And so as a third party administrator of these benefits, we can offer these benefits to companies that self-insure so that they can in turn offer it to their employees. And it's easy and it's seamless and it's super beneficial for the employer. We can talk about how $1 invested in each, in an employee's mental health results in a $4 return or The cost of depression in America for employers is $10,000 per person with depression.

SR: And there's so many days lost and productivity lost and absenteeism in the workplace because of mental health. So if we have finally found something that doesn't answer all of our problems, but seems to be the most effective tool for addressing anxiety and depression from a cost perspective, it's also very beneficial to employers to help treat this so that they have healthy employees.

RS: So Enthea, [00:42:00] as a third party administrator basically is building the community of providers, standardizing and certifying that these providers provide some standard of care that can then help insurance providers come up with some format of reimbursement.

SR: Yes and no. So we're building that network of providers. And we've created medical policy and we've started with ketamine assisted therapy cuz that can be done now. So we don't have to wait for approval. And we work on credentialing these providers when we bring them in network so that we can have some standard of quality of care and safety that we're offering.

SR: Right. There's some credibility and trust built there. And then we don't, I think you said something about then we work with insurance companies to get the insurance to the employees. As a TPA we don't have to work with insurance companies.

SR: We can wholesale to them, which is great. We work then directly with the employers, so we will go to a meta or Amazon or a Dr. [00:43:00] Bronners who is our customer and say, Hey, do you guys wanna offer Ketamine assisted therapy to your employees? Because this is what you'll get from it. These are all of the benefits you will get and this is how much it'll probably cost you.

SR: You're gonna get a huge ROI on this. And you can do that through us, and you can offer this to your employees through us. This is another benefit you offer them. It also kind of in today's marketplace is a benefit that like, is attractive to, for talent acquisition. Oh, I'm, I wanna work for that company cuz they're gonna offer me like ketamine assist therapy.

SR: Similar to like how some companies now offer these fertility programs as a benefit, right? . But yeah, we work directly with the companies, those are our customers and say, Hey, do you wanna offer this to your employees? Here's all the reasons you should. And fortunately, We said, we started this conversation with my maps pin, saying the word is out.

SR: We don't actually have to go to these companies. We're seeing and sell this to them. They're coming to us and saying, Hey, are you ready? Do you have providers on this date? Because we wanna give this to our employees. So it's really it took a lot of [00:44:00] work building this, but we're now in a position where companies are coming to us and it's unbelievable.

SR: And and I will say, tying this into everything else, my personal interest in this is, there's like a long term vision here. So with cash transfers . Okay. The earliest cash transfers were done in some of the most difficult countries, like in terms of like complex and large, like Brazil, Mexico, actually Bangladesh Pakistan, These are the countries that adopted cash transfers early on.

SR: And I saw from my experience doing that, oh, if you do this thing that's never really been done before in a very difficult system, then you can take it to Tanzania and South Africa and all of these other countries a lot more. It's not easy, but it's easier to do so. And so my vision for this is learn as much as I can about the most complicated healthcare system in the world, which I will say is probably the US, how to pave a [00:45:00] pathway to safety and access where people can have affordable access to psychedelic assisted therapy here. So that, I can hopefully share these lessons with people that wanna do it in a developing world context. Not that's I care about the US but my personal passions are about learning this and sharing that knowledge.

RS: Totally. And there's this other angle. My last company that I was with, enterprise SaaS company called Benevity, we basically pioneered a way by which employees anywhere in the world could give to any charity in the world that they want and the tax benefits, and receipts, the whole process is automated, the employers have all of a sudden data about what exactly their employees care about versus throwing CSR money in the dark. But really the other agenda was sort of, There's a organization... edelman is an organization in New York that publishes this Edelman barometer of trust every year, basically looking at what institutions represent trust in our very erratic, chaotic society they will [00:46:00] live in. And they've seen that the corporation or the employer is where like trust and social values and pro-social behavior are centralized.

RS: Now. You apply that to psychedelics and the mainstreaming of psychedelics... I think this is a stat that I found from your side, which is there's more than 40,000 employers in the US alone with more than 500 employees. Now think about this. Yeah. If every one of those employees was exposed and benefited from their spouses and their spouses, What would that do to the entire movement and destigmatizing mental health, but also psychedelics, Incredibly powerful catalyst here, right?

SR: And we're saying not a 100% of the employees would use this. Of course not. In fact, we predict two to 5% of employees that could use this benefit would actually use it. But if all of the employees had access to it and they could come home and talk to their family of Hey, my work's now offering this benefit, they can talk to their wife or their husband or whomever at home. Like that changes the [00:47:00] conversation and creates like a shift in culture. 

RS: And again, one of the reasons that I really love what you guys are doing, and I think it has such incredible potential to move the needle. We are running out of time, so I want to come to this. I wanna

RS: well, we'll work on that, but I do want to sort of end off on one question. It's a two part question. I'm gonna give you the floor to monologue if you want, because it's very important. So the first part is, you're a female CEO in a male dominated world. And even though we're talking about psychedelics and all the woo woo stuff, it still is true. It is male dominated. .But you're a rare sort of person in that not only given the work that you've done, but you are a female CEO of what I think would be a huge company. I really believe that. What advice do you have, for other women no matter what they're doing in this space or if they want to participate in this space, mobilizing this space and other minorities, what advice do you have [00:48:00] for them? And secondly, which is something that is close to my heart as well, we both think a lot about mass mental health, which is how do we actually take these powerful medicines, these new mediums and modalities to the emerging countries where poverty and the scars of rapid progress is perhaps taking over in a way that we've not seen before. My parents are in Bangladesh and it is my sincere hope that one day hopefully, too long from now that they can also benefit from these medicines.

RS: How do you think about that? 

SR: Awesome questions. I'm gonna try to tie it all, answer it all in the time that we have. The first part, being a woman and a person of color in this space, there was a book that I read over 10 years ago now called Covering by Kenji yoshino, I wanna say is the author's name. And he's a law professor. I think he's now at NYU. But this concept of covering [00:49:00] talks about, I think it's actually called like covering the Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights. I think that's the full title. But this concept of covering is about how.

SR: Everything feels great when we cover up our identity. So we might not feel at least explicitly or outwardly feel the racism in North America if we just, dress a certain way and talk a certain way and don't talk about our differences. Just cover up and act as normal as possible. I read that book and it helped me understand why.

SR: As a person of color, I haven't felt, there might have been, there may have been and might continue to be microaggressions but I didn't feel a lot of like explicit macroaggressions or like explicit acts of racism towards me being a person of color, like coming from Tanzania and Pakistan. Or a Muslim person.

SR: Because I covered, and I, it wasn't like an intentional [00:50:00] thing. I grew up in the suburbs so I happened to talk the way I talk and dress the way I do, and this is now just me, but I recognize that there's this covering involved, right? Unfortunately or fortunately, you can't cover up that you're a woman.

SR: You can hide some parts of your identity, your ethnic identity a little bit and blend in, but you can't cover up being a woman. And so while I haven't felt, I hear a lot of stories and I feel a lot of compassion, empathy of other people in this space who, not just psychedelic, just say in life, who have felt difficulties being a minority based on their ethnic or religious background.

SR: I've heard those stories and I'm super empathetic and have a lot of compassion, and I've always been like, I haven't really felt that much. I can pinpoint some micro things, but but being a woman in this, in a for-profit environment, I don't even know if it's psychedelic specific, is not something you can cover up.

SR: And it's not easy. And [00:51:00] my advice and the reason it's not easy is because when you're raising money, most of the money you're raising, like where you're raising your money from, are usually white men usually. I don't know the stats on this, I should look them up. I don't know if you know the stats Raad, but I'm usually in a room of men asking for money for India. And 

RS: Well we know that only 2% of venture capital goes to women led companies that we know. And it's even less for if you're a black founder. So yeah, that is already appalling. So it's probably equally appalling in psychedelics. 

SR: Yeah. And it's so it goes to only 2% goes to women led companies, but how much of the VC money, are from women, like most VCs are led by men. I don't know that's that offhand, but that's where I feel it. It's not just like them giving to me and I'm a woman. It's like I'm in a room of men all the time. And there's like a different dynamic and a different energy and it's so much testosterone in the room.

SR: And you have to [00:52:00] work through these identities and stereotypes that people attach to you being even a younger and unmarried woman trying to raise money. So my, if there's people who really want advice, I would say contact me directly and I will talk with you for forever about this . But broadly speaking, don't ignore it.

SR: Don't be so naive as the think you can just cover, because you cannot cover, you cannot act. as bro ey and as masculine as your male counterparts. And just because you're as smart or smarter does not mean you will be treated the same. And so do not ignore it and then figure out how to use it as your strength.

SR: And there's this fine line of being a woman in a room and not being very, You don't wanna come off as too flirtatious or too giggly or too soft. There's like all of these things a woman has to think about and make sure you look professional. I've had people tell me, [00:53:00] even raising money now, I was told for Enthea I should cut my hair short cuz people would take me more seriously.

SR: And I was like, really? Is that the world we live in? That that I'm not being taken seriously cuz my hair is long.

SR: So, don't ignore or pretend like it's it's gonna be the same or it's gonna be easy, but figure out how to use it as your strength.

SR: And so now I think, we'll see I'm happy with Enthea's progress so far, but now I'm able to walk in room and be like, Yes, I am a woman and I'm not trying to be a man and I'm not trying to act like a man and these are the things about being a woman that makes me stronger and I'm gonna own it instead of trying to figure out how to cover.

SR: Yeah. Fuck. Yeah. And then then you asked about like mental health. Oh my god. And I also have mental mental health in one minute. Okay. So there are several components to this and I don't think I can do this conversation justice in the time that we have left, but I will share some of the things that I think are important.

SR: From a very biased point of [00:54:00] view. I do think America sets the tone. And so, I think that's what MAPS is doing. Let's push for FDA approval in the US and they're looking at, they have a line of sight on other parts of the world, but let's push for FDA approval in the States and that will set a chain reaction elsewhere.

SR: Same thing I, I believe very strongly with in the, if we get, you mentioned the number of employers, right? If we get these employers covered through insurance so that they're able to offer all of their employees, if in the has 5 million covered lives, okay? And then we inspire another company to form, there's lots of room right to, to form and do this as well.

SR: And like in, in a few years, there's 20 million covered lives. That's how many people have access to this benefit for free, right? Access to psychologist is the therapy for free and it's covered by insurance through the employer. That sets off a chain reaction. Just us launching with Dr. Bronners in January this year with the couple hundred employees that they have, or few hundred employees that they [00:55:00] have set off this chain reaction of like the Rolling Stone wrote about it. New York Times wrote about it. Washington Post wrote about it. Economist wrote about, that's one company and you have the huge press outlets, like all of these huge companies writing about it.

SR: Now imagine you get the bigger companies on board and the spillover affects elsewhere. When you talk about mass mental health that's one component and it's a biased, it's through my biased lens cause I believe in what India is doing. I will also say that there needs to be a huge recognition of how important underground work is.

SR: This is a little bit more taboo to talk about, but it's really the underground work that got us here, right when all of these studies were put to a stop and this research couldn't be done anymore, the underground work carried the progress and. Because of that underground work. I would say it's because of the underground work that the research was able to be activated again, and we owe so much to the people who did that [00:56:00] work.

SR: And I would say, even when I think about a developing world context if there are, there's some underground work that starts to happen in a, obviously in a safe way, and you start touching the lives, it's my, the idealistic young person in me that joined the UN thinking like I would address mental health policy at 20 something years old and change the world.

SR: I do think that if we touch the right people in the right places, they will be inspired to share that with others. And that sets off a chain reaction from the bottom. rather than from the top down. There's this top down approach of doing it with employers and doing it in America first, and it's spreading.

SR: But there's this bottom up approach that can happen anywhere in the world as long as it's safe, where people can have a transformative experience. Again, as long as it's safe. And then you've seen this. People have an experience like that and all they wanna do is share it with others. 

RS: Amazing. Sherry, this was phenomenal. You have such deep well of insights and [00:57:00] crazy stories, all the makings of an amazing podcast episode. So I know you have to run. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you being here on spending this hour with us. 

SR: Raad, this was amazing. I've never wanted to start a podcast, but I want to just so I can interview you. 

RS: That's a huge compliment, Thank you.

SR: Thank you so much. You've, this was a lot of fun.