About us

The Four Pillars of Reconnection

Through education and service, we are bridging the gap between allopathic medicine and the incredible healing potential of psychedelic medicines and supportive wellness tools.

We believe the key to living fully again is to help our clients restore meaning and purpose through practices rooted in science, centuries of tradition, and our Four Pillars of Reconnection™: Self, Community, Nature, and Spirit.

People and culture

Combining decades in clinical oncology and the arts, rigorous scientific research and storytelling, and personal experience with cancer, our team leads with compassion and experience.

Jason Konner, MD

co-Founder / CMO

Neal Usatin, MBA

co-founder / ceo

Jason Konner, MD is a Yale- and Stanford-trained medical oncologist, formerly at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. After decades treating cancer from a purely clinical perspective, Jason experienced a profound shift — one shaped by his own journey as a clinician experiencing burnout and by witnessing how our emotional relationship to cancer impacts not only the patient’s body, identity, ability to heal, and sense of meaning but the wellbeing of everyone in the cancer ecosystem. Drawn to deeper forms of healing, he immersed himself in psychedelic medicine, breath work, and integrative practices that honor the emotional and spiritual dimensions of health. He discovered that what many people facing cancer truly need is not just treatment — but wholeness, connection, peace, and the ability to feel alive again. Jason left Memorial Sloan Kettering to follow that calling and founded Chaloka. Through psychedelic-assisted healing and integration work, he helps people access inner wisdom, release emotional weight, and reconnect to purpose.

Neal Usatin is a filmmaker with 27 years of experience, and after editing two episodes of How To Change Your Mind (Netflix, 2022) he felt the call to pivot into the field of psychedelics to focus on the art of healing. Neal became an advocate for access to psilocybin-assisted therapy in NJ, persuaded his Republican state senator to co-sponsor a psilocybin access bill, and founded NJ for Fungi and Plant Medicines. While advocating in Trenton, Neal met Jason, and the two became fast friends. With the same intention of providing stellar psychedelic education and care to those who are most in need, Neal and Jason formed Chaloka (“bridging worlds”) to practice Psychedelic Oncology. As someone impacted by cancer six times, Neal knows the healing potential of these medicines and the need for transparency, ethical practices, safety and support. He is a trained trip sitter and a student of plant and fungi medicines, the flute, breathwork, and his three children. Neal has a BA in Philosophy from CU Boulder and an MBA with honors from UNC Chapel Hill.

Shannon Friedbacher, MD

PSYCHIATRIST

Julian DeVoe

PROGRAM DIRECTOR

Shannon Friedbacher, MD is a cancer survivor, mother, daughter, sister, and tender witness to the mysteries that shape a life. Her path has unfolded through love and loss, through roles held and roles surrendered, and through the quiet teachings offered by family, grief, and grace. Medicine—both traditional and sacred—has opened portals of insight, reminding her of the limits of being human and the boundless presence that lives beneath those limits. She walks with these teachings, allowing them to work through her, calling in strength whenever resistance or fear rises, and returning again to love, gratitude, and presence.

Board-Certified in Adult Psychiatry, Dr. Friedbacher earned her B.S. in Biology at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and her MD and Psychiatry Residency at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW), where she later served as Chief Resident at the VA. Impacted deeply by this work, she transitioned to Staff psychiatrist at the VA and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at MCW, contributing also to the education and supervision of a variety of learners across disciplines. Her work has spanned trauma, severe mental illness, crisis intervention, aging veterans, substance use treatment, psychotherapy, ketamine therapy, and more. She completed MAPS’ 100-hour MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy training and continues to advocate for healing pathways that honor both science and spirit.

Julian’s mission to joyfully liberate the best of the human spirit and weave a new cultural paradigm has taken him across the globe for work, study and service. As a wellness educator, his teaching focuses on movement, purification, mindfulness, and the spiritual arts. He has worked with natural re-associative entheogens in ceremonial capacities for over fifteen years, helping more than a thousand people prepare, navigate and integrate their experiences. His work is culled from working side-by-side with & learning from First Nations people (Peru, Colombia, Brasil and the Americas), Tibetan monks & master yogis, mystics & healers, activists & survivalists. He holds a Bachelors of Arts & Letters from the University of Notre Dame and is an initiate from the First Nation people of the Quisipicanchi Province in Peru and is a creative activist through writing and art. Julian is an unwavering advocate for anyone on the path of self-discovery, community activism and Earth-based wellness.