SPEAKERS

Bio: Andrew Claassen is a passionate mycologist, forest ecologist, and naturalist known for their expertise in the identification and study of California mushrooms. Based in Northern California, Claassen has contributed significantly to the understanding of North American fungal species, particularly through their work on documenting, collecting, discovering, and researching mushrooms found in unique and diverse habitats of the region. 

Andrew is involved with several mycological and environmental organizations, including serving as a collection specialist for Mycota Lab and Shasta Spore, a privately operated taxonomy and rare species cultivation lab.

Bio: Emmie Vander Pluym is an avid forager and fungi fanatic! She just recently received her degree in Forestry from NAU. Specializing in forest health, she has focused majorly on the interconnected relationships between fungi and their ecosystems. She is an aspiring mycologist who will be returning to NAU this fall to focus on her true passion; fungi! When she’s not studying insects and fungi, she is always foraging or playing in the dirt!

Emmie will be giving a talk titled, “The Fungal Farming Frontier: Leaf Cutter Ants and Ambrosia Beetles (A millennia of fungi-insect coevolution)”. In this talk she will discuss some interesting and fun fungi and insect relationships with a focus on leaf cutter ants as well as ambrosia beetles! We will be discussing the ecology and evolution of these amazing insects and their fungal counterparts!

Bio: Tyler Hacking is a multidisciplinary applied research scientist and CEO who focuses on bringing together scientific academia, industrial and commercial business, and citizen science to provide practical and efficient solutions to the problems of society. His products and services range from native soil microbe cell cultures for sustainable and regenerative rapid desert soil transformation, complete nutrition powders, highly accurate predictive mushroom maps, bioprospecting molecular genetic & molecular structure determination, professional scientific consultation services, bionic integration biophysics, and more.

The focus of Tyler’s mycological research includes morel mushroom ecology and habitat associations, fungal nutrition, how fungi impact soil nutrients, using new yeast species for bread and beer fermentation, and endangered cacti fungal endophytes. His science degrees are in biology and botany with a focus on plant & fungal interactions. Tyler is currently a PhD applicant in biophysics and biogeochemistry programs. During his undergraduate studies, he created a fungarium at UVU, formed the university’s mycology club, he is the current chair of the science committee for the Utah Mushroom Society, and designed the upcoming boy and girl scout’s mycology merit badge.

As CEO of Dr Gaia Inc, Tyler applies science directly to farms, yards and gardens using biotechnology to culture specific symbiotic fungi and bacteria which facilitate plant nutrition and soil transformation. He has designed and constructed a functional and scalable automated aerobic compost program for Utah Valley University. Tyler presents his mycological research on morel mushroom biogeochemistry at the Mycological Society of America research conferences annually and is a keynote speaker at mushroom & mycology conferences across the United States.

Bio: Ash Ritter is an ethnobotanist, herbalist, and writer with over 23 years of study in clinical, traditional, academic, and directly relational terrains. She is a devotee of curiosity, and especially savors the inquiry of history & mystery through the woven threads of fungi, people, and plants.

One-on-one long term apprenticeships are the cornerstone of her training, with a focus on clinical botanical & naturopathic medicines, Druid herbalism, Cali-Mexican curanderismo, and MacGuyver-style urban & wilderness first-aid. Her college thesis focused on the history of funga and flora in rites of passage, and altered states as evolutionary technology. Over the years, Ash’s research has honed in on the ethnobotany and ethnomycology of her western United States homelands, and the entheogenic traditions of her Bohemian ancestry.

Ash counsels and creates in her private practice, Black Sage Botanicals, to engage direct relationships with & as the living world. She joyfully offers public & private classes, in-depth consultation services, and loves formulating unique elixirs in her Sonoran desert apothecary.

Bio:Hernan Castro is the owner of Desert Alchemist, an Arizona-based business. He is a passionate naturalist and lead mycology influence in Arizona. He educates the community on medicinal mushrooms, foraging, cultivation, extraction, ethical harvesting practices, and more. He leads foraging workshops in the local mountains during the monsoon season and hosts talks and workshops for the community, as well as educating the global community through videos on TikTok and Instagram. He also contributes to the mycological community by collecting and DNA sequencing rare and novel mushrooms. He began learning about the world of medicinal mushrooms in 2015 when his father had several strokes. Hernan made a lion’s mane extract to support his father’s recovery from paralysis and has been working with medicinal mushroom extracts ever since. His work has been featured on PBS, as well as newspapers and magazines. His company, Desert Alchemist, makes a wide variety of medicinal mushroom/Herbal extracts, coffee, tea, honey, and other mushroom products made with wild fungi.

Bio: Kate Hawke brings together 35 years as a trauma therapist with over 50 years of personal and professional experience with psychedelics—and a deep love of mushrooms sparked at the Telluride Mushroom Festival in the 1990s. A longtime resident of Flagstaff, Arizona, now living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Kate recently completed training to qualify for the Colorado Natural Medicine Facilitator license. Her experience ranges from psilocybin truffles in the Netherlands, to harm reduction at Burning Man, to annual mushroom forays on the San Francisco Peaks with students from the Navajo charter school she co-founded. Former President of the Arizona Counselors Association, trauma therapist and MAPS member.

Bio: Tony Landry is a U.S. Navy veteran, plant medicine advocate, and founder of the Swamp Spore 

Society based in Lafayette, Louisiana. After years battling chronic pain from service-related injuries and surviving the failures of the VA system, Tony found healing through entheogens like ayahuasca and psilocybin.

He’s since become a powerful voice for veteran access to psychedelic therapy, testifying at the Louisiana State Capitol and working to advance Senate Resolution 186 — a groundbreaking legislative effort to create a statewide task force focused on alternative treatment options for veterans, including plant-based and psychedelic therapies.

Through his grassroots efforts, Tony has helped build a vibrant mushroom cultivation community in the Deep South. His talks are raw, real, and rooted in lived experience — blending policy, healing, humor, and the fight for freedom.

Bio:David Poplin graduated from Humboldt State University with a bachelors in science with a major in Biochemistry. As an aspiring mycologist, Poplin has gained an interest in extraction methods of medicinal compounds found in plants and fungi. He believes in a future surrounded by holistic healing for optimal health and wellness.

Bio:is co-founder of San Juan Shrooms, where he specializes in precision, data-driven cultivation of mushrooms and other botanical plant medicines. He leads cultivation efforts at Scottsdale Research Institute (SRI) in Phoenix, Arizona, where he helps grow mushrooms and peyote under SRI’s federal licenses. Kevin’s work focuses on advancing data- and technology-led cultivation systems that maximize cultivated plant yields while reducing friction points in labor and infrastructure—building a scalable path forward for regulated botanical medicine production. His current focus includes collaborative restoration of peyote alongside federally recognized tribal partners and the early development of a domestic T. iboga cultivation center to support access to legal, plant-based ibogaine precursors.

Bio: A mycology hobbyist, Casiana has been foraging for mushrooms for 6 years. As a longtime fiber artist, working with mushroom dyes was a natural next step in her mycology journey. She forages and works with several species of dye mushrooms that grow prolifically in the Sky Islands near Tucson where she lives.

Bio:

Kristan Trunzo is a mother, teacher, healer, nonprofit leader and forager. For over three decades she has studied and practiced many forms of body work, herbal medicine, birthing doula, mycology and more. She is a mom of five who homeschools her kids with an emphasis on connection to the natural world, mycology, and herbalism 

Kristan is part of the founding team of the nonprofit African Rising initiative https://www.africanrisinginitiative.org

which focuses on empowering supporting and educating underprivileged people in the Uganda area by helping them learn how to grow mushrooms, gardens, educational access, health support and so much more.  She is an avid forager with a full but ever growing knowledge of pants and fungi. Her strong connection to the forests and natural world has been a formative part of her life. 

She has been teaching children mycology since 2019 as well as sitting on panel discussions about foraging, children’s mycology education, and ethnogens and parenting. She is currently finishing her first mycology book which should be out in the beginning of 2026