Meet Our Team
Thank You Life is governed by a single Board of Directors, composed entirely of volunteers from the medical and lay communities.
Our small but passionate team is led by visionary co-founders Dr. Dan Engle and Kevin Cannella, and we have an ever-growing team of volunteers supporting the mission. Our structure includes a headquarters in Austin, TX with a presence envisioned at hundreds of clinics across The United States.
Staff
Kevin Cannella is a MAPS-trained psychedelic psychotherapist who has been using non-ordinary states to help himself and others heal for 15 years. His life’s work has been to help people align with their core values and transform.
His years of experience working with ketamine as a breakthrough tool for his clients’ healing have shown him the power of psychedelics in the mental health arena. As a certified MDMA-assisted psychotherapist, Kevin looks forward to the near future when that medicine can be used in the mental healthcare space.
After 15 years of this type of work, Kevin has recognized the substantial financial obstacle that prevents most people from having access to the help that they need. His intention with Thank You Life is to create a fund that can open up this treatment to the masses.
Dr. Dan Engle
President & Co-Founder
Dr. Dan Engle is a psychiatrist with a clinical practice that combines aspects of regenerative medicine, psychedelic research, integrative spirituality, and peak performance.
Dr. Engle is an international consultant to several global healing centers facilitating the use of long-standing indigenous plant medicines for healing and awakening. He is the founder of Full Spectrum Medicine, a psychedelic integration and educational platform.
Dr. Engle is the author of The Concussion Repair Manual: A Practical Guide to Recovering from Traumatic Brain Injuries, as well as his newest book, A Dose of Hope: A Story of MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy.
Meredith Thomas is an ethical and effective fundraiser with a passion for causes close to her heart. She is deeply convicted about the promise of psychedelics to alleviate suffering and elevate consciousness.
She also has her own personal journeys and deep interest in plants and plant sentience, reinforcing her commitment to psychedelics. For decades, she has been on the plant path, studying and teaching the multidimensionality of plants, as an herbalist, urban farmer, fermenter, forager, native plant rescuer & seed saver.
Meredith is now an unstoppable advocate for democratizing healing by providing access to legal psychedelic therapy to those with financial barriers through Thank You Life.
Ronny Bilodeau
Creative Director, Operations
Ronny Bilodeau is a polymath, creative, and writer whose dharma involves helping others rediscover the wonder and awe of being alive. With a background in graphic design, functional neurology, meditation instruction, web design, digital marketing, clinical operations, and more, Ronny is helping to bring Thank You Life into the world in a variety of ways.
Ronny believes that psychedelics will continue to play a major role in our collective awakening process, as they allow one the opportunity to heal traumas and see beyond the limitations of the current paradigms.
He is proud to play his part in carrying out Thank You Life’s mission, because he believes that we all deserve the chance to discover the unique gifts that lie inside each of us and live more empowered, authentic lives.
Ryder Nicholas
Director of Partnerships
Ryder Nicholas is an experienced researcher, logistical planner, and heart-centered communicator. She came to Thank You Life in Fall 2023 with a fervent desire to support our efforts to fund impactful therapies for our communities.
Ryder brings a unique perspective to the team, in that she has personally experienced the disparities in mental health access throughout her life. Ryder has gratefully been a recipient of various sliding scale, low-income programs in the Texas area, and she clearly sees the value of these programs to assist and uplift those in our community.
Ryder has explored and researched non-ordinary states of consciousness for the past decade, but her “Thank You Life” moment did not come from a psychedelic experience, rather from tethering her relationship with alcohol. She believes the self-actualization that is achieved through psychedelics can be achieved through multiple avenues, and she is passionate about sharing this perspective with others.
Denise Malkoon
Client Coordinator
Denise is a heart-centered entrepreneur and business development professional, currently working as Client Coordinator for Thank You Life. She is pursuing a career in counseling and feels a deep calling to be of service to others.
Together with her brother, Denise created a successful nut butter company focusing on nourishment, sustainability, and quality of ingredients. She brings the same level of dedication and precision to everything she does professionally, and cultivates a warm connection with each beneficiary that Thank You Life supports.
Kat Gonzalez
Office Manager & Secretary
Kat is an experienced Office Manager & Executive Assistant. She has been a part of Thank You Life from the beginning of its emergence into our world and supported its founders, Dr. Dan Engle and Kevin Cannella, through its beginning stages up to the present day.
She has stood beside its founders, team, and board in communications and recording, as admin and support with Thank You Life’s building community. She has volunteered on the events team for Thank You Life’s successful virtual Gala and Official Launch.
Board of Directors
Laura Lochrane
Board Chair
Laura Lochrane (formerly Laura Whitney) was introduced to sacred medicine healing ways in 2009, originally on a trip to Ecuador. Through over 20 years in a variety of leadership roles at The Ojai Foundation, Laura led rites of passage retreats, nature-based ceremony and trainings in the Way of Council. She served as President of the Board for 14 years.
Laura is certified as a Council Trainer and on her way to be certified in Compassionate Inquiry™ and Holotropic Breathwork™. She holds a Master’s Degree in Ethnographic Film from the University of Southern California and is also the Founder/President of The Scheerer Family Foundation (established in 1999.)
Laura currently works full time guiding individuals and groups on journeys for personal, collective and planetary healing. Her enduring passion for making intimate contact —with self, others, the natural world and with Spirit — inspires all that she offers.
Yana Grammer
Board Treasurer
Yana Simone-Grammer is a social entrepreneur who co-founded the non-profit New Earth in 2004 and has played a key role in growing the organization from a vision to the impactful non-profit that they are today, having served more than 20,000 young people in Los Angeles County.
Prior to New Earth, Yana developed her business acumen in the consumer product and personal growth industries – managing and scaling organizations; building, leading, and training teams; and being involved in all areas of business development from marketing to sales to administration. She is a Roberts Enterprise Development Fund (REDF) Fellow.
“I am behind the TYL mission because it is my life’s work to ensure that all people have equal opportunity and access – especially when it comes to integrated medicine, healing and therapeutic services.” – Yana Grammer
Dr. Vincent Franze
Board Secretary
Dr. Vincent Franze is an anesthesiologist who has been on staff at Aspen Valley Hospital since 2014. Dr. Franze received his medical degree from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in 2001 and four years later completed his residency at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.
He is certified by the American Board of Anesthesiology. Dr. Franze taught as an assistant professor at Thomas Jefferson University, focusing on resident education and specializing in liver transplants.
He helped found, and was the anesthesia director of, the Jefferson Simulation Center — utilizing advanced simulation technology for the training and assessment of physicians and medical students.
Kelsey Kitsch (Ramsden)
Kelsey Ramsden has spent her life building and scaling businesses in unconventional ways. She was named one of Canada’s 100 most powerful women, won Canada’s #1 female entrepreneur two years in a row, and proudly serves as a Richard Branson Centre Mentor.
Mrs. Ramsden also serves on the Entrepreneurship Council for the University of Western Ontario. An accomplished keynote speaker and bestselling author, she holds an MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario.
“I support TYL because of the vision, the team, and the good I know we can do in helping to heal people who otherwise would not have access to revolutionary psychedelic assisted therapy. When one person heals, the ripple effect of the healing is immense.” – Kelsey Ramsden
Aziz Friedrich
Aziz is a husband, father of four beautiful children, and entrepreneur whose journey has taken him from the worlds of commercial real estate to biotechnology to health technology where he is building Everus, a collaborative care platform offering healing and transformation through high-touch cross-discipline support.
“Healing is offered to us in many ways. The spirit and mission of TYL is an open door invitation to allow healing in and to embrace all parts of ourselves as we find our way home.” – Aziz
