North Star is a nonprofit working to shape psychedelic business around psychedelic wisdom, to not only radically improve mental health but develop role models in the needed transformation of business as a whole.
About North Star
The question for leaders committed to transformation in psychedelics is this: can we model the lessons the medicines teach us in the ways we shape our businesses? What about even in the way we lead?
Help build the roadmap that will change business forever
The question for leaders committed to transformation in psychedelics is this: can we model the lessons the medicines teach us in the ways we shape our businesses? What about even in the way we lead?
A North Star for Ethics
Stay Connected
North Star Ethics Pledge is a step in the process of centering integrity in the emerging field of psychedelics. Enter your email to stay up to date on the pledge, resource development, and the North Star community.
North Star is a nonprofit committed to a future of worldwide psychedelic healing delivered ethically, equitably, and accessibly within and outside of commercial models. North Star's mission is to center psychedelic wisdom into psychedelic business, to not only radically improve mental health, but to develop the business practices that can serve as guiding lights in the needed transformation of business as a whole.
North Star's Mission:
What We Do
North Star brings together the stakeholders in the psychedelic movement to co-create a culture, code of ethics and guiding principles for the field, empowering the community in the work of building a more just, equitable, and connected world.
North Star's
Approach
Approach
Engage with, empower, gather and support the community of stakeholders across the field
Community Building
Culture Setting
Resources & Tools
Guidance & Support
Create a culture of ethical behavior, supported by a participatory pledge
Generate and share resources and tools to help ethical actors be effective
Provide guidance to organizations wanting to ensure they act integrity
Ethics Pledge
Resources & Tools
Community & Support
The North Star Initiative
North Star Ethics Pledge
North Star has co-created an ethics pledge through an intensive process of community engagement. The pledge provides access to the North Star community and resources.
Rooted in Community
North Star engages in a constant process of inclusive stakeholding and community accountability based on deep listening, communicating, and relationship building across the many coalitions in the field.
Get Involved
We have a unique opportunity to build ethics into the foundation of the psychedelic field. If you resonate with this vision, and if you're ready to get to work, join us.
Auryn Project, North Star's parent non-profit, published We Will Call It Pala, a story exploring a potential future for the commercial phase of psychedelics. This story helps inform North Star's work.
We Will Call It Pala
Pledge Creation Process
The North Star team came together after the publishing of We Will Call It Pala. Each of us saw a need to raise a critical dialogue around integrity in the commercialization of psychedelics. We shared a concern that moneyed interests were going to not only take power, but control the conversation. We believed there could be a better way.
That began a six month process of community dialogue. It started with a dinner with twenty of the elders we respect and admire most, asking questions around their hopes and fears for this moment in psychedelics, and what they'd like to see done. Similar dinners happened with clinicians and therapists, asking for their perspectives on commercialization and what would support them in this time, and investors oriented around impact. Here a concern was raised of a "nuclear arms race" effect, where unethical actors would have a competitive advantage to seize power, rapidly scale and control the narrative.
During this time gathering perspective, the North Star team was distilling the feedback into categories, the basis for the principles, and researching other examples of ethics commitments across industries and time. From that point forward the pledge went through four drafts, with one on one feedback with dozens and dozens of stakeholders representing different coalitions in the field.
The principles in the pledge, and the possible actions, are generated by the community. We see our role at North Star as stewarding this process, soliciting perspectives, opinions, concerns, considerations and feedback. This is reflected in the framing of the pledge - it is participatory, not prescriptive. It doesn't tell anyone how they have to behave. It invites people into a dialogue with themselves and others around what it means to put integrity at the heart of their work in the field. The hope for the pledge is that it helps people step into their own power in culture shaping, and serves as the foundation of a community that can take an ethics-first, patient-focused approach to safely scaling psychedelic healing.
That began a six month process of community dialogue. It started with a dinner with twenty of the elders we respect and admire most, asking questions around their hopes and fears for this moment in psychedelics, and what they'd like to see done. Similar dinners happened with clinicians and therapists, asking for their perspectives on commercialization and what would support them in this time, and investors oriented around impact. Here a concern was raised of a "nuclear arms race" effect, where unethical actors would have a competitive advantage to seize power, rapidly scale and control the narrative.
During this time gathering perspective, the North Star team was distilling the feedback into categories, the basis for the principles, and researching other examples of ethics commitments across industries and time. From that point forward the pledge went through four drafts, with one on one feedback with dozens and dozens of stakeholders representing different coalitions in the field.
The principles in the pledge, and the possible actions, are generated by the community. We see our role at North Star as stewarding this process, soliciting perspectives, opinions, concerns, considerations and feedback. This is reflected in the framing of the pledge - it is participatory, not prescriptive. It doesn't tell anyone how they have to behave. It invites people into a dialogue with themselves and others around what it means to put integrity at the heart of their work in the field. The hope for the pledge is that it helps people step into their own power in culture shaping, and serves as the foundation of a community that can take an ethics-first, patient-focused approach to safely scaling psychedelic healing.
Stay Connected
We invite you to take the North Star Ethics Pledge and to share your own ethics statement far and wide. If you'd like to support North Star - in time, resources, or feedback - please email us, [email protected].
Pledge Creation Process
The North Star team came together after the publishing of We Will Call It Pala. Each of us saw a need to raise a critical dialogue around integrity in the commercialization of psychedelics. We shared a concern that moneyed interests were not only going to take power, but control the narrative. We believed there could be a better way.
Thus began a six month process of community dialogue. It started with a dinner with twenty of the elders we respect and admire most, asking questions around their hopes and fears for this moment in psychedelics, and what they'd like to see done. Similar dinners happened with clinicians and therapists, asking for their perspectives on commercialization and what would support them in this time, and investors oriented around impact. Here a concern was raised of a "nuclear arms race" effect, where unethical actors would have a competitive advantage to seize power, rapidly scale and control the narrative.
During this time gathering perspective, the North Star team was distilling the feedback into categories, the basis for the principles, and researching other examples of ethics commitments across industries and time. From that point forward the pledge went through four drafts, with one on one feedback with dozens and dozens of stakeholders representing different coalitions in the field.
The principles in the pledge, and the possible actions, are generated by the community. We see our role at North Star as stewarding this process, soliciting perspectives, opinions, concerns, considerations and feedback. This is reflected in the framing of the pledge - it is participatory, not prescriptive. It doesn't tell anyone how they have to behave. It invites people into a dialogue with themselves and others around what it means to put integrity at the heart of their work in the field. The hope for the pledge is that it helps people step into their own power in culture shaping, and serves as the foundation of a community that can take an ethics-first, patient-focused approach to safely scaling psychedelic healing.
Thus began a six month process of community dialogue. It started with a dinner with twenty of the elders we respect and admire most, asking questions around their hopes and fears for this moment in psychedelics, and what they'd like to see done. Similar dinners happened with clinicians and therapists, asking for their perspectives on commercialization and what would support them in this time, and investors oriented around impact. Here a concern was raised of a "nuclear arms race" effect, where unethical actors would have a competitive advantage to seize power, rapidly scale and control the narrative.
During this time gathering perspective, the North Star team was distilling the feedback into categories, the basis for the principles, and researching other examples of ethics commitments across industries and time. From that point forward the pledge went through four drafts, with one on one feedback with dozens and dozens of stakeholders representing different coalitions in the field.
The principles in the pledge, and the possible actions, are generated by the community. We see our role at North Star as stewarding this process, soliciting perspectives, opinions, concerns, considerations and feedback. This is reflected in the framing of the pledge - it is participatory, not prescriptive. It doesn't tell anyone how they have to behave. It invites people into a dialogue with themselves and others around what it means to put integrity at the heart of their work in the field. The hope for the pledge is that it helps people step into their own power in culture shaping, and serves as the foundation of a community that can take an ethics-first, patient-focused approach to safely scaling psychedelic healing.
