About Fungi Academy
Why Fungi?
Fungi and Mushrooms play a fundamental role in healing ourselves, the global community, and our planet Earth as a whole. Fungi are an elder species, helping humanity to become more mature, responsible, and conscious.
Fungi Academy is an alliance between humans and fungi that inspires us to live in balance with each other and our environment.
Sacred Mycology
Sacred Mycology is the purposeful use and cultivation of edible, medicinal, and psychedelic fungi. Fungi Academy connects a global community to empower the growing and sharing of fungal wisdom.
The Fungi Fam
We are an international collective of passionate earthlings, working together to empower individuals and cultivate deeper connections through revealing the magic of fungi.
We work to make mushroom education accessible and easy by connecting a global community to empower the growing and sharing of fungal wisdom.
Meet the Team
We are an international collective of passionate earthlings, working together to bring the magic of fungi to the world.
Since the beginning of 2016, we have been teaching practical skills of mycology.
Oliver Merivee (1984 - 2020)
Founder
Jasper Degenaars
Hyphae Headmaster
Jasper left his corporate sales job in 2014 after a truly powerful psychedelic experience. He got called to travel the world in search for his true passions. While traveling through Southeast Asia and Australia, he found his passions in cooking and serving medicinal foods to others. This Myconaut is interested in all things Fungal. Home-style cultivation, Ethnomycology, fungal gastronomy and bringing people together like mycelium is where his hearth resides.
Jasper joined Fungi Academy in the beginning of 2019, just after many of the initial founders had left. He saw the potential of the project and decided to listen to his gut. From that moment he has been spending all of his time sharing the magic of mushrooms with the world.
Karena Beana
Queen Psilocybe
Karena has been a health blogger and influencer since she was 16. Her passion for wellness started at a young age when her parents grew ill due to poor lifestyle choices. When Instragram first released she jumped on board and decided to take the influencer route. She focused her time and energy into using this platform to spread positive and informative health and wellness tips that she learned through helping heal her parents from chronic diseases and illnesses.
She turned this passion into a career becoming 200hr+ Yoga Teacher, a NASM Certified Personal Trainer and Health Coach in 2016. As medicinal mushrooms became more popular online, she has started to incorporate fungi into her practices and teachings, helping demystify and spread the magic of mushrooms.
Corie Bidgood
photographer and videographer
Corie left Ottawa, Canada, after completing a Bachelor Degree in Anthropology. Having always had a call for adventure and for new experiences in her heart, she followed her dreams and flew on a one-way ticket to Mexico in 2015. After traveling through many countries, experiencing new cultures, connecting with herself and finding community all over the world, she couldn’t stop coming back to Lake Atitlan, Guatemala.
Finally in 2019 Corie decided to stay still, landing in Lake Atitlan. Since then she has been cultivating her life at the Lake as a photographer and videographer, bringing all her passions together to share and inspire those around the world to follow their dreams.
Richard Olson
Cosmic Community Manager
Richard is a self taught mushroom farmer who started learning about the craft of cultivation in late 2018. Utilizing YouTube university and the websites Shroomery and Mycotopia he was able to learn the ins and outs of growing medicinal, edible, and sacred mushrooms.
After deciding to come to Lake Atitlan Guatemala in 2021 he meet many other mycophiles at the Fungi Academy. It was then he realized his passion for teaching about mushroom cultivation and decided to join the Fungi Academy team. He now works as one of the teachers and as the community manager of Fungi Academy. He also offers personal consultations to support people with their mushroom cultivation endeavors.
Richards other passions and life works include integrative permaculture techniques, community living, natural building, and herbalism. He holds a bachelors degree in Geography and a master degree in Environment and Community focusing his studies on community living at 9+ intentional communities throughout Hawaii, Oregon, Australia, New Zealand, and Guatemala..
Tz'utu Kan
Musician, Artist, Videographer
Tz'utu Kan is an artist, member of the acclaimed Balam Ajpu group, who is changing the notion of Mayan poetry in contemporary arts.His music includes native sounds and electronic beats, creating a unique sound. The Mayan Hip Hop mission is a dual, artistic and spiritual project that represents the ancestral word, the fabric that gives rise to creation and formation in the Mayan cosmogony, its music mixes post-classical Mayan rhythms with Hip Hop and lyrics composed in Tz 'utujil, K'iche and Kaqchiquel who advocate for culture, ecology, peace and justice.
Tz'utu has participated in poetry festivals in Colombia, Mexico and Guatemala, and has already shared his music in important music festivals in Norway, England and Mexico, at the same time he offered talks in different universities in New York, Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Vermont, Virginia, California and Mexico.
Tz'utu is one of the greatest painters on Lake Atitlan and has recently started expressing his magical creativity through editing videos at Fungi Academy.
Milly Raven
Mushroom Mama
Milly left Australia in 2016 after completing a Bachelor of Science (Biology) and has been traveling the world nonstop ever since.
Having always had a passion for nature and animals, she previously worked as a vet nurse for many years as well as in labs and the field as a research assistant for various wildlife and conservation projects. She is certified in wildlife rescue and rehabilitation as well as in marine mammal rescue. Since traveling she has continued to work with animals all over the world including in New Zealand, Mexico, Chile, Palestine, Armenia, Poland and more.
After many years on the road, Milly and her husband have settled in Guatemala to combine their loves of conserving nature, encouraging biodiversity, creating music, living in community and spreading the fungi love.
Gee Gee
Graphic Designer
Since a young age, Geegee has been drawn to creative arts & technology and through school happily studied Design Fundamentals, Design & Technology, Visual Arts, Video Production and Photography, in the end knowing she wanted to be a Graphic Designer. She completed her Advanced Diploma in Graphic Design & Communication at College in 2014. Over the 3 years she studied, her development in layout design, advertising and typography continued, along with her passion for creating art and photography.
Leaving Aus early 2017 to the Americas on a journey that was thought to be roughly 6 months, she unexpectedly found her soul family from around the globe with similar passions, lifestyle goals & way of being.
Now, 5 years later she still finds herself nestled on the shores of Lake Atitlan at the base of a Volcano, creating the life she never knew she so deeply desired, being constantly inspired by the creative, supportive & empowering community around her.
Holden Davies
Creative Advisor
Holden has worked in the film industry from a young age, always fascinated by stories and the power they hold to convey knowledge and shape our understanding of reality. Specializing in documentaries, Holden’s most recent projects have been focused on bringing to light ancient indigenous knowledge systems, collaborating directly with healers and spiritual guides to tell their stories of connection to our eco-system, ceremony, and natural healing methods.
For the last two years he has been working alongside Guatemalan Anthropologist Monica Berger on projects funded by Swiss research group R4D based around bringing Mayan Healers and western doctors together to work on diagnosis and treatment of patients, to better understand health and disease.
Gabriel DeRita
Goal Whisperer
Gabe is a personal development coach & facilitator helping mission-driven humans live in alignment with their purpose.
He left his tech job to travel the world by bike, and in the process found his calling in coaching. He's been working with the Fungi Academy leadership team since 2019.
His approach to personal growth is rooted in neuroscience-based CoActive coaching techniques and Authentic Relating, with a heaping spoonful of Japanese philosophy on top.
Gabe was born in Philadelphia and currently lives in Ft. Collins, Colorado. He's passionate about cycling, foraging wild mushrooms, social/climate justice, and the transformative power of psychedelics. You can learn more about Gabe's work, his story, and connect with him at his site www.effectiveconnection.com
Sam Blackstone
Teacher, Editor, Writer
Sam is a mushroom cultivator, teacher, and award-winning journalist from the United States.
Experienced in building laboratories and fruiting rooms, he has grown and foraged close to 20 species of gourmet, medicinal, and sacred mushrooms. He also runs a profitable medicinal mushroom tincture business and has taught many people the ins and outs of mushroom cultivation in the U.S. and at the Fungi Academy campus.
With a passion for low tek, bare bones cultivation, Sam hopes to spread the message and provide the knowledge that anyone can cheaply and sustainably grow nutritious, therapeutic, and medicinal mushrooms in their home.
In the past year 18 months, he’s built a laboratory and fruiting room in his home, cultivated and foraged over 20 species of gourmet and medicinal mushrooms, started a medicinal mushroom tincture business, and returned to the Fungi Academy to teach his techniques to students.
Our collaborators
Meet our Collaborators
Darren Springer
Educator & Researcher
Darren is an educator, researcher and event organizer based in the UK. Known around the world for his Shroomshop Master classes he is keen mushroom cultivator and teacher and has been growing gourmet and medicinal mushrooms for the last ten years.
Darren is a knowledgeable and dynamic speaker who is passionate about sharing his research and findings on ancient African plant medicines, the history, mythology and various applications.
Collectively his work aims to inform and empower individuals from diverse backgrounds to cope with social challenges and contribute to community development as well as self-improvement in an innovative, creative, culturally-aware style.
William Padilla-Brown
MultiDisciplinary Citizen Scientist
William Padilla-Brown is the founder of Mycosymbiotics, a social entrepreneur, citizen scientist, urban-shaman, contributing editor for Fungi Magazine and author of the Cordyceps Cultivation Handbook.
Due to his and Ryan Paul-Gates’s innovations Cordyceps Cultivation has become accessible to the masses! With their low tech, easy techniques people all over the world are able to grow cordyceps mushrooms.
William is a self-starter in every sense of the word, and is a shining example to other amateurs of what is possible with vision and determination.
With the development of novel methodologies, he is using his platform to propagate expertise in mycology and permaculture and inspire other citizen scientists to use fungi to better the planet.
Julian Vayne
Author, psychonaut, and occultist
Julian has explored many of the techniques humans have used to access the hidden dimensions of reality. He started group ceremonial practices at age 16 and has worked in ceremonies with practitioners from many traditions. Julian is the author of numerous books, essays, journals, and articles in both the academic and esoteric press.
Julian is a co-organizer of the psychedelic conference Breaking Convention and is a trustee of The Psychedelic Museum Project. As a founding member of the post-prohibition think tank, Julian holds a position on the Journal of Psychedelic Studies’ academic board. A regular speaker at conferences and workshop leader, Julian facilitates psychedelic ceremony and provides one-to-one psychedelic integration sessions and support.
Organizations we support
