Pronouns: He/Him

Strategic Advisor, Heroic Hearts Project

Zach’s core purpose is to help people find a better way to heal.  After eleven years and four combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan as a Marine/ Marine Raider, Zach decided it was time to come back home.  He separated from the military in 2012 and attended MIT as a Sloan Fellow for Innovation and Global Leadership. Following graduation, Zach stayed on at MIT as a research assistant in support of a multi-year, DoD-funded project Military Psychological Health Enterprise: Post-Traumatic Stress Innovations (PTSI). Shortly thereafter, Zach entered the private sector where he served as Managing Director of a New York based business intelligence/strategy consulting firm and later as the COO for a technology consultancy based in Seattle.

Zach’s struggle with PTSD began while he was still in the military and compounded over time following his separation until it finally progressed to a point where he could no longer function, socially or professionally. Faced with a hard reset, and the loss of everything he had known himself to be, Zach left the business world, turned inward, and began searching for ways he could start to heal and grow again. Eventually, this journey led him to the high jungle of Peru, where, thanks to Heroic Hearts Project, he was able to find the healing he sought with other veterans in ceremony with Sacred Plant Medicines.

Zach now dedicates his time to helping others find their healing, either through his role as Strategic Advisor for Heroic Hearts Project, or as a writer, teacher, coach, or facilitator in the wellness/psychedelic assisted therapy space. He is also an advocate for federal drug policy reform, in support of the nationwide use of psychedelics as therapeutics, and he works to create and execute programs in support of historically marginalized or under-represented populations in the mental health and wellness space.

Zach currently lives in the mountains of central Mexico, with a box of Pilot G-2 ultra-fine pens and more half-used Moleskine notebooks than any one man should own.