#023 David Champion: the dawn of a decriminalization deluge

Summary:
We talk with David Champion — CEO and Founder of Maya Health — about the discovery of intentional psychedelics, beating nicotine with one session, and what it's like to lead a successful decriminalization campaign.
Highlights:

— NUGGET AND A NOODLE: More lawsuits for access to Psychedelics; a world with legal moderate use of any drug (0:44)

— David’s role in the decriminalize Denver movement (2.41)

— David’s introduction to intentional psychedelics (10.33)

— Challenges during psychedelic use (17.33)

— A fond mystical psychedelic encounter (24.33)

— How David overcame smoking addiction in one session (25.22)

— Debating legalization or decriminalization of psilocybin (30.39)

— What excites David about Maya’s future plans (36.36)

— SOUL SEARCH: Relive the life of any historical figure... who do you choose? (37.43)
David Champion:
He is the CEO of Maya, a real world evidence platform designed to power the ecosystem of researchers, legislators, life sciences, and insurance payors at the frontier of mental healthcare.
He also directs Unlimited Sciences, a psychedelic research nonprofit combining academia with data science to understand how psychedelic healing is being conducted in the underground and surface best practices to inform psychedelic research at large.
In 2019 he served as a campaign-lead in the Denver Psilocybin Initiative, helping Denver become the first US city to reform psilocybin policy.
Prior, he was Co-founder & CPO at Baker Technologies, which he exited after achieving a valuation of $250MM. Leading a team of up to 100, he helped scale at 14% month-over-month to a 50% market share of SMBs in the early cannabis sector.
He graduated summa cum laude in Architecture from Cambridge University and built a nonprofit to help Kenyan children access schooling. Brought up in Papua New Guinea, Portugal and Scotland, he began his career in New York with Daniel Libeskind, working on the Ground Zero masterplan.
He has a decade of experience designing consumer software and his interests are behavioral data, digital art, user experience design, playing piano, and mindfulness.
Find David here:
email - [email protected]
https://www.dschampion.com/
https://www.mayahealth.com/team-members/david-champion