The gap
Approval is arriving. The workforce is not.
On April 18, 2026, an executive order directed federal agencies to accelerate the research, review, and approval of psychedelic treatments for serious mental illness. Meanwhile employers keep absorbing the cost of care that never happens. What nobody has built is the connective tissue between a trained facilitator, an employer willing to cover the care, and a client who needs support long after the session ends.
September 14, 2026
The FDA asked who should deliver this care. We were in the room.
FDA held a Part 15 public hearing, Considerations for Potential Future Therapeutic Use of Psychedelic Drugs, with federal partners including the VA and SAMHSA and more than 18,000 registered attendees. Eighty public commenters spoke. One of the clearest themes to come out of it: standardized, competency-based training should support the full treatment process, and treatment is a process rather than a single event.
That is the thesis Catalyst was built on. Angela attended virtually and is submitting a written comment to the public docket ahead of the October 5, 2026 deadline.
Annual employer cost of untreated mental illness in the U.S.
Of people who need care receive no treatment at all.
Projected cost of a full MDMA-assisted therapy protocol delivered the traditional, one-to-one way.
Standardized facilitator credentialing frameworks exist nationally.
The platform
Catalyst™
One B2B platform with three connected functions. Facilitators are trained and scored, employers get a compliant way to offer the benefit, and both sides stay supported through integration.
Train
Two-track facilitator credentialing with the Catalyst Provider Quality Score (CPQS), built on Total Wellness Coherence with Divinity Science.
- Clinical and ceremonial curriculum
- CPQS scoring and network placement
- Continuing education and community of practice
Connect
A HIPAA-compliant benefits portal that matches employees to credentialed facilitators and shows employers what the program is doing.
- AI-assisted employee-to-facilitator matching
- CPQS-scored provider directory
- ICHRA / QSEHRA administration and ROI reporting
Support
Integration is where outcomes are won or lost. Catalyst gives facilitators the tools and the peer structure to carry clients past the session.
- Post-session integration tools
- Peer support circle framework
- Outcome tracking and aftercare
Pilot programs are designed around four measures: healthcare claims, absenteeism, retention, and total cost per supported employee. Every pilot reports against them. Modeling of group-based delivery has shown clinician time can fall by roughly a third to a half without changing the underlying protocol — the design principle behind how Catalyst structures Train, Connect, and Support.
What makes it different
Two lineages, one standard.
Most credentialing efforts pick a side. Catalyst holds both tracks to identical rigor and treats neither as superior — because the workforce that will actually deliver this care comes from both.
Clinical & medical
Licensed clinicians adding psychedelic-assisted practice to an existing scope: LCSWs, LPCs, MFTs, NPs, and PAs.
Entheogenic & ceremonial
Practitioners carrying traditional and harm-reduction lineages who have had no formal route to credentialing.
Catalyst is not building a benefits portal that needs a facilitator network. We are building the facilitator network that makes every benefits portal possible.
Research & speaking
Care models don't fail for lack of evidence. They fail for lack of infrastructure.
Our thesis comes out of the historical record — used here as pattern, not precedent. Powwow was marginalized. Midwifery was displaced, then partly reintegrated. Chaplaincy endured, because it found a role inside institutional structures with standardized training and credentialing. All three turned on workforce organization, not therapeutic value. Psychedelic-assisted therapy is at that same fork now.
Forthcoming chapter — Psychedelics for Clinical Practice (2026)
Angela McGrady examines psychedelic-informed care through the lens of historical healing systems and contemporary workforce design. Using Pennsylvania German powwow, traditional midwifery, and chaplaincy as analogies rather than direct precedents, the chapter traces how workforce organization, professional legitimacy, and institutional fit — not therapeutic value alone — decided whether each practice endured, was displaced, or was marginalized.
Using data from MDMA- and psilocybin-assisted therapy trials and emerging policy frameworks, it develops a workforce return-on-investment framework showing how role differentiation, group-based models, digital augmentation, and clinician self-care can reduce cost and burnout while preserving therapeutic fidelity. It identifies operational, regulatory, ethical, and reimbursement barriers, proposes strategies for scaling across academic, community, safety-net, and employer settings, and closes with design principles for systems that avoid repeating past patterns of workforce collapse and extractive integration.
- Workforce optimization
- Psychedelic-assisted therapy
- Health systems design
- Indigenous healing traditions
- Midwifery
- Facilitator roles
- Burnout
- Cost-effectiveness
- Policy and regulation
- Spirituality in clinical practice
- Group-based care
- Task-shifting
40 → 22
Clinician-hours per unit of symptom improvement, comparing a traditional individual-session model against a group-based, tiered redesign — nearly doubling workforce ROI on the same underlying protocol.
- What powwow and midwifery predict about facilitator burnoutPowwow was marginalized. Midwifery was displaced, then partly reintegrated. Same root cause — unprotected workforce infrastructure — and what it forecasts for this field.
- Workforce ROI as a design constraintRole differentiation, group models, and task-shifting as the levers that decide whether this care is affordable at scale.
- Credentialing two lineages without ranking themDesigning a single standard that clinical and ceremonial practitioners can both meet, and why the field needs one.
- The employer as the first payerWhy mid-market benefits — not insurance — is the realistic first channel for access, and what that requires operationally.
Available for conference sessions, panels, and workshops. Proposed for Psychedelic Science 2027.
Founders
Lived experience, operations, and regulatory fluency in one team.
Angela McGrady
Fractional Chief of Staff at Divinity Science. Twenty years in people operations and eighteen in start-ups, now building the workforce layer she needed as a patient.
- Clinical researcher, 2000–2002
- Zendo Project SIT, May 2026 cohort
- M.S. Counseling student, PennWest University, 2026–28
- Holy Fire® III Reiki practitioner · 2E+ autism advocate
Tammy Seiler
CEO of Allegheny Global Environmental. Thirty-eight years running a regulated, licensed services business through every regulatory cycle the field has thrown at her.
- Licensed in MD, MA, OH, PA, and WV for asbestos inspection and project planning
- Women-Owned Business and Disadvantaged Business Enterprise since 1988
- B.B.A., Kennedy Western University
Advised by Leo Ramirez, Jr. (CEO, Encast; co-founder, Kizmet.ai) on technology and Ashley Williams (CEO, Divinity Science) on laboratory and wellness scoring. We are actively recruiting a clinical co-founder.
Work with us
Talk to us about a pilot.
We're in conversation with mid-market employers, insurance brokers, PEOs, and facilitators who want to be in the first credentialing cohort. If that's you — or if you're a clinician who wants to help build this — start here.
Email Ashes 2 AgencyPress and speaking inquiries: ashes2agency@gmail.com