Zoe Helene

Early Life and Early Career

Helene grew up in New Zealand, where she moved in 1974 at the age of 9 years old because her father thought that there was a high probability that a “nuclear holocaust” would begin in the United States. Her parents were an artist and a science teacher who taught artists. Helene left New Zealand at the age of 19 and attended college in the United States, earning a Master of Fine Arts in theatre at Brandeis University under mentor Patricia Zipprodt.

During the 1990s, she was the artistic director for Millennium Productions and the chief creative officer for General Interactive, Inc., a company that she co-founded with her fiancé at the time. While at Cambridge, Massachusetts-based General Interactive, she helped combine the arts and artificial intelligence and led a creative team of artists and engineers in developing early multimedia digital campaigns for Fortune 500 clients. She also worked in theatre and the recording arts business, and trained as a Disney animator.

Activism

Helene is best known as an advocate for the use of natural psychedelics, particularly as related to feminism, which she calls “psychedelic feminism.” Many of her advocacy efforts are for education about the benefits and risks of “journeying with” ayahuasca and cannabis as well as their legalization. She reports that her first experience with psychedelics was cannabis as a performing arts student in the 1980s. She first experienced ayahuasca in 2008 in Peru while her husband was speaking at a psychedelics conference.

In 2009, Helene founded Cosmic Sister to provide women in the natural products industry with support. The company is also a psychedelic advocacy network for progressive women that works toward a balance of power between genders. Through the Plant Spirit Grant, the company provides grants to women to travel to Peru and participate in traditional ayahuasca ceremonies for healing and empowerment by helping combat social programming from a patriarchal society. The merit grant has taken women to ayahuasca retreats since 2013. A related project, the Cosmic Sister Women of the Psychedelic Renaissance initiative, provides funds to educate the public about the benefits and risks of psychedelics and responsible use of sacred plants and the need for gender equity in the field, while Cosmic Sisters of Cannabis serves a similar function for cannabis. Funding for these projects comes from Helene and from donations through a fiscal sponsorship with Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS).

She is also a wildlife advocate who published about animal rights, particularly regarding endangered species such as wolves and New Zealand’s endangered Maui's dolphin.

Medicine Hunter

At age 40, Helene left her digital career. In 2005, she met ethnobotanist Chris Kilham at a natural products trade show while she was working in natural products communications. They eloped in 2007. They live in Amherst, Massachusetts, but have traveled the world together for over a decade searching for herbal and natural remedies as part of the Medicine Hunter team, a company and television series that promotes medicinal plants, natural remedies, and cultural preservation. Helene is a business partner of the company.

She is a spiritual agnostic and leads a “vegetarian holistic lifestyle that includes occasional marijuana use.” She practices yoga daily.