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Tyler Josma (he/él)
Tyler Josma (he/él) Grew up in his hometown North East Philadelphia for his formative years, with a Haitian father, and a Puerto Rican mother who both grew up not far from where he first breath, finding much more than a home in one place finding himself in Boston for the last decade with his parents and younger brother. Youth mentor, Athlete, and basketball personal trainer. Spends much of his time with those closest to him, or playing sports. Student and peer tutor with Suffolk University as he finishes his English bachelor's degree with a concentration in creative writing coming May 2024 with aspirations to go to business school soon after.
Tyler was diagnosed with Bipolar disorder at the age of six years old after showing signs of auditory and visual hallucinations. Then, it was modified to schizoaffective disorder seven years later. Lives with PTSD from his fifteen years in the abusive Philadelphia psychiatric hospitals, finding sports, music, and theater to express his emotions turning his situation into a successful story, with the support of his parents, and a never-ending drive to be more than his experiences by embracing his talents and outgoing personality. Starting in 2023 worked with Beth Israel and Harvard University to help others with similar experiences using his lived experience to make a better tomorrow in the psychiatric community through his everyday life, and changes in his community.
As a student, athlete, and most of all to those closest to Tyler, he is known for being a creative, comedic burst of energy to any room he enters because of the effect it has on others. Caring for everyone around him, being the presence he craved from the start, Making an effort daily to invoke a better tomorrow because he brings his culture, his home, and his heart to everything he does.
Vera A. Muñiz-Saurré (they/she/éle/ella)
Vera A. Muñiz-Saurré (they/éle) is a nonbinary, queer, mestize, Peruvian, masters-level public health professional with Spanish and indigenous Andean ancestry who works on peer-focused grant-funded projects through the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health and multiple hospitals in the Boston area. Vera is diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, a survivor of conversion therapy targeting their sexuality, and identifies as mad and a psychiatric survivor.
Starting in 2017, Vera helped found and admin the Psychosis Spectrum Server on Discord and still helps maintain that community! Vera’s ideology and public health approach centers abolition of long-standing oppressive systems, investment in harm reduction-based support services, and reindigenization of academic knowledge systems in both theory and application through explicit recognition of valuable Traditional Ecological Knowledge maintained by indigenous peoples.
Vera graduated with their Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and their Master of Public Health in Community Health Sciences from Boston University and uses what they learned working in public health and as a community organizer to strengthen community supports, to address social determinants that create poor health outcomes, and to create community spaces that facilitate dialogue centering people with lived experience of marginalization through a framework of meaningful participatory design.
Loc Ironwood (they/éle)
Loc Ironwood (they/éle) is 35 years old. They are a disabled, queer, BIPOC, nonbinary, poet and musician descended from the Kalingo tribe of the West Indies, Loc grew up in a rich indigenous culture as a part of Boston’s West Indian community.
Loc was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder in 2008 when they were 19 years old.
After many years of turmoil they emerged from the mental system beautifully broken and ready to enact change. During their years being in the mental health system, Loc became armed with experience and tenacity. Having seen the disparities of the mental health system, Loc started a support group in Dorchester, Massachusetts, with the hopes of serving trans people of color and has worked as a Peer Supporter at a local state agency with extensive experience in advocacy and community organizing.
While working Loc served as an operator on their local peer support line. Loc also volunteered in union based advocacy for a time, where they witnessed important work being done for working class folks themself.
Sarah “Punky D” Dreyfus (any pronouns/éle)
Sarah “Punky D” Dreyfus (any pronouns/éle), is a 24 year old, songwriter, dancer, musician, gender-expansive/queer, Jewish activist and Young Adult Peer Mentor. Sarah studied three years of Creative Writing at Goucher College, focusing on poetry. She went on the Kratz Fellowship in Glasgow, Scotland, in 2019. Sarah mainly writes and performs songs now. Sarah's peer work today centers around psychosis spectrum treatment, recovery, care and advocacy.
Her own experiences, however, spread beyond diagnoses of Anxiety, Depression, Bipolar I (with psychotic features), PTSD, OCD, and ADHD and chronic pain. Sarah is a long-term member of Alcoholics Anonymous, Al Anon, and a few other peer groups. WellSpace and BARCC (Boston Area Rape Crisis Center) have been vital supports during her journey so far.
Sarah is inspired by writers, leaders, musicians and activists from varied generations and cultural origins. Given everything Sarah has been through, what she learns to stand for, and what she has witnessed her peers survive, Sarah hopes she may aid others to seek, see, resonate and create their own definitions of freedom- allowing room for others to identify what freedom once signified, what it means in and for their lives now, and how it might manifest in and express itself in our communities.