The phoenix loop
Andrew Leonard
Bowen Island, British Columbia.
The phoenix loop
Andrew Leonard
Bowen Island, British Columbia.
The gist
Andrew Leonard is a community leader, clinician-in-training, technology consultant, and researcher based on Bowen Island, British Columbia.
He currently serves as Mayor of Bowen Island Municipality and Board Chair of the BC Mental Health Foundation, bringing together public governance, mental health systems leadership, and direct community service in a single practice. Over three decades, his career has moved across youth development, community mental health, housing and homelessness outreach, public policy, and technology — not as separate tracks, but as mutually informing domains that share a common centre: how people change, heal, and build lives worth living.
Andrew holds a Master of Liberal Arts in Extension Studies (Psychology) from Harvard University, where he graduated with distinction. His research interests centre on embodiment processes in crisis and suicidal distress response, psychedelic-assisted therapy, and psychosocial outcomes for youth living with chronic illness. He is a published co-author on intervention research with adolescents with type 1 diabetes (Dover et al., 2023, JMIR) and lead developer of PSI:FI, an online research platform for the preparation and integration of clinical and non-clinical psychedelic experiences.
His clinical training spans Hakomi body-centred psychotherapy, Somatic Experiencing, and Psychedelic Somatic Interactional psychotherapy (PSIP), alongside over 250 hours of live crisis support at the Crisis Centre of BC. He has held certifications as an ICF Professional Certified Coach and Integral Master Coach, and is trained in Applied Suicide Intervention Skills (ASIST). He is currently completing a Graduate Certificate in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy at Vancouver Island University.
Andrew also brings eight years of independent consulting in technology and change management, with a particular focus on helping mission-driven organizations modernize their infrastructure. He holds four Google Cloud professional certifications — including Professional Cloud Architect — and a PMP designation, and has designed and deployed platforms ranging from custom learning management solutions, medical registration systems, and integrated SaaS/IaaS solutions to meet needs of small- to medium-sized enterprise.
ABOUT andrew
ABOUT andrew
opening
I've spent most of my adult life in rooms where things are hard. Camp dining halls full of kids learning to manage a disease that will never leave them. Crisis lines at two in the morning with someone who isn't sure they want to be alive tomorrow. Council chambers where a community's future hangs on a zoning vote. Shelters where a person's entire life fits in a backpack. And quieter rooms too — coaching sessions where someone is trying to find language for the thing they most need to change, or a team realizing that the technology problem they hired me to solve is actually a people problem wearing a systems mask.
What connects these rooms is a set of questions I keep returning to: How are people actually helped? What does it look like when someone moves through acute distress — or chronic stuckness, or systemic neglect — toward something more bearable? And how do we build the clinical practices, community structures, and organizational systems that support that movement rather than obstruct it?
Professional Background
My career began in experiential education and youth health, directing national residential programs for children and families living with type 1 diabetes through Camp Banting and the Diabetes Canada D-Camps network. Over six years I led medically supported camps, peer support programs, and family retreats serving thousands of participants annually — work that included managing medical teams led by pediatric endocrinologists across western Canada, overseeing a $1.2M operational budget, and navigating complex stakeholder relationships spanning hospital administration, corporate funders, and government bodies. I presented on this work at international conferences in Australia and the United States.
That foundation in national non-profit operations led naturally into independent consulting. Through the Phoenix Loop, I spent eight years working as a personal development coach with an international client roster — working at growth edges to build skill and capacity across professional and personal domains. Alongside this coaching practice, I drew on my background in large-scale human services programming to adapt and deploy formal project management methodologies to mission-driven organizations, earning my PMP designation in the process. As clients' needs increasingly pointed toward technology, I scaled into custom and SaaS-based CMS systems, digital marketing strategy, and agile project management coaching — eventually earning four Google Cloud professional certifications and building platforms ranging from learning management systems and medical registration databases to integrated cloud infrastructure for small and medium enterprises.
But the thread I kept pulling on was clinical. I found that I was most drawn to higher-acuity populations — people navigating genuine distress rather than optimization — which led me to CMHA BC's Confident Parents, Thriving Kids program, where I delivered government-funded telehealth coaching to hundreds of families across British Columbia. Most recently, I managed housing and outreach programming for Progressive Housing Society, overseeing approximately 200 clients across the housing continuum — from street outreach and encampment response to shelter operations and transitional housing.
At the governance level, I serve as Mayor of Bowen Island Municipality, where my work has focused on sustainable infrastructure development, reconciliation, and regional collaboration through Metro Vancouver. I also serve as Board Chair of the BC Mental Health Foundation and Board Chair of CMHA North and West Vancouver, working on provincial mental health funding priorities and community-level service delivery.
Research & Scholarship
My research sits at the intersection of embodied therapeutic process, crisis intervention, and psychedelic-assisted therapy.
I am a co-author on a study evaluating a Mindful Self-Compassion for Teens intervention for adolescents living with type 1 diabetes (Dover et al., 2023; published in JMIR). For this work, I completed certification as an MSC-T facilitator and delivered the structured intervention protocol to treatment and control groups across multiple cohorts. A second study assessing the effect of summer camp on illness-specific health-related quality of life and psychosocial outcomes is currently in preparation (Baxter et al.), developed through a collaboration between my professional network and the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario.
My master's capstone at Harvard resulted in PSI:FI (Psychedelic Support and Integration: Facilitated Innerwork) — a 12-week online research platform designed to deliver structured preparation and integration programming to participants in both clinical and non-clinical psychedelic contexts while providing the statistical platform to compare both populations. Built on open-source infrastructure with integrated psychometric assessment (PROMIS-57 / NIH Toolbox), qualitative data capture, and social learning functionality, PSI:FI was designed to enable mixed-methods comparison across diverse treatment settings. A manuscript describing the platform design and study protocol is in preparation.
Clinical Training
My clinical training reflects a deliberate orientation toward embodied, relationally grounded approaches to therapeutic work.
I am completing a Graduate Certificate in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy at Vancouver Island University, which includes a clinical preceptorship in ketamine-assisted therapy at the Roots to Thrive Clinic. I am in ongoing training in Hakomi body-centred psychotherapy, Somatic Experiencing (SE), and psychedelic somatic interactional psychotherapy (PSIP), each of which deepens my understanding of how the body holds and processes distress.
In 2024–2025, I completed over 250 hours of live crisis support through the Crisis and Suicide Intervention Centre of BC, including extensive training in suicide risk assessment and crisis intervention. I also joined the harm reduction team at Shambhala Music Festival, providing support to individuals in acute psychedelic distress.
I hold a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) credential through the International Coaching Federation and have training in the Parent Management Training — Oregon Model (PMTO), delivered through the Canadian Mental Health Association.
Education
Master of Liberal Arts in Extension Studies — Harvard University Field: Psychology · GPA: 3.91 · Dean's List Academic Achievement Award
Graduate Certificate in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy — Vancouver Island University (2026, in progress)
Professional Certificate in Trauma — Wilfrid Laurier University
Bachelor of Arts in Psychology — Carleton University
Bachelor of Science in Social Science — Excelsior College (Human Services concentration)
Selected Publications & Presentations
Dover, S., Leonard, A., et al. (2023). Teaching adolescents with type 1 diabetes self-compassion (TADS) to reduce diabetes distress. JMIR. DOI: 10.2196/53935
Baxter, S., Leonard, A., et al. (in preparation). Effect of summer camp on illness-specific HRQoL and psychosocial outcomes in children with type 1 diabetes.
Leonard, A. (in preparation). PSI:FI: Design and protocol for an online mixed-methods psychedelic integration intervention comparing clinical and non-clinical populations.
Conference presentations at the American Camp Association National Conference (2013, 2022) and the Asia-Pacific Camping Congress (2013).