Ep. 114: Jamaica's Mushroom Queen & Wake Network (feat. Terri Smith)

Today on the Mushroom Hour Podcast we are honored to be joined by Terri Smith, the CEO of Wake Jamaica. Terri’s passions lie in making wellness possible for underserved people and communities. As a young mother recently arrived in Canada, she completed her studies in Literature and Social-Cultural Anthropology and developed her expertise in Labour Market re-entry for injured workers and economically-disadvantaged adults. Terri returned to Jamaica to care for an elderly relative, and during that time she and her husband took up a mushroom farm using a unique proprietary lemongrass-bamboo substrate. Terri believes in a triple bottom line approach to growing any of her projects: every community entered must be better when we leave - financially, socially and environmentally. I’m so excited to here about her work in helping rural & underserved communities to find empowerment through mushroom cultivation and all the ways that her company Wake is contributing to the democratization of wellness.   

TOPICS COVERED:   

• Childhood in Rural Jamaica  
• Inspired to Train Women how to Change Their World with Mushrooms  
• Seeing a Need to Heal People and Environments in Rural Jamaica   
• Economic Policies Impacting Health of Jamaica’s People and Environment  
• Becoming Jamaica’s Mushroom Queen  
• Adapting Cultivation Techniques to Meet the Needs of Communities  
• Improving Understandings of Agriculture through Mushroom Cultivation  
• The Power Multiplier of Empowering Women in Poor & Rural Communities  
• Connecting with Wake Network  
• Landscape of Psilocybin Mushroom Industry in Jamaica  
• History of Psilocybin Mushrooms in Jamaica  
• How Wake’s Programs Integrate and Support Local Communities in Jamaica  
• Plant and Mushroom Medicines Nothing New for Indigenous Cultures  
• Future of Scaling Wake Network Programs in Jamaica  

EPISODE RESOURCES:   

• Wake Network: https://wake.net/  
• Chido Govera (Inspiration): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chido_Govera  
• Pleurotus ostreatus (fungus): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleurotus_ostreatus  
• Psilocybe cubensis (fungus): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybe_cubensis