Dr. Janice Campbell
Dr. Janice Campbell: Navigating Your Emotional Weather Report: Experiential Practices for Interning Your Internal Seasons. Dr. Janice, otherwise known as The Story Medic, practices acupuncture, herbal medicine, and somatic touch in Baltimore, MD, specializing in the stress/trauma/recovery spectrum and how it plays out in our bodies, minds, and hearts.
Worldwide, she leads individuals and businesses in grounded, connected, receptive experiences. Using storytelling, creative discussion, and guided somatic meditations, she helps people return to their bodies, become aware of their senses, and achieve deeper connection with others while synchronizing their physical, mental, and emotional health. She is the founder and host of the “Once Upon A Moment” podcast (currently re-released on Substack) and a Founding Member of The Octopus Movement.
She’s a storyteller, a sought-after podcast guest, and the namer and tamer of the elephants in the room, committed to us all creating stories big enough to live in.Relevant Links:Website: https://DrJaniceCampbell.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-janice/Substack: https://thestorymedic.substack.com/?r=1zmem4&utm_campaign=pub-share-checklist
Lorie Callahan
Lorie Callahan is a Sound Healing Practitioner, Western Reiki Practitioner, Jikiden Reiki Practitioner, and Personal Growth Facilitator focused on Emotional Health, Shadow Work, and Self-Healing.
Jikiden Reiki is a traditional Japanese form of Reiki that focuses on preserving the original teachings and practices passed down in Japan. Meaning “directly passed down,” Jikiden Reiki traces its lineage from Reiki founder Mikao Usui through his direct students to the present day.
Lorie has been fascinated by sound, energy, and holistic healing since childhood, when stories about Eastern healing practices, music, energy work, and the connection between mind, body, and spirit first sparked what felt like a sense of “magic” and wonder. The idea that sound, intention, touch, and even nature itself could influence how people feel emotionally and physically stayed with her throughout her life.
Years later, while navigating her own experiences with physical pain, emotional stress, nervous system dysregulation, and mindfulness exploration, that early curiosity evolved into a deeper interest in holistic healing modalities and the science behind sound, meditation, vibration, and nervous system regulation.Today, she enjoys exploring the intersection of ancient healing traditions, modern research, and the restorative power of sound while bringing both personal insight and practical knowledge to her presentations in a way that is accessible, grounded, and welcoming to beginners.
Cindy Koistinen
Cindy Koistinen has spent most of her life being difficult to categorize.She was identified as gifted in childhood, diagnosed with ADHD during what she enjoyscalling “cougar puberty,” and eventually recognized her own autism through reading — aprocess that felt less like discovery and more like finally having the right map.
She is also aclassically trained soprano, a writer, and a nature photographer — which is to say, she hasnever been able to stay in one lane, and is learning to stop apologizing for it.Her life has not been conventional. Her career has not been illustrious.What she hasaccumulated is decades of navigating a mind that works differently, a lot of wisdom aboutwhat that has cost and what it has made possible, and a genuine desire to say to whoeverneeds to hear it: you are not an ugly duckling, you’re a swan. You are the part of giftednessthat didn’t get to be seen yet.
She is the creator of The UnDiva, an orientation practice for neurodivergent, gifted, andcomplex adults. She is still figuring out what she wants to be when she grows up.
Patty Gently, MSMHC, PhD
Patty Gently, MSMHC, PhD, is a doctor of developmental psychology and founder of Bright Insight Support Network. Grounded in advanced training in psychotherapy and trauma-informed approaches such as EMDR and parts work, she serves as a therapeutic mentor, supporting gifted and neurodivergent adults in their own autopoietic autopsychotherapy processes.
Drawing from her Identity Development (GEAR) Theory, developmental psychology, and structured reflection, Dr. Patty facilitates opportunities for self-alignment, coherence, and meaning-making. Her work explores the intersection of trauma and giftedness — recognizing how heightened sensitivity, intensity, and overexcitability can both deepen the impact of adverse experiences and expand the capacity for healing and growth. This lens informs her broader exploration of hyperneuroplasticity as a unifying framework for understanding neurodivergence, emphasizing information integrity, integrated inclusivity, and a whole-person perspective.
Sher Griffin
Sher Griffin, founder of The Compassion Collective, a neurodivergent researcher, educator, facilitator, and community builder whose work explores the relationship between belonging, identity, systems, and human flourishing.
As a late-identified autistic and ADHD individual, Sher came to recognize that many experiences often framed as personal shortcomings—burnout, chronic misalignment, masking, isolation, and self-doubt—were not simply individual challenges. They were often reflections of environments, institutions, and social expectations that were never designed to support diverse ways of thinking, relating, and being.
Today, as a doctoral researcher in Transformative Social Change, Sher’s work continues to investigate identity development, belonging, neurodiversity, and relational approaches to human flourishing. Current research focuses on the experiences of late-identified autistic adults and the processes through which people reconstruct identity, develop coherence, and find new ways of participating in community following recognition.
Ilya Gulko
Ilya Gulko runs a hacker house called C House in Cambridge and writes open-source software for community and spiritual pursuits. In this talk he will share his experiences and lessons learned in community living and building a hacker house so that you can go and do the same.
Andrew Goldish
Andrew Goldish is a software engineer who grew up in the Boston area and never left. His parents met at MIT in the 60’s and he followed their example, graduating in 1994 with about as much of a polymathic degree as one could have expected: bachelor’s in theoretical computer science with a de facto double minor in history and planetary science. His parents are both type-A people, and he believed that it was his duty to continue on for a PhD like most of the other educated people he knew. However, he left after a Master’s as his interests had shifted out of computer science by that point to astronomy. He eventually began learning on his own, left with an insatiable curiosity to understand how and why everything works. It is a standard engineering mentality, except in his case he applied it to spirituality, sociology, and many other non-technical fields.
An Introduction to Buddy Studies by Andrew Goldish
Rachel Schor
Rachel became involved with Nerdstock shortly after meeting Andy. While math and science are not really her strong points, she really loves fiber arts and crafts, as well as cooking. She is more on the humanities and literature side of intelligence. Nerdstock is a great opportunity for different types of people to discuss world issues from alternative points of view. She looks forward to meeting you!
Michael J., Youmans, Ph.D.
Michael J., Youmans, Ph.D., aka Dr. Yo, Board Member, Director of OutreachMike is an educator across the curriculum with 35+ years of experience teaching English, Mathematics, Music, Philosophy, Physics, Humanities, and SAT & ACT prep to students grades 6–12 and college. Committed to academic excellence, holistic student development, and inclusive learning, Mike is a self-proclaimed nerd, feeling right at home at Nerdstock.
Philip de Loraille
Born in 1956 in France, he emigrated to the United States in 1976 to study astronomy, physics, geophysics, and applied mathematics. His career began in research laboratories where he transitioned from scientific computing to pioneering work in scientific desktop computers, event-oriented programming, and large-scale distributed computing. As the Internet and web servers emerged, he became an expert in network, computer, and data security, eventually contributing my expertise at Stanford University. Alongside his technical pursuits, his early mystical experiences and passion for Tibetan mysticism set me on a lifelong spiritual journey. After retiring, he returned to Buddhism and meditation, deepening his exploration of consciousness through psychedelics such as LSD, MDMA, psilocybin mushrooms, Ayahuasca, 5-MeO-DMT, and 2-CB. Today, he helps individuals—particularly those with a logical yet open mindset—navigate the transformative realms of self-examination via mind medicine with careful preparation, ceremony, and integration.
David Flusberg
David Flusberg (aka Flus) is a father of three, an entrepreneur, visionary painter, author,
poet, public speaker, and scuba diving instructor. He was born and raised in New York
and Boston, traveled the world on business, artistic, and psychedelic adventures, and
spent most of the past twenty years living in Bucharest, Romania. His pursuits aim to
stay true to the authentic meaning of the word “nerd,” which is etymologically rooted in
the right / left brain integrative flow state known as “high on life.”
At this edition of Nerdstock, Flus will present a spoken word piece called “Deep Dive to
A.I.,” a mythopoetic journey that reveals the philosophical and psychospiritual
dimensions of Flus’s love of diving—and what it can teach us about the interface
between organic and digital consciousness, as we strive to remain human by
remembering our inner fish. Flus’s words are accompanied by shamanic music and
A.I.-generated art pieces; and the audience is encouraged to relax, allow normal
awareness to dissolve, and together to swim in the sea of non-artificial intelligence
where nature, technology, and art converge.
Elizabeth Vonnegut
Elizabeth Vonnegut is a poet, biomedical scientist, and accidental polymath who has spent a lifetime being too much for every room she was supposed to fit neatly into. She staged her first act of intellectual protest at age 3, refusing to eat or play at daycare until she was placed in a “real” kindergarten at age 4. It worked. Her life is a study of “it worked, somehow.”Her education defies linear summary: a degree in research psychology with minors in art, political science (peace studies), history, biology, and Russian studies; graduate work in English literature with a focus on magical realist fiction and transatlantic/post-colonial literary theory; seminary (briefly, and faithfully concluded in agnosticism); premed coursework yielding the equivalent of a second bachelor’s in biochemistry; and a DO/PhD program in biomedical science where she served as the neuroscience specialist in an advanced mass spectrometry proteomics lab researching neuropeptide cancer treatment metabolism. Along the way she was recognized with the Mary I. Gorley Scholarship for World Changers, the UNT Board of Regents Scholarship, and departmental awards in both biology and chemistry. She left ABD… not for lack of effort, but because her body had finally succumbed to years of her pushing it past normal human limits.She has opened for national slam poetry award winner Natasha Carrizosa numerous times, and once found herself—through a chain of circumstances too improbable to have been invented—substituting as an opener for Maya Angelou in Dallas. She was not in the program. She was called in at the last minute. Elizabeth now writes and presents from her home in Spokane, Washington, where she continues to make connections across disciplines that probably don’t connect, and to insist…stubbornly…on the importance of beauty even at the edges of our darkest places.