From idea
to institution.

Voter registration was an opt-in bureaucratic hurdle. Millions of eligible citizens fell through the cracks of a paperwork system built for a previous century.

As interim executive director of the Oregon Bus Project, helped lead the coalition behind the law — and publicly articulated the case, co-authoring Rock the Vote’s “New Motor Voter” piece and being cited by name in the Brennan Center’s analysis as a voice of the reform coalition.

The Bus Project’s volunteer machine, Rock the Vote, national reform allies, and Oregon legislative champions who carried the bill.

Oregon passed the first automatic voter registration law in the nation in 2015; Oregon Motor Voter took effect in January 2016, flipping registration from opt-in paperwork to an automatic, opt-out public default.

By late 2025, 24 states plus D.C. had enacted automatic voter registration. A state-level coalition win became national democratic infrastructure — the cleanest possible demonstration of idea → institution.

Replication. The full path: an “unrealistic” idea, a coalition, a law, an operating system, and a model other states copied.

Cost kept community college out of reach for a large share of Oregon’s high-school graduates — and tuition-promise ideas were still treated as fiscal fantasy.

Senior legislative and fiscal strategy roles — Chief of Staff to State Senator Mark Hass, later Oregon Senate Finance Director — during the period of major education and tax policy work in which Oregon Promise took shape.

Senate education and finance leadership, the Higher Education Coordinating Commission’s orbit, and the advocates who turned a promise into a program.

Oregon Promise launched as a statewide community-college grant. Official Oregon Student Aid and HECC materials show it still awarding grants in 2025–26, with substantial long-term reach.

A policy outcome that is still paying out a decade later is the definition of durable. This chapter built the legislative, budget, and coalition muscles every later build relied on.

Policy → ongoing implementation. The program’s persistence across budget cycles is the proof point.

Cities declare climate goals constantly; very few wire those goals into budgets, fleets, buildings, and intergovernmental plans where they can survive a change of administration.

Senior policy advisor to Mayor Ted Wheeler after serving as deputy campaign manager. Portland’s 100% renewable energy resolution was publicly indexed as prepared by Nathan Howard alongside other staff; he was a key contact on the 2017–18 City–County Climate Agenda and quoted on the 2050 goal.

The Mayor’s office, Multnomah County, 350PDX and the Let’s Talk Climate community, and the Renew Oregon orbit he’d been part of since 2015.

Portland adopted its 100% renewable energy resolution in 2017 and published a joint City–County Climate Agenda — turning a campaign-trail aspiration into assigned, contactable, trackable government work.

It modeled climate implementation at city scale. And it stayed lived-in: his own household electrification was later profiled as an example of home decarbonization in Portland.

Implementation. Resolution adopted, agenda staffed, contacts named — the unglamorous machinery that makes a goal real.

Portland’s displacement crisis was accelerating while renters held some of the weakest protections on the West Coast.

Worked on tenant protections and housing policy inside City Hall; city lobbying-data summaries show his activity intersecting with Portland Tenants United and relocation-assistance issues.

Tenant organizers, housing advocates, and council offices pushing relocation assistance and stronger code enforcement.

Some of it — and candidly, not enough of it. In 2018 he publicly argued the administration had walked away from stronger housing convictions, including tougher housing-code enforcement and directing demolition-related value toward affordable housing.

This file stays in the archive on purpose. Institution-building has a cost side, and saying publicly that a build stalled — while still in the arena — is part of what makes the rest of the record credible.

Implementation, partially. An honest entry: not every build completes on the first attempt.

A brand-new legal cannabis market with every incentive to race to the bottom — and a public starved of honest education about the plant, its chemistry, and its policy history.

Co-founder and president of East Fork Cultivars, built with his brother Aaron — a mission-driven Oregon cannabis and hemp company rooted in stewardship, differentiated CBD-forward cultivation, and public education.

Founding member of the Craft Cannabis Alliance; work on interstate adult-use commerce; later co-organizer of the Plant Medicine Healing Alliance, which pushed Portland’s decriminalization conversation beyond psilocybin — including ayahuasca.

A farm became a policy platform. East Fork connected agricultural entrepreneurship to drug-policy reform, and PMHA broadened the plant-medicine coalition into a durable civic constituency.

Proof that the mechanic works in markets, not just in government: values → company → industry alliance → policy reform. It’s also the bridge chapter that made the psilocybin work possible.

Access. Craft-scale farming, CBD education, and alliance-building as an access strategy for a fairer industry.

Psilocybin showed serious promise for depression, anxiety, and end-of-life distress — but there was no legal, regulated way for an adult to access it. Anywhere. No playbook existed for building one.

Advisor to the campaign that became Measure 109; helped with Measure 110; co-created InnerTrek and ran it as director of operations through launch — later shifting to strategic advisor as the institution matured. An arc, not a title.

The campaign community around Tom and Sheri Eckert, facilitator cohorts, service-center partners, and the regulators writing the first rules of their kind.

One of the world’s first state-approved psilocybin facilitator training programs: 102 students enrolled by October 2022, first cohorts graduated in 2023 as Oregon’s system went live, and a working service center profiled nationally in 2024.

Ballot text became licensed practice — the hardest translation in public policy. The Guardian called InnerTrek “America’s first magic mushroom school”; Colorado built its training system with Oregon’s lessons in the room.

Replication. Oregon’s implementation lessons — affordability, economics, facilitator pipelines — now travel to other states.

A legal psilocybin system that only the wealthy can afford — and that payers have no evidence to cover — stays boutique, fragile, and politically vulnerable.

Executive Director and founding board member. Originated ORCHID and serves as research project founder and senior advisor; helps lead provider partnerships, strategy, and the build-out of access funds and fellowships.

Healing Advocacy Fund (partnership that awarded roughly $300,000 in first-wave facilitator scholarships), service providers, researchers, and community leaders — including justice-impacted participants.

The foundation became a platform: fellowship and scholarship programs, multiple access funds, a research incubator, and ORCHID — a flagship real-world economic study designed to generate payer-grade evidence for broader coverage.

Access and evidence are the last two stages of the mechanic — the difference between a policy experiment and a healthcare institution that can survive its founders and reach the people it was designed for.

Evidence → Replication. The current frontier: proving, in payers’ own language, that the system deserves to scale.