About

Adriana Kertzer is a NY-based Texan-Brazilian Jewish activist, psychedelic lawyer, and cultural producer. In October 2024, she will join the Anti-Defamation League as the Senior Associate Regional Director for New Jersey.

Adriana was the principal of Plant Medicine Law Group, a law firm founded in 2020 that specialized in psychedelic infrastructure. After four rewarding years, she sold certain assets of PMLG and transitioned relationships to Emerge Law Group, a leading Portland-based law firm with extensive expertise in cannabis and psychedelics. Adriana remains committed to the safe delivery of psychedelic care through her role on the Board of Directors of the Shine Collective and previously served on the Board of Directors of Doctors for Drug Policy Reform from May 2021 to August 2024 where she led the rebrand of the organization and the inclusion of psychedelics in its mission.

Jewish community building around altered states, humor, and healing is a passion of Adriana’s. In 2016, she founded JewWhoTokes, a celebration of the ecosystem born from the intersection of Judaism and alternative medicines, altered states, and spiritual growth. What began as an Instagram account became a community. After the October 7 attacks, it transformed into a safe haven for Jews confronting antisemitism in these industries or seeking a place to come together. JWT is active online and in-person, hosting happy hours, pre-Shabbat calls, gatherings at larger conferences, and holiday parties.

In 2020, Adriana launched the interfaith working group Faith+Delics, which for a year brought together Jews, Christians, and Muslims to explore the role of psychedelics in their respective communities. Following the October 7, 2023, attacks, Adriana dedicated herself to various initiatives addressing the rise of antisemitism in the cannabis and psychedelics industries, documenting mental health mobilizations in Israel after the Nova attack, and promoting harm reduction education. These efforts are organized under the banner of the Jewish Healing Society, a mutual aid collective committed to fostering a supportive environment for Jews in psychedelic medicine and science.

Adriana began her career as a corporate associate on Simpson Thacher & Bartlett’s Latin American capital markets team. She then became Acting Assistant General Counsel at the Guggenheim Museum, a Curatorial Fellow at the Cooper Hewitt Museum, a Teaching Assistant at Parsons The New School for Design, a Curatorial Assistant & Digital Strategist at the Museum of Arts and Design, a Senior Advisor to the Senior Deputy Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts (Obama Administration), and Managing Partner of Chestnut Hill Advisory Partners, a consultancy focused on design, real estate, and cultural projects.

A leading expert on the topic, Adriana is the author of Favelization: The Imaginary Brazil in Contemporary Film, Fashion, and Design, published by the Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum (Smithsonian Institution), which discusses the use of references to Brazilian slums in the branding of luxury items.

Adriana has been a featured speaker at multiple conferences, including SXSW 2018, Museo Amparo (Puebla, Mexico), Brown University, Parsons The New School for Design, Queens College/CUNY, General Assembly, The Line (NY), Zona Maco México Arte Contemporáneo (Mexico City), University of Hong Kong, and Virginia Commonwealth University.

Adriana was born and raised in São Paulo and lives in New York City and the Catskills with her husband and two Havanese, Scotch and Cachaça. She holds a B.A. from Brown University in Judaic Studies and International Relations, a J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center, and an M.A. from Parsons The New School for Design. Adriana is fluent in Portuguese and English, and conversational in Italian.