NY-based Texan-Brazilian psychedelic lawyer, strategist, and cultural producer.
Adriana Kertzer is the co-founder and principal of Plant Medicine Law Group, a law firm dedicated to novel therapies in the mental health and wellness industries. She is on the Board of Directors of Doctors for Drug Policy Reform and sits on the Board of Advisors of the Shine Collective.
She was born and raised in São Paulo and has a B.A. from Brown University in Judaic Studies and International Relations, J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center, and an M.A. from Parsons The New School for Design.
Adriana began her legal career as a corporate associate on Simpson Thacher & Bartlett’s Latin American capital markets team. Adriana has since drawn on her love of contracts as an entrepreneur in the fields of contemporary culture, real estate and cannabis, as well as in her role as Senior Advisor to the Senior Deputy Chairman at the National Endowment for the Arts under President Obama. Adriana is the author of the book Favelization: The Imaginary Brazil in Contemporary Film, Fashion and Design originally published by the Cooper Hewitt Museum (Smithsonian Institution) and the series Rebranding Pot. She is passionate about Jewish psychedelic culture, leads the interfaith working group Faith+Delics, and founded JewWhoTokes, an Instagram account that explores relationships with cannabis and psychedelics in the Jewish community.
Prior to PMLG, Adriana was the Managing Partner of Chestnut Hill Advisory Partners, a consultancy leading or managing design, real estate and cultural projects. She worked for the Obama Administration as the Senior Advisor to the Senior Deputy Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Prior to that, she was a Curatorial Assistant & Digital Strategist at the Museum of Arts and Design, Teaching Assistant at Parsons The New School for Design, Curatorial Fellow at the Cooper Hewitt Museum, and Acting Assistant General Counsel at the Guggenheim Museum.
A leading expert on the use of references to the Brazilian slums in the branding of luxury items, Adriana is the author of Favelization: The Imaginary Brazil in Contemporary Film, Fashion, and Design, a book originally published by the Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum (Smithsonian Institution), and the article series Rebranding Pot about the changing aesthetics of the cannabis industry.
Adriana has been a featured speaker at 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 grew up in São Paulo (Brazil); is fluent in Portuguese, English and Italian; lives in New York City and the Catskills with her husband and two Havanese, Scotch and Cachaça.