About Emergent Therapeutics

Meet the Providers

Hillary Arnold-MacLeod, D.O.

Hillary is a mother, wife, family physician and military veteran who left primary care after 18 years for urgent care work in 2017 due to the medical system's increasing erosion of the physician patient relationship through impersonal corporatization of medicine. After eight years in urgent care work, Hillary continued to struggle with burnout. Urgent care medicine is a band-aid for a broken health care system, and though it does afford great work-life balance, it does not fulfill her need to make positive change in the world.

As she began planning her transition toward retirement, Hillary’s father was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. She began researching and exploring ways she could support him through that journey, while he pursued all that traditional medicine had to offer. Thanks to her husband Shawn’s life-long interest in psychedelic and medicinal plants, Hillary’s eyes were opened to the tremendous benefits of medicinal mushrooms in cancer care. The exploration of that topic (Thank you, Paul Stamets for sharing the story of how Turkey Tail contributed to your mother’s successful battle with cancer!) ultimately led to Hillary’s “discovery” of the profound good that psychedelic assisted therapy is doing for the very ill and dying, the very depressed and the deeply traumatized.

As a daughter, Hillary has a passion for the very ill and their families. As a veteran, Hillary has a profound respect for her sisters and brothers at arms and is outraged by the abandonment they have received by their health care system. Her goal is to put that passion and over 25 years of clinical experience to service as a partner in your healing journey.

Hillary feels a calling to explore psychedelic medicine further, and to dedicate the next chapter of her career to exploring and even contributing to this field. She completed an eight month certification program in Psychedelic Assisted Therapy through Naropa University in January 2025. During that training, she and Shawn took opportunities to experience therapeutic psilocybin in Oregon as well as participate in a four day apprenticeship in Ketamine Assisted Therapy. That process has affirmed for us both that our journey in partnering with clients for their healing and wellness is not over. It is taking a turn away from the rush and pressure of corporate medicine, away from the influence of the for-profit pharmaceutical industry and toward the profound healing power that psychedelics including Ketamine have to offer.

Shawn MacLeod, M.D.

Shawn is blessed to be the child of a school teacher and a geologist. He spent summers in the field with is dad, living in tents, rafting rivers, exploring caves, hiking, and exploring. His parents, while cringing at his brother and sister’s exploits, allowed them to test their limits. He practiced catching arrows out of the air, blowing up things with home-made explosives, and taking risks that he’s lucky to have survived! Part of that risk taking evolved into exploring psychedelics in the 70’s. He learned to identify psychoactive mushrooms that weren't even named at the time!

Shawn’s experiences with psychedelics culminated during a period when he was struggling with the existential questions that call into question our beliefs and purpose as we emerge from adolescence into adulthood. From a place of despair, he took a heroic dose of psilocybin and came face to face with the divine. That would later prove to be the grounding experience that helped carry him through a variety of trials.

Shawn enlisted in the Navy, travelled, got married, had children, then at the end of his time in the Navy, went to school and became a high school chemistry teacher. With his terrible handwriting it was clear he wouldn't make it as a teacher. With handwriting like his, the only option was to become a doctor. With 3 kids in tow, he went to medical school. The military’s Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences. USHUS afforded him the opportunity to attend and support his family. USUHS instilled the doctrine of taking care of the soldier first, then caring for the officer corps.

That was the ethos he carried with him into several deployments. Like many who serve, Shawn endured the loss of brothers in harm’s way, and the loss of even more after their safe return to a military medical system that harmed them more than it helped. "Military doctors, at least when I was trained, were there to serve those who serve." Unfortunately, he was serving in a system that separated the traumatized from their units, marginalizing them and rendering them valueless in the name of unit readiness. After 20 years in military medicine, Shawn left government service for the civilian sector. It erodes the soul to continue to work in an environment where there is capacity to do so much good for people, but in a system that actively prevents it.

On the cusp of retirement, Shawn and Hillary began discussing the real possibility of doing something completely different. They both felt called to train at Naropa University Center for Psychedelic Studies and pursue a career in psychedelic medicine. Shawn’s lifetime of experience has prepared him for this. Medicine trained him to care for wounds of the body. Combat experience and training in psychedelic assisted therapy has prepared him to begin treating the soul.