George Goldsmith—Ekaterina Malievskaia: Compass Pathways partnership

George Goldsmith and Ekaterina Malievskaia’s partnership linked entrepreneurial planning, medical expertise, and advocacy for psychedelic treatment. As a married couple, they devoted considerable energy and resources to winning approval for psilocybin-assisted therapy in the European Union; Goldsmith’s Compass Pathways gave that ambition an institutional and clinical form.

Partnership and public role

The book introduces Goldsmith and Malievskaia at a conference plenary on the future of psychedelic psychiatry, where Goldsmith organized and moderated a discussion with Paul Summergrad and Tom Insel. Summergrad, the former head of the American Psychiatric Association, and Insel, the former head of the National Institute of Mental Health, embodied the mental-health establishment’s arrival in a field once associated chiefly with marginal or underground practice. Goldsmith’s role placed him between the conference’s researchers and the institutional leaders whose recognition could help legitimate psychedelic therapy.

The account identifies Goldsmith as an American entrepreneur and health-industry consultant based in London, and Malievskaia as a Russian-born physician. Their work was not presented simply as Goldsmith’s business project: the couple had directed considerable effort and resources toward securing European approval for psilocybin-assisted treatment. The partnership therefore joined commercial organization to medical advocacy, while bringing different professional backgrounds to a shared effort.

Compass Pathways and the treatment model

Goldsmith formed Compass Pathways to develop a network of psychedelic treatment centers. He envisioned facilities in attractive natural settings where patients could receive guided sessions, and aimed to make the treatment sufficiently effective and economical for Europe’s national health services to reimburse it. The model treated the setting and care surrounding a session as part of the intervention, rather than framing psilocybin as a pill that could be evaluated or delivered in isolation.

The company’s first clinical focus was treatment-resistant depression. Goldsmith had raised three million pounds to fund and organize trials at multiple sites in Europe, making the partnership’s broader ambitions contingent on generating evidence that could support regulatory and health-system adoption. The plan thus connected a specific research program to a larger proposal: if trials established a case for treatment, purpose-designed centers could carry it into routine care.

Redesigning care and navigating recognition

Compass Pathways also worked with IDEO, the international design firm, to rethink the entire experience of psychedelic therapy. That effort extended beyond the drug itself to the organized treatment environment in which patients would encounter it. Goldsmith’s envisioned centers, clinical trials, and design work formed complementary parts of an attempt to make psychedelic treatment both legible to institutions and suitable for patients.

Summergrad and Insel joined Compass Pathways’ advisory board, linking the company to prominent figures in mainstream mental health. Their involvement echoed the conference panel’s larger significance: psychedelic-assisted therapy was being discussed not only as an experimental drug intervention but as a new model that combined pharmacology with psychotherapy. The partnership’s trajectory therefore depended on translating that hybrid model into clinical evidence, an experience of care, and a form that European health systems might recognize and reimburse.