Our Team
Paulo Sansón
Paulo was born and raised in the deep south of Colombia, where storytelling, history, and the ancestral wisdom of the land shaped him from an early age. He holds a degree in History, a Master's in Anthropology, and a Film and Television Production degree from the Los Angeles Film School — a combination that would later become the foundation for Corona.
For over two decades, Paulo has walked the path of ancestral medicine, building a relationship of trust and intimacy with the Siona, Huottuja, and Wiwa communities that goes far beyond the camera lens.
Authorized by elders to share sacred plants including yagé, yopo, and bufo, he is not an outside researcher but part of a living tradition — a path he has walked not to study, but to belong to. It was this heart-earned trust that opened the door to unique and irreplaceable recordings of Abuelo Pacho, a Siona taita from the lower Putumayo who has since passed — footage that exists nowhere else in the world.
In audiovisual production, Paulo brings credits in Colombian narrative cinema and international television, including work as part of the production team on a 2024 season of Discovery Channel's "Naked and Afraid," filmed in Colombia. In 2020, he co-founded Memnosis alongside Miguel Gómez, driven by a shared conviction: that cinema can awaken.
Today, as co-creator and co-director of Corona, Paulo brings together academic rigor, spiritual depth, and decades of lived relationship — carrying forward a story that only he had the trust to be there when it happened.
Carl Helmle
After experiencing an Out-of-Body experience that freed him from the shackles of atheism in 2002, Carl became a zealous spiritual seeker. During a breathwork training session in Taos, New Mexico a few years later in 2006, he experienced a shamanic calling and fully committed to answering the call from spirit. Since then, he has immersed himself in the study of Jungian psychology, shamanism, plant medicines, dream yoga, meditation, channeling and extra-terrestrial contact.
He first met Paulo in his 2015 in Lake Arrowhead, California where he hosted an ayahuasca ceremony at the Native American Church he and his ex-wife founded. He has been part of the UrkuShasta family since 2019 and has been an investor/shareholder in Memnosis Production Company since its inception.
Lauren Johnson
Lauren is a student of life, having found her way to sacred medicines on a journey to awaken to wholeness. In 2017 on a yoga retreat in Costa Rica, she recognized that the achievements in the material world were not fulfilling of the heart. Grateful for the opportunities of the education and career that allowed her to contemplate and pursue a greater purpose in life, she set out on a path to leave the corporate world and dedicate her time to deepen the relationship with herself and others.
Divinely timed in 2025, Lauren made her first journey to Columbia to sit with sacred medicines alongside the Urkushasta family. Learning of the vision for sharing through film the stories of Origin told by the Elders, she was inspired to join and support this mission of Memnosis. She brings her skills of corporate experience and her passion for art to fulfill the Eagle-Condor prophecy of bringing together the mind and the heart.
Liz Haunstein
From a young age, Liz questioned the purpose and meaning of life. She felt very connected to the internal dreamworld, and the external world through star gazing. Her curiosities of how people think and how the mind works led her to study psychology. Several years later, Liz chose to follow another calling and pursued massage therapy. This led to learning yoga, energy work, and meditation.
As she became disciplined in her practices, Liz felt like something was missing in her strength, endurance, and vitality. This led to developing an alliance with kambô in 2021. Shortly after training to become a practitioner, Liz felt the call to go deeper into the internal landscape of her mind and heart. She sat in a life changing ceremony with Paulo where she received simple, yet profound teachings and experienced Christ Consciousness. As she continued to connect with these traditions, Liz continued to awaken and remember her truth.
Liz first traveled to Colombia in 2023 for the Foundational Retreat, and soon became part of the UrkuShasta Family. Today, Liz recognizes herself as a bridge between the North and South, and offers heartfelt support to the mission of Memnosis.
Miguel Gómez
Miguel was born in Pasto, Colombia in 1996, growing up in a family rooted in performing arts and literature. Storytelling found him early — at eleven, he won a national short story contest that confirmed what would become a lifelong calling to tell stories.
That calling led him to cinema. What began as an interest in visual composition grew into a deep vocation, and Miguel spent years building his craft in the field — directing, filming, and editing audiovisual work for organizations across the Nariño region of southern Colombia.
Along the way, he worked as a production assistant on acclaimed Colombian director William Vega's feature film "Sal," an early experience that shaped his eye and his understanding of what cinema, done with care, can hold.
In 2018, his short film "25 Mil Alegrías" won the Sol de los Pastos award at FICPA, and in 2020 his screenplay "A Mar" was recognized by the Gobernación de Nariño. That same year, Miguel co-founded Memnosis alongside Paulo Sansón, drawn together by a shared conviction: that cinema can awaken.
Today, as co-creator and co-director of Corona, Miguel brings twelve years of visual language forged in the south of Colombia — a way of seeing that favors presence over spectacle, and truth over performance.