Alyssa Cypher

Activist and Community Organizer
Image of Alyssa Cypher, a white non-binary person with red hair, smiling, wearing a blue dress and blue bird earring.

Welcome to my website! I am an activist, community organizer, and self-appointed “professional crazy person.” I enjoy connecting to and educating others through public speaking engagements, spoken word performances, writing, and podcasting. My work focuses on radical mental health, Mad Pride, and the expertise and rights of people with lived experience of mental illness and madness.

I am the founding Executive Director of Inside Our Minds, an organization that works to elevate the voices of people with lived experience of mental illness and madness in Pittsburgh. I have a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from the University of Pittsburgh and a Master of Public Administration in Policy Research and Analysis from the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. I was recently honored for my work as a Pittsburgh Business Times 30 Under 30 winner.

In addition to my work at Inside Our Minds, I serve on the Steering Committee for the Western Pennsylvania Disability History and Action Consortium (WPDHAC) and the Temple Institute on Disabilities Home and Community Based Services (HCBS) Advisory Committee. I co-facilitate writing groups for Queer youth and adults through Write Pittsburgh (Rainbow Writers and Queers Write Pittsburgh, respectively). I was also elected to the board of Lawrenceville United as a 6th Ward Representative for the 2019-2021 term.

Current Projects

Image of Alyssa Cypher, a nonbinary woman with red hair, staring at the camera. Text reads "Mental illness was a label assigned to me until I took ownership of my identity."

PublicSource Op-Ed

Read the article here.

Speaker

I am a professional public speaker on radical mental health, focusing much of my work on finding new ways to think about mental health. I am available for lectures, panels, workshops, and keynote speaker positions. In the past, I have presented at TEDxPittsburghWomen, Carnegie Mellon University, and Duquesne University, among other locations.
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Writer

I write on a variety of topics within radical mental health. You can often catch me performing spoken word around Pittsburgh or writing op-eds for a location newspaper.
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Consultant

I am available as a consultant to help make your workplace or event inclusive for people with lived experience of mental illness and madness. I am also available for workshops on radical mental health topics for service providers and mental health professionals.
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Contact Alyssa

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