The Sempergeist Institute
The Sempergeist Institute is a nonprofit research and practice center dedicated to meaning-making and long-term healing through art, storytelling, and narrative exploration.
Founded by Dr. Dennis Stevens, a U.S. Coast Guard veteran, visual artist, and author of Sacred Descent of the Warrior, the Institute works alongside veterans, educators, Veteran Service Organizations, and VA-adjacent programs to pilot programs, evaluate outcomes, and develop evidence-informed tools that support resilience, belonging, and sustained orientation within the veteran community.
Through Poewell, our flagship platform, participants give shape to experiences — including moral injury, PTSD, and complex grief — that resist ordinary language. Working within peer-facilitated cohorts led by trained veteran facilitators, participants convert internal emotional states into personal symbols, images, and visual narratives: externalizing what cannot be spoken into forms that can be witnessed, examined, and shared.
This approach is grounded in trauma-informed neuroscience and affective science, showing that nonverbal, image-based processing reaches experiences that talk-based approaches often cannot. Poewell operates below the level of clinical diagnosis — it is not therapy and makes no diagnostic claims. It is a non-clinical layer of care, designed to work alongside existing therapeutic relationships, not replace them.
The Sempergeist Institute is developing Poewell's infrastructure toward full HIPAA compliance to support safe, responsible deployment within VSO and VA-adjacent settings, guided by an advisory network of clinicians, mental health professionals, and veteran service experts.
We invite foundations, VSOs, and individual donors to join us in building the evidence base needed to bring this work to those who have served.
The Sempergeist Institute (operating name of Conway Cultural Development Corporation, a 501(c)(3) public charity, EIN 47-5065116) welcomes contributions, which are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.
Mission Statement
The Sempergeist Institute bridges emerging AI technology with trauma-informed care, developing creative healing tools for veterans, first responders, and their communities. Through creative placemaking and partnerships with VSOs and the VA, we translate Silicon Valley innovation into safe, non-clinical protocols — developing toward full HIPAA compliance — that integrate crisis response and incorporate evidence-based practices. Our goal is to make advanced creative technologies accessible through trusted veteran service networks.
For Funders
Investing in this work means addressing the deeper disconnection that undermines resilience. Art and ritual are cost-effective, scalable, and evidence-informed, but they are also profoundly human. They create spaces that traditional therapies often cannot, offering new pathways for renewal for those who serve and those who have served.
By disrupting entrenched isolation, this work helps people reconnect with themselves, trusted peers, family, and community. We invite foundations, corporate partners, and individual donors to join us in making these tools accessible to those who have served.
Contact
Dr. Dennis Stevens
Founder, Sempergeist Institute & Inventor, Poewell
dennis@conwayculture.org