Thinking Outside The Bud

Nick Scalera, Founder, CEO, NJ Cannabis Consulting For more than 20 years, Nick held management positions with high-tech New Jersey companies such as AT&T, Perkin Elmer, Telcordia Technologies, and Ericsson. He has also taught business, technical, and math courses at several NJ colleges and universities. Since 2001, his consultancy, NJS Marketing Services, has helped businesses across a wide range...

Lior Root and Sophia Trunzo, Founders, Paradigm Media Paradigm Media is a digital marketing agency specializing in the CBD and Cannabis industry. In the last three years, they've developed 360° marketing solutions and have been working with 70+ brands executing an ROI-focused growth strategy. Understanding the challenges this industry is facing Paradigm became a one-stop-shop for all of their clie...

Heather Rubiales, Founder, Heather's Hemp Alternatives Heather Rubiales has worked closely in the Cannabis industry for the past 10 years. She is a California native born and raised in San Diego. Her passion for the industry and a clean Planet has pushed her to create the startup Heather's Hemp Alternatives based out of Humboldt County. Heather's Hemp Alternatives is providing compostable Hemp-bas...

Igor Dunaevsky, Managing Partner at AskGrowers.com A digital marketing expert with a keen eye for performance marketing. Passionate about cannabis, Igor immediately recognized an emerging need for a unifying cannabis marketing platform. Combining his love of marijuana and his 15 years of experience in the digital landscape, Igor crafted an online cannabis index committed to helping consumers and b...

Matt Hampton, Founder, Headshop Remember the first time you walked into a headshop; the amazing sights and smells, the sense of wonder? That memory is what led Matt Hampton to create Headshop.com. A keen student of the digital revolution, Matt founded the online home for those who want to explore and buy high-quality items related to cannabis and other plant-based medicine — safely and efficiently...

Jun S. Lee, Co-CEO and Co-Founder, Nabis Jun S. Lee is an entrepreneur, software engineer and multifaceted business executive. In his role as Co-CEO of Nabis, California’s largest licensed wholesale cannabis marketplace, he oversees revenue, operations, product and business strategy. He brings the experienced mindset of a systems architect to cannabis, creating flawless business and consumer exper...

Matt McComb, VP of Business Development, Dingus and Zazzy Matt is the VP of Business Development at Dingus and Zazzy—a full-service, unlimited marketing department in Edmonton, AB. Matt launched his career in Engineering, Oil and Gas, and Cannabis, but has since discovered a home in creative sales and marketing. He believes that building real relationships begins with being yourself, however eccen...

Scott Berman, President & Co-Founder of The Panther Group Scott is the President and Co-Founder of the Panther Group. Since 2014, he has co-founded and exited multiple companies in the ad tech and cannabis distribution sectors—with 20+ years of experience working in politics, cannabis advocacy, healthcare, and digital advertising. linkedin.com/company/thepanthergroup Instagram: @thepanthergroup Tw...

Elana Frankel, Entrepreneur and Chief Creative Officer, Indigo + Haze Elana Frankel has been working in the cannabis industry for 10+ years. She started a home grow garden club; an e-commerce business, Indigo and Haze; developed product; founded the magazine Women and Weed; authored a book with the same title; serves as Chief Growth Officer for MedialCannabisMentor.com; produces documentaries; wri...

Rick & Monique Fitzgerald, Co-founder, InnDica Monique Jackson-Fitzgerald Monique Jackson-Fitzgerald is an attorney and the co-founder of both InnDica.com, an online cannabis travel platform and Lazy Turtle Group, LLC, a creative agency. With a vision to modernize and destigmatize the public perception of plant medicines, and their use as part of an active lifestyle InnDica.com was launched in 201...

Javier Hasse, Managing Director, Benzinga Cannabis Javier Hasse is a cannabis, hemp, CBD and psychedelics-focused reporter, currently serving as Managing Director of Benzinga Cannabis, CEO of Spanish-language news site El Planteo, a company he co-founded and Senior Contributor at Forbes. His book, “Start Your Own Cannabis Business,” was published by Entrepreneur Media in 2018 and hit the #1 Best-S...

Sloane Barbour, Founder & CEO of engin and Partner at FlowerHire Sloane Barbour is the Founder & CEO of engin, the hiring platform for industries of the future. Sloane was previously Chief Revenue Officer at FlowerHire, the Cannabis industry's leading executive and strategic search and recruiting firm. Sloane brings over 12 years of leadership and innovation in the Talent and Recruiting space at c...

Steve Peterson, WasteTrakr, CEO and Co-Founder Steve Peterson is the CEO and Co-Founder of WasteTrakr Technologies, a software application for ESG reporting and sustainability. In addition, Steve is a Partner at Tress Capital, a NY venture capital firm investing in cannabis technologies. Steve combines 20+ years of technology experience with five years of cannabis industry management experience as...

Max Simon, CEO at Green Flower Max Simon’s vision to change the world’s understanding of cannabis led him to create Green Flower, a first-of- its-kind education company, in 2014. Green Flower has since become the recognized industry leader in cannabis education and training, producing the world’s largest library of online cannabis courses; bolstering a network of more than 700 leading cannabis exp...

Travis Schwartz, CEO, Co-Founder, GrowGlide Travis Schwartz is the CEO & co-founder of Grow Glide. Travis owns three businesses and recently sold his Amazon-adjacent venture. In 2021, Travis led Grow Glide to a 20x revenue year, smashing expectations. Additionally, the company increased its headcount 533%. He credits his scaling success to his firm business beliefs: - Attract talented, capable, li...

Rose Taylor, EA, Redbud Advisors LLC Rose Taylor graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a BBA in Business Management. While business is her primary passion, she found out early on she had a knack for accounting. For the past 15 years, Rose has owned multiple businesses and partnerships in varying fields such as retail, B2B, e-commerce, and real estate. She has worked for small businesses a...

Caitlyn Krebs, Co-Founder & CEO at Nalu Bio Caitlyn is an entrepreneur with 20+ years of healthcare and life science experience. She has a passion for building companies at the frontier of science and technology - cancer epigenomics, eye tracking for Alzheimer’s, pre-diabetes diagnostics, predictive biosimulation, and now chemistry for cannabinoids. She has held positions in executive management,...

Dede Perkins, Co-Founder and CEO of ProCanna Dede Perkins, Co-Founder and CEO of ProCanna, has a true entrepreneurial spirit. She joined the cannabis industry in 2013 as a member of the application team that won one of the first competitive vertically integrated applications in Massachusetts. After that, she helped win cannabis licenses in New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, California, Arkans...

Annie Davis, Founder and CEO, Growing Impact Annie Davis is a business strategist and marketing leader with a lifelong passion for building lasting brands. She founded Growing Impact because she believes in the healing power of cannabis, and that business can be a force for good. She served as VP Marketing for Flow Kana, a leading brand of sun-grown flower, VP Sales & Marketing for Care By Design,...

Jeff is an entrepreneurial leader and storyteller with more than 25 years experience in technology, marketing, product management, business development, and finance. Prior to Everscore, he was the founder of two marketing technology startups in consumer goods including myUpside, the first experiential rewards coalition in the world with over 100 brands including Red Bull. He pioneered data-driven,...

Bryan Passman, Founder, Hunter + Esquire Bryan Passman is the Founder + Head Hunter at the retained executive cannabis search firm Hunter + Esquire. Bryan is globally renowned in executive search and advisory in the Cannabis, MedTech/ Pharma/Biotech, and Food & Beverage (FMCG) Consumer Packaged Goods industries. Bryan's hiring partners have included small and large NA and LATAM based cannabis comp...

Jerry Abiog, Co-Founder and CMO of Standard Insights Jerry Abiog currently serves as a Co-Founder and CMO of Standard Insights - an AI as a Service growth marketing platform. Their solution helps companies worldwide across many different verticals address the challenges of leveraging customer data to drive growth. “If two markets are pretty much guaranteed to make money over the next decade separa...

Kevin Hart, CEO of Green Check Verified Hart is the CEO of Green Check Verified, the leading provider of cannabis banking solutions and expert advisory services for financial institutions. He is an experienced, passionate, team-oriented leader that has held executive positions in venture backed technology companies. Hart specializes in developing strategic plans coupled with organizational develop...

Darwin Millard, Chief Science Officer, Canada - Final Bell Corp Darwin Millard is an active member of ASTM International’s technical committee D37 on Cannabis which is an international group dedicated to the development of voluntary consensus standards for the global cannabis/hemp industry. Darwin is the Subcommittee Vicechair of D37.04 on Processing and Handling of Cannabis and Cannabis-derived P...

Steven Phan, Founder, Come Back Daily New York City-based entrepreneur Steven Phan has been an activist in the cannabis space for nearly a decade, where he also spent time working for a CBD company and noticed a need for peer-to-peer interaction. While operating the company’s live chat, even after providing extensive customer service, individuals still wanted to see and speak to someone physically...