Cocktail Whisperer
Megan Stone – Partner, Royal Highness Cannabis Boutique; Founder & Principal, The High Road Design Studio
Keyva King – Partner, Royal Highness Cannabis Boutique; Founder, Earth Essentials
Kiyah King – Partner, Royal Highness Cannabis Boutique
Warren Bobrow=WB: Please tell me about yourself.
John Korkidis=JK: I’m a bit of a mixed bag. When most people look at me, I’m not sure they see the son of an immigrant who speaks several languages. But the fact that I am easily slept on, typically often gives me an upper hand. Little known fact: I dropped out of college in NY where I was studying graphic design and spent most of my 20’s living and working in China as a creative. During my time there I cut my teeth in various agency roles and had the honor of working closely with the artist Ai Weiwei in his Beijing studio. Ultimately, I came back to the US (San Francisco) after taking a job with a large Chinese social media company, MOMO (NASDAQ) to help develop new mobile products for the US market. I fell in love with the Bay Area immediately but over the course of about 5 years of working in high-pressure performance marketing roles, my love affair with the tech scene started to fade and I began turning to my hobbies as a creative outlet. Hence the birth of my beverage platform Chron Vivant.
Warren Bobrow=WB: Where are you from?
Charles Jones=CJ: I was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey and moved to Charleston, West Virginia when I was 12. Math and science were my favorite topics in school. In high school, my extracurricular activities included playing chess (I won a national title in my senior year of high school) and attending classes in psychology and philosophy at a nearby university.
Warren Bobrow=WB: Tell me about Cannabolish. What do you do? What is your role?
Dr. Laura Haupert=DLH: Cannabolish is our brand of plant-based odor control products scientifically developed to remove the odors associated with cannabis smoke. Cannabolish doesn’t mask the odors that come from cannabis smoke, but rather neutralizes it using plant oils and water – no added fragrances, no harmful ingredients.
Warren Bobrow=WB: Where are you from? When you were a child, what was your ambition? Why did you take this path?
Chris Rebentisch=CR: I’m from Las Vegas, Nevada. When I was growing up I wanted to be a judge. I thought I would be good at handing down creative sentences. I actually ended up on the other side of the judge’s desk, however, due to my interest in and passion for the cannabis plant. I wasn’t any good at school; I didn’t learn the same way everyone else learned. And the education system I grew up in didn’t exactly equip teachers with the tools or a curriculum that helped children with different learning styles succeed. It wasn’t until my mid 20s when I found out how I learned the best and, by then, traditional education was behind me. And you need a traditional education to wear the robe and hold the gavel.
Warren Bobrow=WB: Please tell me about yourself?
Monique Ramirez= Mo: My name is Monique but my friends call me Mo. I live on a mountain just outside of Covelo in Mendocino County. I live off-grid in a home my partner Gus is building. I’m currently the Vice President of the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance and the founder of the Covelo Cannabis Advocacy Group. I started CCAG back in 2017 during a very interesting time. Our county was about to adopt a new cannabis ordinance and our district didn’t have a supervisor, so essentially the people had no representation. I knew our community needed to come together and form a group so we could begin advocating for our needs. And here we are now several years later and it’s pretty amazing to see how many farms are still standing and navigating all of the crazy regulations and paperwork to get legal. It’s been really important to me that our County acknowledges the importance of small family farms, because we are the backbone of our communities. Our group is pretty amazing! It’s made up of nearly 30 legal farms. We meet every Friday in our local library commons space. We discuss many cannabis topics, ranging from county to state policy issues, planning for future meetings we need to attend, writing letters to the legislators and well just being a support for each other.
Warren Bobrow: Where are you from? Why cannabis? Did you go to business school? Who is your mentor?
Peter Miller: I am from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I spend my time now between our corporate headquarters there and visiting everywhere that the SLANG network operates, meeting with the team, our partners, and the greater group of stakeholders in our supply chain and business. Cannabis grabbed my attention seven years ago, when Colorado had a ballot initiative to legalize adult use cannabis. It piqued my interest because of the potential that the new market represented and how the cannabis space could have such a great impact. Soon after, I discovered that Canada was exploring a commercial medical cannabis market to handle what had become a pretty large gray market that the government wanted to disintermediate.
Make & Mary founder Yvonne Perez Emerson is a wild spirited, Latinx woman with 30 plus years of experience in design and strategy. She’s an impressive entrepreneur with a CBD beauty and experiential brand that explores cannabis via self-care, art, and design…and her sleeve tattoos say she has very personal reasons for having them — do you want to ask why? I wouldn’t. They appear to be something that whispers non-conformist, just like the motorcycle she chooses to enjoy. It’s a 950 Yamaha Bolt. That, in itself, is a massive statement to the world. It’s not like a BMW, or even something fast and sleek from Italy. It’s a big, loud bike and I think it fits her personality and speaks to the path she’s taken to bring her luxury products to the market. ‘Nuff said.