Category: Interviews

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Monique Ramirez Discusses Sustainability Of Her Farm’s Organically Grown Craft Cannabis

Photo credit: Monique Ramirez
Photo credit: Monique Ramirez

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.

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Peter Miller And Billy Levy, SLANG Worldwide Founders/CPG Giants: Traverse Five Questions

Product mix
Product Mix
PHOTO COURTESY: SLANG WORLDWIDE

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.

Peter at the farm
Peter at the farm 
PHOTO COURTESY: SLANG WORLDWIDE

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Articles Interviews

An Interview With Greater Goods Founders Carrie Solomon And Jody Ake, Defiantly Optimistic

Carrie Solomon and Jody Ake, Founders of Greater Goods. Photo credit: Sam Gehrke
Carrie Solomon and Jody Ake, Founders of Greater Goods. 
PHOTO CREDIT: SAM GEHRKE

I love the flavors of Greater Goods — Mint Hibiscus Chocolate, Mocha Crunch Chocolate, Orange Ginger Chocolate and Marshmallow Bon Bons. When I started digging a bit deeper and I saw that Greater Goods founders, wife and husband team Carrie Solomon and Jody Ake, are the duo behind Oregon-based recreational cannabis company Leif Goods…well, I was immediately intrigued. They launched Greater Goods this year as an extension of their successful and delicious line of cannabis infused products to deliver inspired and whimsical creations to the CBD market nationwide. So now, everyone outside of Oregon can experience the joy their confections bring….

Greater Goods. Photo Credit: Ben Mund
Greater Goods 
PHOTO CREDIT: BEN MUND

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Yvonne Perez Emerson, Founder Of Luxury Beauty And Experiential Brand Make & Mary

Photo credit: Richard Darbonne
Yvonne Perez Emerson of Make and Mary 
PHOTO CREDIT: RICHARD DARBONNE

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.

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An Interview With Livicated Farm’s Owner And Cultivator, Jeremiah Woodard

TREES
TREES!!! 
PHOTO COURTESY: LIVICATED FARM

I love the cannabis grown by Livicated Farm. The unique strains ease my glaucoma pressure on my eyes and the terroir speaks clearly of outdoor grown cannabis from the northern part of California. I’m pleased by their terpenes and the deep experience of enjoying some of the best cannabis in the world. Thank you for inhaling deeply on our behalf.

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Green Sky Strategy Digs Deeply Into Go-To-Market Tasks

Photo Courtesy Green Sky Strategies
BRIAN QUIGLEY 
PHOTO COURTESY GREEN SKY STRATEGIES

GREEN SKY STRATEGYGREEN SKY STRATEGY

Green Sky Strategy combines deep cannabis industry insight with Fortune 150 strategic thinking to create sustainable value creation opportunities that advance the cannabis industry and create meaningful consumer-focused differentiation. 

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Tim Keogh, CEO Of AmeriCann Sits For Five Questions

AmeriCann
CEO Tim Keogh in front of the Massachusetts Cannabis Center in Freetown, MA
PHOTO COURTESY: AMERICANN

Warren Bobrow=WB: Tell me about yourself? Why cannabis? When did you decide to leave traditional business for a much different path in legal cannabis? 

Tim Keogh=TK: I got involved with cannabis initially as a medical advocate in 2011 in New England. In 2012, after the ballot initiatives passed in Massachusetts for Medical and Colorado for Adult-Use, the ‘industry’ presented itself as the opportunity of a lifetime. I had witnessed the benefits to patients firsthand through my advocacy, and my background in real estate development and operations gave me a unique perspective on what the industry needed to reach its full potential. It all happened naturally and the transition to cannabis full-time always seemed like the right thing to do every step of the way. 

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Meet Warren Bobrow, The Ex-Banker Turned Cannabis Cocktail King

Meet Warren Bobrow, The Ex-Banker Turned Cannabis Cocktail King
Warren Bobrow

You’d be hard pressed to find an authority figure when it comes to cannabis cocktails. But Warren Bobrow, the author of Cannabis Cocktails, Mocktails and Tonics, doesn’t think that’s because the combination is a bad idea. He should know — he literally wrote the book on the subject. He’s a strong believer in a good cannabis cocktail. It’s just that everyone else (other than a few brave bar owners) is too scared to tackle the subject.

“I don’t think anyone has had the nerve to do it, nor have they found a publisher to take that type of risk,” Bobrow tells me over the phone, chuckling. “This is not a big lucrative project. I wish it was, but there’s so much preconceived stuff about it.”

There’s that, and the fact that making cannabis cocktails the right way — in a safe way that actually tastes good — is a lot harder than just throwing a couple nugs into a cocktail shaker. Luckily, Bobrow has it mastered, and it all started with a dream and a passion for quality cocktails and cannabis.

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Five Crisp Questions With Maggie Connors Of Besito

Besito
Besito
PHOTO COURTESY: BESITO

Warren Bobrow=WB: Where are you from? What did you originally want to be when you were a younger person? How did you achieve the honor of working with our plant?

 Maggie Connors/Besito=MC/B: I grew up in Connecticut, where I wanted to be everything from a designer to a doctor, an architect to a therapist. I’ve been driven by impact, human connection, and design as long as I can remember. I fell in love with cannabis as soon as I tried it in high school, and always sought the healing it provided though it was difficult to access. There was a strong stigma, and I kept the solace I found in cannabis hidden from my parents and professional life for another decade. Because of the misinformation from prohibition, it took years for me to realize cannabis wasn’t just an illegal indulgence, but a deeply therapeutic natural remedy for my anxiety and chronic pain. Above all it gave me the quiet and presence to live in the moment and know myself better. 

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Jane Technologies CEO: Socrates Rosenfeld Discovers Five Questions

Socrates
Socrates and his dog at the Jane office
PHOTO COURTESY: SOCRATES ROSENFELD

With Veterans Day around the corner, we catch up with Jane Technologies CEO, Socrates Rosenfeld, a former Army commander who discovered a new way to serve his country and fellow veterans, by increasing education and access to cannabis.

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