Tell us your canna-story. What led you to this industry? What was your first endeavor and what piqued your interest about cannabis?

I come from the corporate world as a former big law attorney and felt dissatisfied at work despite having achieved everything I had set out to do. My inner malaise was pathologized by doctors as depression and I was offered several medications in order to “become well.” Instead, I left my firm and embarked on a grand adventure studying wellness and learned that it is a subtractive experience. What this means is that it is more about removing the layers that cloud our connection to our wellness than fixing anything broken inside of us. What I love about the hemp plant and what inspired me to create AMMA Healing is the plant’s power to act as a catalyst for this subtractive experience, for connecting us to our wellness. It clears our anxiety, soothes our pain, and strips away the barriers to our true, powerful selves.

What is your favorite thing about working in cannabis and what keeps you excited about continuing to work in this space? What do you find to be unique about this industry?

Unlike traditional industries, the cannabis industry is built on coopetition, or collaboration between competitors. We encounter unique problems no other industry has faced like less traditional access to capital, restricted opportunities to advertise, regulatory hurdles, and lack of education, and we work together to solve them. This approach has formed an industry of “we over me,” and we are better and stronger together.

This attitude has led to a bigger reception of female leaders. Company culture has traditionally valued male leadership qualities like competitiveness, competence, and dominance. Only women who exhibit these qualities “make it” as leaders. We are starting to see a shift towards valuing key female leadership attributes like collaboration, creativity, and nurturing relationships, especially in the cannabis space. As more companies become more receptive to including these qualities in their culture, they will naturally attract incredible female leaders.