The Top Businesswomen in the Cannabis Industry
Jazmin Hupp – Women Grow was founded in the summer of 2014 by Jazmin Hupp and Jane West. WomenGrow is a national professional network that connects leaders and entrepreneurs in the marijuana industry. The group cultivates female leadership through programs and events across the country. In just a short time the group has grown to 30 chapters nationwide. Hupp is the Executive Director and spends a whopping 35 weeks of every year on the road. “We were attending these cannabis events and we weren’t finding our tribe,” said Hupp. “So we decided to set up these events meant to welcome women into the industry and be the first place they come when they are interested in the industry.” The group is sponsored by companies within the industry and has received commitments from fifty different companies and uses the #First50 to recognize this campaign.
The Women of Weed
Some of the most successful companies in the cannabusiness were founded by women. Check out the stories of three founders who have already made a significant impact on the burgeoning industry.
While it’s certainly not easy to achieve success in the heavily regulated legal marijuana industry, it’s a field that remains highly accessible to savvy entrepreneurs. That’s especially true in Colorado, which unlike other emerging markets doesn’t have a limit on the number of licenses to grow and sell pot.
The result is an industry with a diverse set of business owners, including a significant contingent of women. Data is hard to come by, but anecdotal evidence suggests that it is far more inclusive than tech and many other hot startup fields.
To ensure the continued presence of women, people from the cannabis industry in 2014 founded Women Grow, a Denver-based network that now has 29 chapters across the United States. Women Grow estimates that about 20 percent of cannabis business owners are women, a number higher than tech but one that still needs work. Co-founders Jane West and Jazmin Hupp tell Inc. that while it’s certainly a challenge, gender equality is a much more attainable goal in the marijuana industry compared with what they encountered in the tech startup world.
“The entrenched patterns were so entrenched that I don’t think technology will ever be an equal playing field for women,” says Hupp, who founded female-focused tech media brand Women 2.0 15 years ago. “When we started to get into cannabis, we realized the industry was already an equal battlefield from the beginning. We had an enormous number of women already in the industry.”
From software companies to large grow facilities, women are represented in leadership positions in the cannabis industry like no other, Hupp and West say. “Cannabis has more female entrepreneurs because it’s nascent,” says West, who is also the founder of cannabis-friendly events company Edible Events Co. “We’re working with a blank slate. Most of these companies didn’t exist five years ago, so there isn’t a patriarchy and nepotism like other industries.”
Below, check out three women who are playing pivotal roles in Colorado’s legal weed industry.
Mother of All Highs
At a soirée on the outskirts of Denver, Colorado, one woman greets her fellow guests with a delicate bowl of vanilla sea-salt caramels, each one laced with marijuana. “It’s quite subtle,” she insists. “I just keep a few in my bag for when I’m feeling stressed out.” Over light chat about family and work, the group quickly cleaned up the bowl.
It is a scene Americans will be accustomed to by about 2025, according to Jazmin Hupp, head of Denver’s Women Grow society. “Once moms are on board, that’s it,” she explains, taking a drag on a hot pink e-cigarette filled with cannabis oil. Her battle cry explains the recent surge in products such as vegan weed bonbons, cannabis kale crisps, cannabis spiced almonds and “high tea”.
Meet 5 of the Most Powerful Women in the Pot Business
It’s high time women took on the industry.
The newest industry in the U.S. may also be the most female-friendly.
In corporate America, women hold about a quarter of leadership roles and less than 5% of CEO positions. But in the fledgling cannabis industry, women make up about 36% of leaders, including 63% of high-level positions at testing labs and half of leadership roles at infused products and processing companies, according to a survey conducted by Marijuana Business Daily.
In honor of 4/20—the 20th of April, which has become an unofficial marijuana holiday in the U.S—Fortune took a look at some of the pot industry’s female pioneers, including a “cannabusiness” investor, a dispensary owner, a grower, and a professional connector.
A “genius entrepreneur,” Jazmin Hupp launched six different companies before entering into the cannabis industry in 2014. Just two years later, WomenGrow, the professional network for women in the cannabis industry that she helped found, has grown to 30 chapters across the U.S. The network’s goal is to increase the number of female business leaders in the nascent industry and keep it from becoming yet another male-dominated corporate sector.
The Women Hoping to Become New York’s Pot Moguls
Last year, whenever women asked Jazmin Hupp about starting a medical-marijuana business in New York, she responded with a question: “Do you have a million dollars?” Hupp is the founder of Women Grow, a professional network for women with marijuana businesses, and she’s used to helping others get their start in a male-dominated industry. New York, however, was especially daunting. The state was licensing only five companies to participate in its medical-marijuana program, and each would be required to grow its own marijuana, process the flowers into a pill or oil at a manufacturing plant, and then sell the final product at four dispensaries around the state. The costs of vertical integration are enormous, and it is historically more difficult for women to raise capital than men. None of the women who called Hupp had the funding they needed — until Amy Peckham and her daughters Hillary and Keeley called her last September. “Do you have a million dollars?” Hupp asked. “Yes,” said Amy. “Yes, we do.”
The Peckham women are like characters from a Jenji Kohan script that was workshopped by a Lean In circle. They come from a wealthy family in Westchester County. Amy Peckham is a compact blonde woman who raised four children; sat on the board of Peckham Industries, her husband’s construction-material company; and started a family foundation. When the New York legislature was poised to pass a medical-marijuana program in the spring of 2014, she called her daughters Hillary and Keeley and suggested the Peckham women branch out on their own. She had been waiting for New York to legalize medical marijuana after watching her mother suffer from ALS without access to the drug. Hillary, a senior at Hamilton College, was an easy recruit: Who else was going to offer her a job as the chief operating officer of a new company?* Meanwhile, Keeley was 25 and trying to start a horticultural therapy in New Orleans when her mother called. “I wouldn’t come back without a greenhouse,” she said, so her mother offered her a job as chief horticultural officer. They called the company Etain, after a heroine from Irish mythology. Amy was named the CEO.
Weed Entrepreneurs Woo Women In Bid To End The Ganja Gender Gap
When Jazmin Hupp was searching for a container for her marijuana at the Cannabis Cup trade show in Denver, all she could find were boring, utilitarian glass jars.
So she asked a vendor at one of the booths if he had anything more elegant. He offered to make her a jar in pink.
Her immediate conclusion: “You guys need some help.”
Hupp’s experience may shed some light on why women account for only about a third of heavy and moderate cannabis users, even as they make up about half of occasional consumers, according to the Brightfield Group, a market-research firm. Women like Hupp say that’s partly because current pot purveyors aren’t offering the products they want and are marketing in ways that annoy them.
She’s now among a group of entrepreneurs seeking to close the ganja gender gap, which represents a huge sales opportunity in an industry that researcher ArcView projects will grow more than sevenfold to $21 billion in the next five years.
Winning over women will require more than just churning out pink bongs. Women use marijuana differently, often preferring alternatives to lighting up joints. Health foods like cannabis-infused juices and raw salads are becoming increasingly popular, as are creams and salves containing the drug. For women who still want to inhale their pot, vaporizers have become the go-to method.