Elevate Your Grind

Born and raised in Hamilton Heights, NYC, Vladimir Bautista is a formidable advocate and leader in the cannabis space. He is the co-founder and managing member of Happy Munkey LLC, an internationally-known NYC lifestyle company that is synonymous with cannabis culture. Vlad is widely recognized for his deep relationships with the international cannabis elite and his successful experience in music, hospitality and event production. Vlad provides corporate cannabis access to the authentic NYC cannabis scene. Under Vlad’s leadership, Happy Munkey hosts popular VIP events that connect politicians, chefs, doctors, influencers, athletes and creative artists with each other based on a mutual love of the plant. Vladimir and his partner Ramon, cohost the popular Happy Munkey on the Boulevard podcast where they bring the Happy Munkey to the masses. The podcast features an eclectic mix of guests who run the cannabis gamut from rap stars to CEOs to the founder of the Canadian Securities Exchange and can be found on all major podcast sites. Vlad is a sought-after public speaker at national cannabis conferences and business events and can be reached for events or speaking bookings at [email protected].

Rachel Gillette is among the first attorneys in the nation to dedicate her practice to the cannabis industry. Since 2010, Ms. Gillette has helped licensed cannabis and hemp businesses with licensing, permitting and regulatory compliance, business law and transactions, contract drafting and review, tax litigation, corporate formation, and other tax matters, including audit representation. She works with startups and entrepreneurs, investors, and ancillary industry businesses to help develop the cannabis innovation ecosystem, and is a zealous advocate for the industry.

Ms. Gillette regularly represents clients before the IRS’s Examinations, Appeals, and Collections Divisions, including cannabis businesses facing the challenges of IRS adjustments under IRC §280E. She has successfully challenged local, state and federal tax deficiencies on behalf of her clients, having prevented hundreds of thousands of dollars in incorrectly assessed taxes, interest, and penalties. She can assist individual and business taxpayers in §280E proposed adjustments, offers in compromise, audit examinations, innocent spouse claims, sales, use, and employment tax matters, trust fund tax penalty assessments, penalty abatements, and levy releases. Additionally, Ms. Gillette has significant U.S. Tax Court litigation experience, which is highly beneficial in unique and complex cannabis tax matters.

For several years, Ms. Gillette was the Executive Director of the Colorado state chapter of NORML, the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws. She was a founding member of Women Grow and the National Cannabis Bar Association. She an advocate as well as an attorney, and is committed to helping change laws – and perceptions – relating to cannabis and ensuring state licensed and legal marijuana businesses are fairly taxed and regulated.

Ms. Gillette received her Juris Doctorate from the Quinnipiac University School of Law in Hamden, Connecticut, where she served as Associate Editor of the Quinnipiac University Probate Law Journal. During law school, she interned with the New Haven Public Defender’s office, where she developed her commitment to advocacy for those facing the many challenges of the criminal justice system.

Ms. Gillette serves on the Management Committee at Greenspoon Marder.

Emily has reviewed thousands of companies in the cannabis industry and has worked with countless founders in many capacities. She had helped to shape founders' pitch preparations, their go-to-market strategies/ product launches, and advised on day-to-day business operations. Emily has held board seats for multiple portfolio companies and participates as an adviser to multiple teams.

Extremely active in the investment decision making and ongoing investment oversight processes, she works closely with her partners to create meaningful deal structures, ensuring that proper governance is carried out at the company level. Further, Emily has dedicated time and energy to supporting policy groups and has served on the Board of Directors of the Marijuana Policy Project. She also currently serves on the Board of Athletes for CARE and The Initiative.

Emily has over 10 years of experience working as a consultant and researcher, and as such, has become an expert at extracting actionable insights from research and applying them to make corporations function more efficiently and successfully. She also leverages this experience to engage in detailed market analysis for determination around product-market fit and potential scalability.

Emily graduated from New York University with an M.A. in Psychology in 2008. She graduated from Skidmore College with a B.A. in Psychology in 2002.

Before getting into the cannabis industry, Oswaldo built a successful career in television, digital media, branding, and advertising, working with companies like Sony Pictures, HBO, and YouTube.

His work has been praised by The New York Times, The Washington Post,  and CNN. He’s also been honored with multiple awards in Latin America, Europe, and the United States. These have ranged from celebrations of content creation and digital success in advertising to ongoing contribution to human rights cause, including the Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent in 2017, an award given by the Human Rights Foundation in Oslo, Norway.

Always looking for new challenges, in 2018, Oswaldo saw a fantastic opportunity in the Florida cannabis industry.  Now he leads the new wave of cannabis branding and communications in the state.

Jared Mirsky and his branding agency, Wick & Mortar, have been in 15 magazines since 2009 -- Entrepreneur, Forbes, Huff Post, CNN, Geekwire, The Dieline, HighTimes and MJ Venture. They are the Dope Industry Award Winners for “Best Cannabis Design Firm,” two years in a row.

Nina serves as Chief Commercial Officer for Akerna, a global regulatory compliance technology company in the cannabis space. Akerna’s companies and investments also include MJ Freeway, Ample Organics, Last Call Analytics, Leaf Data Systems®, solo sciences, and ZolTrain.

With more than 20 years of technology industry experience, she has spearheaded strategic innovation initiatives for global Fortune 100 companies including Oracle, SAP, and most recently, NTT Group. Nina oversees both Akerna and MJ Freeway’s revenue generation streams, builds strategies to drive revenue growth, and plays a pivotal role in aligning revenue generation processes across the Akerna organization. 

Previously, Nina was President and CEO of NTT Innovation Institute Inc. (NTTi3), the prestigious Silicon Valley-based innovation center for NTT Group, one of the world’s largest ICT companies. Prior to NTT i3, Nina was responsible for leading the creation and execution of Nike Technology strategy, planning and operations world-wide. At SAP, she was the Senior Vice President of SAP’s Global Premier Customer Network (PCN) where she led both the PCN Center of Excellence and SAP’s Global Executive Advisory Board. During her eight-year tenure, she was a part of SAP’s Global Ecosystem & Partner Group which was charged with continuing to build and enable an open ecosystem of software, service and technology partners together with SAP’s communities of innovation.

Ms. Simosko currently sits on the Advisory board at Santa.io, AppOrchid and Reflektion and she has also been a member of the advisory boards at Appcelerator and Taulia.

Nina can be found on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Dave began his entrepreneurial career in 2004 by inventing the first all-glass gravity bong, the Gravitron, an instant success that has become a cult classic. Since the Gravitron, Dave has designed or led the Grav design team to bring over 500 unique top-line products to the cannabis market. In 2020, Grav launched pre-filled Glass Joints in California in collaboration with Eel River Organics, the brand's first entry into consumables.

Roger Brown co-founded ACS in 2008. ACS Laboratory, an ISO 17025, AHCA and CLIA accredited facility is the largest cannabis and CBD/Hemp testing laboratory in the southeastern USA. Utilizing their vast experience in high complexity laboratory tests they developed proprietary testing methods for cannabis, hemp and all derivatives. Mr. Brown is a serial entrepreneur. Prior to founding ACS, Mr. Brown was President of CMB Additives, an animal feed additive manufacturer.  In 1996, he founded MD To You, a premiere mobile physicians group targeting the elderly population throughout Florida. Prior to that he owned or was involved in several medical businesses and taught surgical procedures domestically and internationally using specialty instrumentation such as laparoscopy and surgical staples. Mr. Brown received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida. He is a board member of the Hemp Industries Association of Florida.

We've posted snippets of our coversation before, but wanted to bring back one of the great cannabis voices over the last decade and then some - David Tran. 

David began his cannabis entrepreneurial journey by co-founding a Seattle medical marijuana dispensary Conscious Care Cooperative, where he conceived the idea of Dope Magazine, a Cannabis lifestyle brand. He served as the CEO and took the role of Dope Media Brand Director after facilitating the acquisition to Hightimes Media. In 2019, he co-founded Farechild, an all-inclusive event production and marketing platform dedicated to connect the cannabis industry. He also serves on several advisory boards including AMMA Hemp and Sensi Media, as well as managing his own consulting firm, Goldfingers Group and Greenstone Holdings.