Pubdate: Fri, 05 Feb 2016
Source: Denver Post (CO)
Copyright: 2016 The Denver Post Corp
Contact:  http://www.denverpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/122
Author: Ricardo Baca

GOING TO POT WITH THE PROS

As more than 1,400 cannabis industry professionals flooded the Ellie 
Caulkins Opera House on Thursday, a majority of the attendees shared 
one unifying quality: They were women.

That s business as usual at the Women Grow Leadership Summit, the 
second-year Colorado event that is part TED Talk, part networking 
mixers and part reunion for women and equality-minded men working 
toward the legalization and commercialization of marijuana. Other 
entertainers speak out

I know that we will create a cannabis industry that we all want be a 
part of, Amy Dannemiller, the Women Grow co-founder who goes by the 
420-friendly name Jane West, said Thursday as she finished her talk 
titled Cannabis Cured My Imposter Syndrome.

Rock star Melissa Etheridge was the keynote speaker Thursday afternoon.

Can you believe you re in a room this big, with this many other women 
doing what you re doing? Etheridge asked. This looks like one of my concerts!

In her speech, Melissa Etheridge talked about her early introduction 
to recreational pot by her first girlfriend during high school in 
Leavenworth, Kansas. She also referenced her late introduction to 
medical cannabis, via friend and songwriter David Crosby, who is also 
the father of her children. After Etheridge was diagnosed with breast 
cancer in 2004, Crosby told her emphatically: You must get some cannabis.

Inspired by her successful nontraditional treatment, Etheridge says 
now is the time for women to claim ownership of this important 
brand-new industry.

It s time now for us to ... run that business with that knowledge of 
the wellness and the health and the other energy, the yin and yang of 
capitalism, of business, Etheridge told the audience. We will show 
that it can work. We can create our own corporations.

Etheridge recently released a pot-infused wine tincture in California 
dispensaries. She's also working on a line of THC- and CBD-infused 
wellness products, she told The Post in a telephone interview a few 
hours before the keynote.

(Women in cannabis is) a part of a huge paradigm shift in how we look 
at health and how we look at taking care of ourselves, Etheridge 
said. Cannabis is a lot like the LGBT movement or the 
marriage-equality movement, how it pushes to the forefront and raises 
everything up around it.

Ashley Rheingold took in the opera house's bustling lobby before 
Etheridge s speech.

This is legitimizing everything that we ve been working on, said 
Rheingold, a managing member at Headquarters Cannabis Co. in Lyons 
and an early member of Women Grow, which was organized in 2014. It s 
a measure of how far this movement has come.

Dope Magazine's Emmett Nelson said he felt inspired by the event. You 
look to any traditional business industry, and it's all 
male-oriented, it's all the good ol boys club.

Women Grow is doing something about it, he said. They re recognizing 
that the opportunity for anyone to get involved is open now, and 
there's no reason women shouldn't be afforded that opportunity.

Laura Bianchi, a marijuana attorney who co-chairs Women Grow s 
Phoenix chapter, said the young organization's quick growth signals 
that women are emerging as leaders in the nascent industry.

This organization has not been around for very long, Bianchi said. So 
this shows when women come together on something, we can take over an 
industry. Hopefully it will be the first billion-dollar industry that 
women are actually leading.

I am certainly not anti-men; I love men, she said. But I want to sit 
at the same table as them. And it's very unbalanced right now.

The Women Grow Leadership Summit continues Friday with panels on 
funding, branding and trademarking at the Curtis Hotel.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom