Laurie Gregory is chief brand and product officer of Skymint Brands, Michigan’s leading vertically integrated cannabis company and the state’s largest medical and recreational license holder.
Laurie has held top brand and marketing roles at a number of companies in her career.
My parents met and fell in love in San Diego and decided to move back to Ohio to raise their children with Midwest values.
As a surprise to many, Columbus is a breeding ground of creativity and boasts the highest number of fashion designers per capita, trailing only New York City and Los Angeles.
Short’s is a much beloved Michigan brewery with whom we have partnered to recreate the remarkable taste of their beer flavors into the cannabis edible space.
In cannabis as it currently stands, there are of course many challenges given the Schedule 1 status, so we can’t advertise in many of the traditional platforms as I’m used to doing and can’t market on social media like other industries.
Skymint partnered with DNA Genetics, a founding cannabis brand that originated in Amsterdam and has the most awarded cannabis flower in the U.S., and we’re extremely proud to have exclusively launched nine of their proprietary flower strains in the Michigan market.
Cannabis has the power to be a driver for change, and we’re all very excited that our industry can directly impact people through criminal expungement, prison release and other life-changing measures.
We opened 11 stores across Michigan during the pandemic last year, and I’m extremely proud of the work that we’ve done to provide essential services and products safely to neighborhoods throughout the state during one of the most difficult times any of us has ever experienced.
The pop-up legal clinics that Jason White at Curaleaf organized exemplify what is needed to heal and support our communities, particularly for those people of color who have been unfairly impacted by the war on drugs.
She’s used her deep knowledge of and experience in digital marketing to make a defining impact on our industry, helping to forward the discussion around race and equity.
It’s fascinating and infuriating and exhilarating to be a part of a new post-Prohibition industry that is truly poised to reinvigorate the middle class and change the definition of self-care in the U.S.
Higher Calling is a weekly series, publishing on Thursdays, where we chat with folks in the cannabis industry about their personal history and taste in cannabis and the future of cannabis marketing.