Cannabis Business Times
Breaking the Grass Ceiling
November 20, 2018, by Cannabis Business Times
These Women Are Working to Help Other Women Advance in the Cannabis Industry
Cannabis Business Times featured the work of three women helping women in cannabis. Check out the full article here.
Kyra Reed, Kadin
Although marketing and social media veteran Kyra Reed had a long history of working with entrepreneurs through her firm, Markyr Digital, she realized that women launching cannabis businesses had specific needs.
“Most women in cannabis are focused on saving the world,” she explains. “[In working with them,] I realized that there were a lot of women who wanted to make products or grow [cannabis] and had a passionate belief in what the plant can do and the opportunities to mainstream it, but that passion wasn’t always coupled with business acumen.”
Reed started reaching out to her network, asking women in industries ranging from law and finance to public relations and advocacy to create recorded lessons that could help female cannabis entrepreneurs succeed. Reed called the venture Kadin Academy. Members can access video lessons of PowerPoint presentations narrated by mentors like Heidi Groshelle of Ingrid Marketing, Jamie Cooper of CannaMedia, and Shabman Malek and Amanda Coley of Brand and Branch. Worksheets accompany the virtual classes, and mentors are available to answer questions.
In 2017, at the same time she launched Kadin Academy, Reed also created a private Facebook group, Women Entrepreneurs in Cannabis. The virtual community has attracted more than 4,100 members. Membership in Kadin Academy, which includes a Cannabis Business Startup Course, training videos and webinars has grown, too, attracting cultivators, distributors, dispensary owners, product manufacturers and ancillary service providers.
“It is a pretty broad group because the one galvanizing part of it is that we are here to help each other, and we are building a community,” Reed says. “What we’re building here is a new movement; we’re realizing that we don’t have to come into this male-dominated world, that we can actually do it differently.”
By offering resources tailored to women in cannabis and building a community to help them succeed, Reed hopes to shift the balance of women in the industry—but making that happen has required navigating some roadblocks.
Currently, Kadin Academy is “really focused on getting new members,” Reed says, pointing to the company’s new pricing structure, which has lowered prices from $1,000 for the Cannabis Business Startup Course to $120 per year for access to all Kadin Academy resources, in an attempt to increase enrollment.
By making the resources more accessible, Reed hopes she can help more women enter (and succeed in) the industry. Her long-term goal is to see women make up at least 50 percent of the entrepreneurs and at least 50 percent of C-suite executives in the cannabis industry.
“There is all of this data that shows that women kick ass at being entrepreneurs—then you look at the other side of the data, which is how much women are getting funded, and it’s abysmally low,” says Reed. “It’s the way that things have been going for a very long time, and we have to shift and change. It’s going to take a lot of work, and it is going to take all of us locking arms and really focus[ing] on solving this problem.”
Kadin Academy started hosting Mentor Monday, interviewing women in cannabis about hot topics in the industry, further empowering members to engage with experts, acquire knowledge and connect with each other to help grow their businesses. Wendy Kornberg of Sunnabis, Humboldt’s Full Sun Farms, and those at Arcanna Flowers are among the cultivators featured in this weekly social media broadcast.
“I created this community because I wanted women to know that there is a place for them in this industry; there are opportunities,” she says. “The one thing I most want women who are considering making the leap to cannabis or getting more involved in cannabis to know is that there is a community here for you.”
