Canadian CANNAINVESTOR Magazine Canada March / April 2019 | Page 166

WeedMD. I had heard good things about Nick from horticulture students at Durham College and from people he and I know in common. He’s incredibly approachable and clearly knowledgeable in his craft. He led us from grow room to grow room, walking through rows of classic strains like White Shark, Mango Haze, and Shishkaberry as he educated us on specialized cultivation methods and integrated pest management systems used at the Strathroy facility. We even got to peek at the research tables where WeedMD has exciting new strains in the works.

It’s a wonderful feeling to walk through a room with hundreds of happy cannabis plants. I was encouraged to walk up and down the walkways and chat with people tending to the plants. These people clearly know their stuff. The staff enjoy their jobs and that gets carried into the plants. It makes sense that to have happy plants, you need happy people tending to them. I asked Nick about the employees and what they did before coming to work at WeedMD. He told me that a lot of the staff in the area were working in small farms or at processing facilities working in industries with less enjoyable aromas wafting in the air. They appreciate the opportunity to have a good job in that part of Ontario.

At this point in the tour we were joined by core management team members Keith Merker (CEO), Brett Moon (SVP Marketing and Sales) and Derek Pedro who recently became Canada’s first Chief Cannabis Officer. These guys have found a way to balance life between surf boards and boardrooms. They’re easy going and friendly with finely tuned business acumen. These are the people who are bridging the gap between old ways and new ways of thinking about cannabis. They’re helping to elevate cannabis to the corporate class.

Derek has been in the industry for decades, but his craft has become even more fine-tuned under the WeedMD greenhouse roofs. When I asked Derek, what made WeedMD stand apart from its competitors heemphasised that, “It’s the people.

I’ve consulted for 8 LPs in the past

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