Adam JacksonDecember 8, 2022
Plaintiffs also are seeking an injunction to stop product sales.
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Adam JacksonDecember 8, 2022
StaffMarch 24, 2021
Betty Tran is an award-winning marketing leader with 15+ years of experience in the rapidly expanding world of digital and live entertainment.
Most recently, Betty served as partner of BNE & Associates, where she managed social influencers.
Prior to BNE Betty served as Executive Vice President of Marketing and Talent for DanceOn, where she was responsible for all aspects of marketing and the top tier talent in the network.
Betty served as Executive Vice President of Marketing and Media for Insomniac Events, a division of Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. Betty was responsible for the buying and creation of all media, spearheaded the redevelopment of the company’s online presence, leading to a 25 percent increase in ticket sales, and overseeing internal and external corporate communications.
Prior to Insomniac, Betty served as VP of Brand and Integrated Marketing at global video entertainment network Machinima. During her tenure, she led the company’s successful brand redevelopment, cultivated partnerships and business relationships to build profitable, multimillion dollar sales packages to major brands including Honda, and launched Machinima’s inaugural activations at Comic-Con and E3.
She joined Machinima following her post as VP of Interactive Marketing at Evolve Media, where she expanded the company’s marketing team, raised the marketing budget by 50 percent and implemented new media strategies that increased revenue by nearly 45 percent.
When she’s not traveling for business, she spends quality time with her three children. Betty graduated Magna Cum Laude from University of California, Los Angeles with a B.A. in Film and B.S. in Anthropology.
GMR Executive Spotlight Interview:
Full birth name: Betty Tran
Title: Founder
Company: bu’kei Agency
Title: CMO
Company: FEVO, Inc.
Years at current company: 1 year
Education profile: Bachelor of Arts. Communications at UCLA and Bachelor of Science, Anthropology at UCLA
Most successful professional accomplishment before cannabis: EDC Vegas 2014 – Sold out within 2 months.
Company Mission: To help cannabis brands to authentically connect with audiences through lifestyle and culture
Company’s most successful achievement: House of Saka – deliver 2600% increase in sales for the month of August 2020
Has the company raised any capital (yes or no):
if so, how much?: No, but partners with Acme Media Co.
Any plans on raising capital in the future? No
Most important company 5 year goal: Establish bu’kei as thought leaders in the space and elevate the profile of underrepresented cultures,
StaffJuly 10, 2019
Jill Ellsworth is founder and CEO of Willow Industries, Inc., which provides state-of-the-art, ozone-based technology for post-harvest microbial decontamination. Upon launching Willow Industries in 2015, Jill’s aim was—and remains—to protect consumers and patients by helping producers put clean, safe product on the market.
Willow’s technology has proven to reduce yeast, mold, bacteria, mildew, E.Coli, and other dangerous pathogens, all while protecting the medicinal properties of the plant. The introduction of the WillowPureSM system to the market has provided growers a solution to passing newly set state regulation standards.
Fueled by her passion for innovation and dedication to healthier living, Jill is a vocal advocate for the cannabis industry’s adoption of FDA-like standards and proactive promotion of safety measures.
Jill serves on the Cannabis Health and Safety Advisory Committee for the City of Denver and is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist (RDN) with a Master’s of Science in Nutrition, Dietetics, and Food Science.
Prior to launching Willow Industries in 2015, Jill founded Vibrant Earth Juices (VEJ), a cold-pressed organic juice company, in 2010 and later parlayed VEJ into a beverage distribution company.
In 2013, Jill was named Female Entrepreneur of the Year in Emerging Business by the Santa Barbara Women’s Economic Ventures group. Most recently, Jill was selected by Marijuana Business Daily as one of their 2019 Women to Watch in Cannabis. She has also been honored by cannabis lifestyle magazine, GreenDorphin, as one of the 20 Most Influential Women in Cannabis and Industry Leaders Magazine as one of the Influential Businesswomen in the Cannabis Industry.
GMR Executive Spotlight Q&A –
Full birth name: Jill Lynn Ellsworth (Maiden: Latham)
Title: Founder / CEO
Company: Willow Industries, Inc. (https://willowindustries.com/)
Years at current company: 3.5 years
Education profile:
BS Communications – California State University, Northridge
MS Nutrition, Dietetics & Food Science – California State University, Northridge
Dietetic Internship : Registered Dietitian – Cal Poly San Louis Obispo
Most successful professional accomplishment before cannabis: I am most proud of the cold-pressed, organic juice business, Vibrant Earth Juices, I founded and launched in Santa Barbara, CA in 2011 and Denver, CO in 2013. Vibrant Earth was one of the first fresh juice companies in Santa Barbara and Denver and quickly became very successful. From this, I was named Female Entrepreneur of the Year – Emerging Business in 2013. This was the start of my vision to develop innovative products and/or solutions for consumers.
Company Mission: Willow Industries strives to be the cannabis industry’s most reliable and innovative solution for producing clean, safe cannabis that consumers can trust.
Company’s most successful achievement: Willow’s most successful achievement was innovating a solution to a huge problem in the industry – microbial contamination. While we were very ahead of our time when we first launched Willow, we remained focused and patient, knowing the industry needed to catch up to our vision and what was important to the future of the industry. Staying the course and not giving up before the industry understood our value is our most successful achievement. Now with many cultivators adopting our tech, we continue to focus on our vision and goals.
Has the company raised any capital (yes or no): Yes
If so, how much?: We have raised $2 million.
Any plans on raising capital in the future? Certainly. We have very aggressive and aspirational goals that will lead us to the need for more financing. Right now, we are focused on executing our plans for the most recent funding round.
Most important company 5 year goal: We look for Willow to become a standard for consumer safety in the cannabis industry (modeling safety standards from the food & beverage industries) and for cultivators to see Willow as the solution for clean cannabis. We are focusing our efforts on cannabis compliance and helping to educate the regulatory sector of the industry as well. We will continue to push the boundaries for clean cannabis innovations, while keeping consumer safety at the focal point of our goals.
StaffJuly 1, 2019
Vern Keenan is a new market visionary and serial entrepreneur. A graduate of Northwestern University with a degree in Bio-Medical Engineering, Vern established his career as a technical and networking Director at Genentech and Oracle corp, before becoming an entrepreneur. During the Internet boom, Vern made a name for himself as one of the foremost analysts for eCommerce with his firm Keenan Vision. Vern later started Berkeley Logic, a tech services and consultancy focused on the small to medium sized business market. From there, Vern started Telnexus LLC, a VOIP services telecommunication company. Vern developed and implemented the telecom tax calculation engine for Telnexus that was the precursor to the Taxnexus cannabis tax compliance solution.
GMR Executive Spotlight Q&A –
Full birth name: Vernon Keenan, III
Title: CEO
Company: Taxnexus, Inc.
Years at current company: 1
Education profile: Bachelors in Biomedical Engineering (BSc) from Northwestern University
Most successful professional accomplishment before cannabis: Global tech analyst
Company Mission: Make tax compliance easy for all cannabis taxpayers
Company’s most successful achievement: Monetizing the only cannabis tax regulation database in the world!
Has the company raised any capital (yes or no): Not yet
Any plans on raising capital in the future? Currently raising a $1M round on a $5M-pre SAFE suitable for angel investors or seed-stage funds
Most important company 5 year goal: Wow, five years…be the nexus for all things tax!
StaffFebruary 28, 2019
Arcadia Specialty Genomics to bring standardization and optimization to America’s
cannabis crop with a focus on improved plant quality, resiliency and yield.
DAVIS, Calif. – February 28, 2019 /AxisWire/ Arcadia Biosciences, Inc.(RKDA), an agricultural food ingredient company and proven leader in leveraging advanced, proprietary breeding techniques to improve the quality and nutritional content of wheat and soybeans, today announced the company will apply its expertise to a new crop: cannabis. With the establishment of Arcadia Specialty Genomics™, the company is dedicating a first-of-its-kind strategic business unit to the optimization and standardization of cannabis plant content, quality, climate resiliency and yield. Arcadia Specialty Genomics intends to conduct its business only in federal and state markets in which its activities are legal.
With a fifteen-year track record of agricultural innovation, Arcadia Biosciences has brought new and beneficial crop traits to market through its advanced, proprietary approach to plant breeding and gene editing. With products such as GoodWheat™ flour and SONOVA® GLA safflower, the company is an industry leader in the development of high-value food ingredients and nutritional oils that meet consumer demands and improve crop outcomes for farmers. Now, the company will apply its expertise to the burgeoning cannabis industry, with an initial focus on the hemp market. Chief Financial Officer Matt Plavan has been appointed president of Arcadia Specialty Genomics.
“Within the rapidly growing legal cannabis industry, we see enormous opportunity in –and demand for–
improved plant quality, productivity, consistency and resilience, said Raj Ketkar, president and CEO of Arcadia Biosciences. “With this new operating unit, Arcadia Specialty Genomics, we are uniquely qualified as a proven crop improvement company equipped to address the legacy challenges facing a plant that until recently was largely grown unlawfully.” Ketkar added, “I can think of no one better than Matt Plavan, an industry veteran with a track record of leading transformational market pivots, to lead our new strategic business unit.”
The recent passage of the U.S. Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 – also known as the Farm Bill – confirmed the federal legalization of hemp, the term given to non-psychoactive cannabis containing less than 0.3% tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). It also included provisions for legalizing on a federal level hemp’s cultivation, transport and sale for the first time in more than 75 years. Hemp, previously considered a Schedule 1 drug and banned as an agricultural crop, lacks substantive plant biology research and suffers from suboptimal genetics, highly fragmented germplasm and rampant inconsistencies.
According to Plavan, hemp’s newly legal status creates significant market opportunities for a company known for its agronomic excellence. “As we’ve evolved from an agricultural trait provider to a functional ingredient seller, we’ve developed capabilities and partnerships which will drive innovation and growth in hemp-derived oils such as CBD and other functional plant properties. As with our wheat and soybean products, we will create hemp-based solutions that allow farmers to be more productive and enable consumer packaged goods companies to differentiate their brands in the marketplace.”
The Hemp Business Journal estimates that the hemp CBD market totaled $190 million in 2018 – an astounding rate of growth for a category that didn’t exist five years ago. By 2022, the Brightfield Group, a cannabis and CBD market research firm, projects sales to reach $22 billion.
Arcadia Specialty Genomics will develop novel cannabis varieties possessing productivity, pest
resistance and crop quality traits for license to cultivators, and for products serving the nutraceutical and food industries. These developments are made possible through a proprietary approach combining conventional breeding, Arcadia’s advanced screening and breeding technology known as TILLING and gene editing. Through this process, plant populations carrying desirable, high-value genetic characteristics are identified, isolated and bred to reproduce. Arcadia Biosciences is a recognized leader bringing deep experience and established capabilities in this kind of crop innovation and optimization, delivering proven results safflower, wheat and durum such as:
- A 100 percent increase in the production of Omega-6 GLA for safflower.
- Two to six times more fiber than standard wheat and durum with its proprietary GoodWheat™ flour.
- A 65 percent reduction in allergenic gluten content in in its GoodWheat™ flour.
- 30 percent more lysine, an essential amino acid, in GoodWheat™ as compared to standard wheat.
“Our ability to bring innovative traits to the market for some of the most complex plant genomes is unparalleled, and we’re excited to turn our attention and expertise to the critical needs facing the rapidly evolving cannabis industry,” said Plavan, “Our near-term focus will be acquiring federal and state licensure in key geographies to launch our research and pilot programs, for which we expect to begin operations in early 2019. In parallel, we are evaluating key partnerships to extend our capabilities vertically, maximize shareholder value and establish Arcadia Specialty Genomics as the leading science-driven company and genetics innovator for cannabis.”
About Arcadia Specialty Genomics
Arcadia Specialty Genomics is a strategic business unit of Arcadia Biosciences, Inc. leveraging the market-leading capabilities of its parent company to deliver crop innovation into developing proprietary, industry-leading cannabis germplasm. Focused on productivity, pest resistance and favored quality traits, Arcadia Specialty Genomics’ innovations serve the state and federally-legal nutraceutical, food and industrial markets. For more information, visit http://arcadiaspecialtygenomics.com
About Arcadia Biosciences, Inc.
Arcadia Biosciences, Inc. (Nasdaq: RKDA) develops and markets high-value food ingredients and nutritional oils that help meet consumer demand for a healthier diet. Arcadia’s GoodWheat™ branded ingredients deliver health benefits to consumers and enable consumer packaged goods companies to differentiate their brands in the marketplace. The company’s agricultural traits are being developed to enable farmers around the world to be more productive and minimize the environmental impact of agriculture. For more information, visit www.arcadiabio.com.
Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially, and reported results should not be considered as an indication of future performance. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: Arcadia Specialty Genomics’ expectations about the cannabis industry and potential demand for our products; the uncertainty of the laws and regulations relating to cannabis and products derived therefrom; the inherent uncertainty associated with the development of new projects; our ability to obtain proper licenses and successfully complete research programs related to cannabis; the acceptance of our products in the market place; the impact of competitive products and pricing; risks related to costs, delays and uncertainties associated with potential future scientific research, product development, clinical trials and the regulatory approval process; our partners’ and affiliates’ ability to develop commercial products incorporating cannabis related traits, and complete the regulatory review process for such products; our compliance with laws and regulations that impact our business, and changes to such laws and regulations; our future capital requirements and ability to satisfy our capital needs; our ability to develop, enforce and defend our intellectual property rights; and the other risks set forth in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission from time to time, including the risks set forth in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2017 and other filings. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof, and Arcadia Biosciences, Inc. disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.
Press Contacts:
Arcadia Specialty Genomics
Lisa Weser
+1-314-625-4633
pr@arcadiabio.com
Arcadia Biosciences
Jeff Bergau
+1-312-217-0419
pr@arcadiabio.com
Twitter: @ArcadiaAg
LinkedIn: Arcadia Biosciences
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