Cannabis CEOs Are White Men, Just Like in the Rest of Corporate America
As VCs and corporate money move in, women say they’re being pushed aside.
When Nancy Whiteman, 61, founded her marijuana edibles company, Wana Brands, almost a decade ago in Boulder, Colo., the legal industry was relatively diverse and dominated by local startups. It helped that Wall Street banks and institutional investors took a hands-off approach to cannabis, leery of getting involved with a drug that’s still banned by the federal government. “It was a pretty even playing field for everybody—men, women, anybody who was interested,” Whiteman says.
These days, however, the industry is increasingly dominated by men. The influx of venture money and Wall Street dollars, in addition to the rise of larger companies operating across several states, has made things harder for startups and, by extension, female-led businesses. In 2015, 36% of pot executives in Colorado were women, but just two years later that dropped to 27%, according to Marijuana Business Daily. Some in the industry fear the same lack of diversity that’s characterized such sectors as finance and technology will become the norm for the fast-growing pot world.