The National Cannabis Industry Association (NCIA), the cannabis industry’s only national trade association,  opened voting today for its Board of Directors.  The Board has twenty-two Directors, each of whom serves a two-year term, and each year NCIA members fill eleven of the seats.  To qualify for board election, a candidate must be the owner or employee of a current dues-paying Sustaining Member business and must be nominated by at least one other NCIA member business (of any level). Voting, which is open to all NCIA members, continues through May 16th, with votes weighted by membership level.

Of the twenty-two running to fill eleven seats, ten are incumbents, with one Director having resigned from the Board earlier this year. In 2015, eight incumbents ran, with five retaining their seats.  In 2014, seven incumbents ran, with five retaining their seats.

Continuing to serve are Cody Bass, Jessica Billingsley, AC Braddock, Max Cohen, Steve DeAngelo, Dale Sky Jones, Rob Kampia, Tripp Keber, Kayvan Khalatbari, Khurshid Khoja, and Christian Sederberg.

The non-incumbents represent eight “direct-to-plant” cannabis companies and four “ancillary” companies. While most of the candidates are from the West, three are from the East.  Of the incumbents, all but one are from the West, with three of the ten representing ancillary companies.

Here are the candidates for 2016:

• Caela Bintner – Faces Human Capital Management
• Brian Caldwell – Triple C Collective
• Alex Cooley – Solstice
• John Davis (incumbent) – Northwest Patient Resource Center
• Troy Dayton (incumbent) – The ArcView Group
• Etienne Fontan (incumbent) – Berkeley Patients Group
• Steve Janjic – Amercanex
• Neil Juneja – Gleam Law
• Aaron Justis (incumbent) – Buds and Roses Collective
• Brendan Kennedy – Privateer Holdings
• Kris Krane (incumbent) – 4Front Ventures
• Neal Levine – LivWell Enlightened Health
• Jaime Lewis (incumbent) – Mountain Medicine
• Randy Maslow – Ianthus Capital
• Norris Monson – Cultivated Industries
• Lance Ott (incumbent) – Guardian Data Systems
• Erich Pearson (incumbent) – SPARC
• Glenn Peterson – Canuvo
• Tom Quigley – Gluu
• Ean Seeb (incumbent) – Denver Relief
• Bryan Sullivan – DANK
• Scott Van Rixel (incumbent) – Bhang Corporation

New Cannabis Ventures salutes those that are serving through leadership. Please consider supporting the cannabis industry by joining NCIA.

Exclusive article by Alan Brochstein, CFA

Based in Houston, Alan leverages his experience as founder of online community 420 Investor, the first and still largest due diligence platform focused on the publicly-traded stocks in the cannabis industry. With his extensive network in the cannabis community, Alan continues to find new ways to connect the industry and facilitate its sustainable growth. At New Cannabis Ventures, he is responsible for content development and strategic alliances. Before shifting his focus to the cannabis industry in early 2013, Alan, who began his career on Wall Street in 1986, worked as an independent research analyst following over two decades in research and portfolio management. A prolific writer, with over 650 articles published since 2007 at Seeking Alpha, where he has 70,000 followers, Alan is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and a frequent source to the media, including the NY Times, the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, and Bloomberg TV. Contact Alan: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | Email