In 2010, Jessica Billingsley co-founded MJ Freeway, the company that paved the way for the modern cannabis industry to be regulated from "seed to sale." In 2019, MJFreeway was spun into a new venture called Akerna (KERN) and as part of a new SPAC became the first cannabis compliance technology company to list on the Nasdaq. Now as Akerna's Chairman and CEO, Billingsley is one of the few women to helm a publicly traded cannabis company. According to new research by Arcview and the National Cannabis Industry Association only 8% of CEO's in cannabis are female.
The longtime entrepreneur who holds a degree in computer science and communications from University of Georgia sat down with Heather in late 2020 to talk about how she leveraged her tech background into cannabis at the dawn of the industry, the challenges she faced in the early days and her advice to up and coming female founders.
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