Organizations face complex challenges working to balance legal rules and undeveloped industry standards. With growth comes the need to meet various requirements while staying efficient and ethical. Effective regulatory strategies are essential for sustainable growth to protect assets, ensure transparency, and stay abreast of changing laws in a competitive market.

Jeremy Unruh is a founder and former senior legal, compliance, and public affairs officer of a start-up cannabis company that ultimately boasted 3,500 workers in eight state markets. Under a decade of Jeremy’s leadership, this company licensed, developed, owned, and operated nearly seventy retail locations and ten licensed cannabis manufacturing facilities, including both cultivation and processing functionalities, in the most highly-regulated state cannabis markets in the nation. These efforts included leading administrative and judicial litigation matters in multiple jurisdictions across the country, both personally and in a strategic management role.

Jeremy led industry efforts to reform the legal landscape of the regulated cannabis in nearly ten states and at the federal level. His leadership in cannabis law and business development includes serving as a government affairs executive, in-house and regulatory counsel, chief compliance officer, lecturer-at-law, and adjunct professor and creator of the first cannabis course at New York University. He also co-founded and served as an officer in industry trade associations in several states.

Jeremy's industry expertise has been recognized by publications like Crain’s Chicago Business (including their 2023 Notable Leaders in Cannabis), Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune, New York Post, and New York Times.

Beginning his career as a prosecuting attorney, Jeremy was trained in trial advocacy by the United States Department of Justice at the National College of District Attorneys. Before his appointment as the first-chair prosecutor in the courtroom of the Chief Judge of the Criminal Division of the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, Jeremy successfully investigated and tried hundreds of drug cases, homicides, financial, and sexual assault crimes.

Jeremy went into private practice for a firm that would reach the American Lawyer Top 100 during his tenure. Joining the firm’s Chicago office in 2006, Jeremy helped grow the Chicago presence from a handful of lawyers into a powerhouse office of more than 100 lawyers when he left to help build the medical cannabis industry. His practice focused on commercial litigation, internal compliance investigations in the financial services and healthcare sectors, and product liability defense. He was the lead trial attorney on the national product liability trial team for a Fortune 100 industrial company for many years and tried civil cases in federal and state courthouses across the United States. His commercial litigation experience included representing creditors and debtors of various sizes in the 2008-2009 commercial real estate crisis, including lenders, financial institutions, and developers.

Jeremy has a Bachelor of Science from Kansas State University. He earned a Juris Doctor from Washburn University School of Law where he was an inaugural recipient of the Environmental Law certificate. While serving as an assistant state’s attorney in Chicago, Jeremy attended DePaul University Kellstadt School of Business Management at night and earned his Master of Business Administration. Jeremy lives in the northern suburbs of Chicagoland with his wife and three children.

John Wellehan is an experienced entrepreneur and financial strategist, adept at navigating complex ventures and transforming data-driven insights into tangible asset growth and operational excellence. With a distinguished career spanning company leadership, quantitative finance, and business development, John brings a unique blend of strategic vision and hands-on execution to challenging situations, particularly in emerging and highly regulated industries.

As a founder and Chief Executive Officer, John has successfully launched and scaled multiple enterprises. Most recently, with Myndset Herbs, he has been at the forefront of pioneering a state-of-the-art, carbon-neutral licensed cannabis operation in Michigan, demonstrating a commitment to innovation and sustainable business practices. His entrepreneurial leadership also includes founding Bearing Fruit Co., where he established a specialty agricultural commodity business, sourcing directly from growers in Central America and notably reintroducing the "Gros Michel" banana to markets for the first time since the 1950s.

John’s profound expertise in finance and investments was honed through significant roles in the capital markets. At Harpswell Capital, as Vice President, Senior Analyst, and Trader, he was instrumental in producing top ventile returns for its market-neutral hedge fund. He leveraged sophisticated quantitative tools and rigorous fundamental analysis, playing a key part in the firm’s substantial AUM growth from $30 million to approximately $300 million during his tenure. Prior to Harpswell, John was a Partner, Senior Analyst, and Trader at Twenty Mountain, where he launched a quantitative trading business deploying machine learning strategies across numerous commodities. His early career included various roles at JPMorgan.

Further demonstrating his commitment to fostering business growth, John served as Managing Director for the 2016 cohort of the Good Food Business Accelerator-1871, the top-ranked university-affiliated incubator in the United States, where he also mentored early-stage entrepreneurs. His work focused on accelerating the development of "Good Food" businesses, guiding them through critical growth phases.

John earned his Master of Business Administration, with concentrations in Finance, Entrepreneurship & Innovation, from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Linguistics from Boston University.