Darin Carpenter

As an Army medic, Darin Carpenter saw what he calls “the dark side of Big Pharma.” Wounded soldiers would leave with highly addictive pain medications from their frequent trips to Veterans Affairs hospitals.

“I had a lot of buddies get wounded in that time,” Carpenter says. “I wanted to get out of the military and go earn an M.D., become a doctor.”

A long-time cannabis advocate, Carpenter didn’t consider the industry a viable option when he left the military to pursue a medical degree in 2007. While earning degrees in biochemistry, genetics and cellular biology, Carpenter worked for a plant breeding company. He was eventually offered a position as head grower for Tryke Companies in Nevada.

“That started a snowball effect,” Carpenter says.

Carpenter has been credited with numerous innovations at the company’s flagship cultivation facility. He says his time outside the industry allowed him to pull ideas from the medical and tech industries, as well as from commercial agriculture. The centralized chilling system, onsite power production and anti-contamination systems he’s implemented for the facility are only the beginning, he says.

“This is just Version 1.0,” Carpenter says. “For Version 2.0 we’re going to be doing a lot of really cool tricks.”