40 Under 40: Chris Campagna

“It was a pretty hectic growth curve, for sure,” Campagna says.

Since the company’s launch, $50 billion worth of cannabis products have been made with True Terpenes flavors and formulations. In 2025, True Terpenes made the prestigious Inc. 5000 list of the fastest growing privately owned companies in the United States.

But cannabis is far more than just a business to Campagna. Like many cannabis entrepreneurs, he had a profound medical experience that opened his eyes to the medicinal qualities of the plant. Campagna’s story is particularly harrowing.

At the age of 15, he went from being a healthy teenager to completely paralyzed within two weeks. Diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome, he spent almost three months in the hospital and had to learn how to walk again.

“I had firsthand experience of traditional health care, pharmaceuticals,” he says. “I was on over a dozen medications and just felt like my medicine was making me more sick. I had lost a third of my body weight, and I wanted to try a different direction. When you’re paralyzed and dying, you’re open to anything. Long story short, I ended up trying cannabis and it helped with everything I needed: pain management, sleeping, appetite. When we asked our doctors about it, they looked at me like I was crazy. So that was interesting because when I tried it, it had such a profound impact on my life. That was the first catalyst that was, like, okay, something’s really wrong here and right here at the same time.”