Chelsey Joseph
Company: [WHT LBL]
Title: CEO and co-founder
Age: 28
For the past 12 months, the editorial staff at Marijuana Venture has compiled a list of candidates for our third annual 40 Under 40 feature. This year, we narrowed our list down from hundreds of worthy candidates to come up with a cross-section of personalities across the U.S. and Canada, from salt-of-the-earth farmers to tech savants. All of them have unique stories, successes and ambitions and all represent the excitement and promise of the cannabis business. We feel honored to share their stories and look forward to watching them push forward in our ever-evolving industry.
Although the cannabis industry is still in its infancy, Chelsey Joseph has nearly a decade of experience in the regulated market, culminating in her current role as CEO of [WHT LBL], a licensed marijuana cultivator and processor in northern Colorado.
“The fact that this facility is in my hometown of Lafayette brings me great pride in bringing jobs and driving the Lafayette economy,” she says. “This is my legacy and I’m humbled to say that I’ve both tackled and conquered this milestone.”
At the risk of exposing her “geeky side,” Joseph says she has always been fascinated by the science of bringing cannabis to market, from seed to shelf to consumer. She got her start in the cannabis business as general manager of Boulder County Caregivers, the first dispensary storefront in Boulder County, then led the build-out of three dispensaries, two cultivation facilities and a manufacturing plant in 2010 as Colorado implemented the nation’s first licensing structure for medical marijuana businesses.
Looking back on her career, she says it was easy at times to become impressionable. She realizes now that her instincts were spot-on, but she was “missing the confidence to underscore my intuition.”
“My advice to my younger self would be, ‘Think for yourself,’” she says.
Now, she’s using her widespread expertise to deliver engineering, manufacturing and distribution services to cannabis brands of all sizes.
“We built [WHT LBL] to power seasoned operators or first-time entrepreneurs to trust in us as the partner to expand their brand using our platform,” she says. “We know the cannabis market is very difficult and packed with pitfalls like navigating compliance, regulations, scaling cost of manufacturing, processing and packaging, just to name a few.”