Natasha Strother Lassiter
Sharon Ali
Even in the cannabis space, Prime Wellness of Pennsylvania’s Sharon Ali and Natasha Strother Lassiter are outliers.
Ali, the company’s CEO, has more than 25 years of corporate experience in consumer packaged goods including marketing, sales, development and more with major companies such as Proctor & Gamble, PepsiCo and Johnson & Johnson. Lassiter, the chief operating officer, has more than 15 years of her own in the food service, health care and sports and entertainment industries.
Beyond that, both are African-American women in positions that have traditionally been dominated by white men.
“I’ve always worked in a male-dominated industry,” Lassiter says. “We bring an important and needed perspective within the industry.”
It is exactly that perspective that led them both to Prime Wellness, one of the first 12 licensees to cultivate medical marijuana in Pennsylvania’s fast-growing cannabis economy.
“We were recruited,” says Ali with a hint of pride.
Prime’s parent company, Acreage Holdings, sought out both Ali and Lassiter. Today, the ladies oversee a 30,000-square-foot grow operation located in Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania, about 90 minutes northeast of Philadelphia in the Keystone State’s Southeast region. The company hosted a groundbreaking on the site in September 2017 and brought the first product from the custom-built facility to market in July 2018 to what Ali calls an “extremely strong response.”
“Our mission is to be the premier grower/processor in the state, bar none,” she says.
Unfortunately, Prime Wellness missed out on a retail license in the first round of applications, but the company is waiting to hear if it will receive one in the second phase of licensing. In the meantime, Prime Wellness is supplying dispensaries across the state with its product.
The two women say it’s their combined professional skill sets — Ali’s marketing knowledge and Lassiter’s entrepreneurial bend — that help set the company apart.
“We just bring it all together and we make it work,” Lassiter says.
Prior to jumping into the cannabis business, Ali spent a decade at Johnson & Johnson, leading teams in the company’s consumer and professional market divisions. She leveraged her experience in health care packaged goods to get her current position.
“It was such an incredible opportunity,” she says of joining Prime Wellness. “I’m really proud and fortunate to be in this position.”
Similarly, Lassiter says her pre-cannabis business experience in food service “mimics cannabis” because of the regulations, logistics and packaging that goes into it. Combined with her fascination with the medical benefits of marijuana, the move to Prime Wellness “just made sense.”
As for being women in traditionally male-dominated roles, Ali says the empathy and sensitivity they bring to their positions gives Prime Wellness an advantage over the competition.
“It allows us to look at the business through a whole different lens,” Ali says.
Lassiter agrees, saying the women bring a perspective that, while not confrontational, “challenges the status quo,” which is helpful in an industry that does the same thing to the business world in general. It also gives them an advantage in reaching across demographics and meeting the needs of customers.
“Our face has to be a face that’s reflective of the customer,” Ali says.
Both are equally adamant about the importance of not only hiring a diverse group of employees, but in making sure to seek out a diverse set of suppliers to meet their needs as a business.
“Every day that’s part of our mission,” Lassiter says.
The two also see it as part of their responsibility to build a pipeline for other women and minorities to find a seat at the table, like they have. Their advice to other women getting into the industry is simple: “build relationships.”
“Try to immerse yourself in any cannabis industry events and figure out how to transfer your existing skills to the cannabis market,” Lassiter says.
Ali agrees and adds that given the nature of the cannabis business, it is a “little more receptive to women who want to enter it.”
“Truly, this is such an incredible industry,” she says. “We’re just so proud and excited to be a part of it.”