Paul Vancea
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Chief financial officer
Kosmik Brands
As the chief financial officer for Kosmik Brands, Paul Vancea has not only protected the company’s finances, but has been a driving force behind Kosmik Brands’ meteoric expansion from Oklahoma to an impressive presence across seven states and counting. Coming from Denver where he was the head of finance for a publicly traded cannabis company, Vancea was eager to join a group of like-minded entrepreneurs in Oklahoma and together build an unstoppable enterprise.
“They definitely took me in and made me part of the family, I wouldn’t trade this for any other team” Vancea says.
Vancea has wasted little time since he moved with his family from Romania to San Diego at the age of 14. In high school, he maintained a near 4.0 GPA while earning MVP honors on the wrestling, football and track teams by his junior year. He graduated Magna Cum Laude early from Brandeis University with a triple major in economics, business and film.
He began his career as a financial analyst for a $7 billion telecom company but found the corporate world stifling and left to find success in numerous roles in finance, startups and digital media, where he developed his own email marketing platform for industries that were blacklisted by the major service providers.
“And that’s how I got into cannabis,” Vancea says. “I wanted to make a mark for myself, and the cannabis industry had more opportunity.”