Kimberly Cargile
Company: A Therapeutic Alternative
Title: Executive Director
Age: 37
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.
As the executive director of A Therapeutic Alternative, as well as a board member for six different dispensaries, two cultivation sites and an upcoming manufacturing operation, Kimberly Cargile says she has been able to dramatically reduce the time she spends on permitting by adhering to an old adage of business.
“The advice I learned — and I don’t really like, but it’s turned out to be true — is, ‘It’s not what you know, but who you know,’” she says.
Fortunately for Cargile, she knows many of the industry’s longtime operators, having gotten her start in the cannabis business in 2003. She was one of the early pioneers in California working to build the network of industry professionals it has today.
She has worked “with every group there is” and has earned accolades for maintaining a model retail operation. Right now, she says the majority of her time is spent launching Khemia, a manufacturing business based in Sacramento, that is set to open January 2019.
“I’ve been working with local and state government officials for the last decade to educate them on the industry, on patients’ needs and rights for safe access,” she says. “It didn’t happen overnight. It took a long time and a lot of hard work to get in there. I think the name of the game is just good business.”
Cargile graduated from Humboldt State University with a degree in liberal studies and a minor in psychology, with a focus on social justice that taught her about systematic oppression and the steps marginalized groups throughout the 20th century have taken to counter it. She moved to Sacramento in 2007 as a patients’ rights advocate and became a member of likeminded groups such as Americans For Safe Access and NORML and helped start the California Cannabis Industry Association, a group she continues to work with to this day.
“The work the CCIA does and the work that I do with them is extremely important toward changing the landscape of our entire industry in California,” she says. “Our industry at large is having some major problems. We lost 70% percent of our industry to the unregulated market as of Jan. 1, 2017.”