Nick Mosley
Age: 30
Company: Confidence Analytics
Location: Redmond, Washington
Position: Co-founder and chief science officer
As Washington voters were on the verge of approving a measure to legalize recreational marijuana usage, Nick Mosely was a clinical researcher for the University of Washington Medical Center, focusing on redefining newborn and prenatal growth charts.
But at a party one evening just prior to the vote, a friend in the medical marijuana industry lamented the lack of competition among testing labs as the state began moving into recreational sales and pointed out that Mosely had exactly the background needed to open a testing lab.
Eight months later — after putting together a business proposal, getting together with partners and investors, finding a space and developing a method to test cannabis — Confidence Analytics opened its doors. In those early days of Washington’s regulated cannabis industry, Mosely, who has a master’s degree in genetic epidemiology, often had to personally pick up and test samples for clients throughout the state.
“It was hectic,” he says.
Confidence was the second lab in the state to receive accreditation. A package of the first lab-approved product sold in Seattle was donated to Washington’s Museum of History & Industry.
“That’s pretty awesome,” Mosely says. “I hope it’s there in perpetuity.”
Today, Mosely is a board member of the Cannabis Alliance and serves on the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board’s Traceability and Packaging and Labels Advisory Panels. He says he spends his days working on compliance issues, but adds there’s never a dull day working in cannabis, which he calls “endlessly complex” with “decades of research” yet to be done.
“The drug has incredible capabilities,” he says. “It’s really unlike anything else.”