Krista Heinz
1937 Farms, production and sales manager
CHAMPION OF CHANGE | One of Washington’s first medical cannabis patients, turned healthcare professional, turned cannabis leader, Krista Heinz hails from a wealth of industry experience and draws upon her extensive knowledge to help lead 1937 Farms to new heights. In her time with 1937 Farms, Heinz has more than doubled the company’s retail footprint.
Women to Watch
Welcome to Marijuana Venture’s 10th annual feature highlighting women in the cannabis industry. This year we are proud to bring readers the stories of 13 influential professionals helping to shape the industry through their leadership, insights and visions for the future of cannabis. The following women hail from a variety of backgrounds and each bring their own unique skillsets, experience and perspectives for the betterment of the industry.
It is an honor to share their stories.
Krista Heinz, the production and sales manager for the Washington cannabis producer 1937 Farms, began her relationship with legal cannabis at age 14, as one of the first medical marijuana patients in the state.
Heinz, now a three-time cancer survivor, picked up her first prescription for medical cannabis with her mom inside “a little basement area” at the University of Washington. It was the early 2000s, in the early days of Washington’s medical cannabis era, when dispensaries weren’t common yet.
“They wouldn’t let me smoke weed at Children’s Hospital, but I wasn’t allowed to leave the campus,” she says, “so somebody from our church donated an RV, and my mom and I would just post up in the RV in the parking lot of Children’s Hospital and watch X-Files and smoke.”
Her initial cannabis prescription only came after doctors tried every medication they could to get her to eat. Heinz says it saved her life and made her a huge proponent of legalization. As soon as she legally could, she was growing for herself until Washington replaced the medical program with recreational cannabis in 2014.
Heinz, who was working as an urgent-care nurse at the time, initially boycotted the recreational market out of principle, until a friend she knew from her time in the medical market asked her for help with his recreational grow.
“So I got into it and realized that there are some really good farms out there that are doing really good work,” she says. “And was like, all right, I don’t want to work in the medical field anymore, and then kind of dove headfirst into cannabis.”
Heinz already more than a decade of experience growing cannabis, but she became something of an artisanal specialist and quickly learned the recreational market’s legal processes from seed to sale, as well as how to apply her existing knowledge to a commercial operation. Although dedicated to the industry, Heinz says she struggled to find a home until she applied for a position at 1937 Farms.
“Now, thankfully, I just have amazing bosses,” Heinz says. “I finally found a farm that grows the way I do — not for quantity, but for quality. You know, real quality medicine.”
Heinz joined 1937 Farms as a packaging and production associate in July 2023 and has since worked her way to become the company’s production and sales manager. She took over sales management for the company about six months ago and has more than doubled the farm’s retail footprint. The sudden surge in demand has pushed the company to expand its grow capacity from one greenhouse to five, albeit slowly.
“We’re going to start with the first three [greenhouses], because we want to increase our employee numbers as little as possible,” she says. “My job is to make sure that our crew is as strong as it possibly can be, so that when we do start to ramp up, we can add new key players.”