Jodi McDonald

Jodi McDonald is the President & Founder of Keystone Labs Inc., (www.keystonelabs.ca) an Edmonton based Health Canada accredited testing facility with a Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) establishment license.  Keystone Labs was incorporated in 2005 and in August 2015, acquired a Health Canada controlled substance license to conduct cannabis testing. Jodi has a background in clinical and microbiology sciences and her passion is bridging the gap between analytical and microbial sciences and the medical cannabis industry to help improve the quality of medicinal cannabis products being used by patients.  Her vision is to offer validated and quality testing data comparable to the pharmaceutical industry for medical cannabis patients health and safety.

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Jodi has a Bachelor of Science from the University of Alberta.  She is a writer for HydroLife magazine on scientific topics regarding cannabis testing.  Jodi is very involved with the Alberta Women Entrepreneurs, enabling women to build successful businesses.  Also, Jodi offers her scientific expertise to several key advisory boards; NAIT Biological Sciences Laboratory and Research Program Advisory Committee, University of Alberta and Medical Laboratory Sciences Advisory Committee.

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Av Singh

Av Singh, PhD, PAg
Cannabis Cultivation Advisor

Av Singh is one of the leading authorities on regenerative organic cannabis production. After completing his post-doc at the University of Minnesota on pasture-based livestock production, Singh worked at the Organic Agriculture Centre of Canada and served as the Organic and Small-Scale Farming Specialist in Nova Scotia, for over 15 years, and recently held the Just Us! Chair in Small Farm Sustainability.

Dr. Singh has authored over 200 peer-reviewed papers, chapters, and extension articles and has been an invited speaker to over 500 workshops, conferences, symposia as well as guest-lecturing at over 30 universities in Canada, the US, the UK, and India. Av has had the privilege of visiting
over 2000 farms across five continents which has shaped his extension of holistic, system-based design solutions.
Emphasizing a union of traditional knowledge with science, Av works with growers to cultivate an appreciation of
plant: soil interrelationships.
 

Currently, Av and his colleague Randy Flemming serve as Cultivation Advisors within the cannabis industry
cannabis.com. Av is also the Commercial Science Specialist at Greenstar Plant Products www.gaiagreen.com, the Chief
Agricultural Scientist at BetraLif; the Chief Science Officer with Green Gorilla ; the Chief
Soil Scientist at CaliCann (Colombia) and formerly served as the Chief Agronomist with the American Cannabis Company,
helping to develop the High Times Magazine’s STASH Award-winning super soil.

Av has recently been appointed to the Cannabis Quality Assurance (CQA) Standards Committee and is a member of
the International Cannabinoid Research Society, and was identified as one of the Top 50 Heroes shaping the Canadian Cannabis sector by High! Canada Magazine and a Cannabis Hero by Cannabis Amnesty. Av serves on several Scientific Advisory Boards - SolarGram; ArcticPharm; 7 Farms Down; Tailor Made Extracts, Advanced
Extraction Systems, and AgXactly. Av is a frequent speaker and advisory board member at MJBizCon, LIFT,
O’Cannabiz, and the Grow Up Conferences.

Lastly, Av is also serving as the Vice-President of the Canadian Organic Growers and is proud to be a member of Slow Food Canada, Food Secure Canada and the National Farmers’ Union. Av is also a faculty member at Earth University (https://www.navdanya.org/site/) in India where he delivers courses on agroecology and organic farming.

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Ashley Chiu

Ashley is EY's Global Cannabinoid Subject Matter Resource who leads strategic assessments and development of strategic roadmaps for companies exploring entry into the global cannabinoid industry. Ashley leads commercial and operational due diligence projects for investments, debt financing, valuations, and sale lease backs in the cannabis industry for deals ranging from $100M – $2.4B. She leads benchmarking activities to assess gross margin, EBITDA, market share, cost, profitability, as well as analysis of major innovations, intellectual property, capital equipment, technologies, commercial viability, and operational efficiency for buy-side due diligence projects. Ashley also has experience with leading multiple projects analyzing market size, market segments, value chain, regulation, and innovation in the global cannabis, hemp and health and wellness sectors to identify high-growth opportunitis and develop qualified lists of potential investments and acquisition targets. 

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Barry Davidson

Barry Davidson is the CEO of Davidson Advisory Group Inc. and is a leader in the global cannabis industry. He also serves as a Senior Advisor to CannaNavigators & Hyde Advisory and is an internationally recognized security and CPTED consultant with more than 30 years experience in strategic & crisis management. Barry has worked with private enterprise, not-for-profit organizations and government and is called upon regularly to advise on sensitive/volatile issues.

Davidson Global Advisory Group Inc. is a full service security and strategic consulting practice. Over the past 3 years Davidson Global has provided security and regulatory services to dozens of commercial and retail cannabis operations as well as governments across Canada and abroad. Our work has included business strategy, operational security and regulatory compliance issues as well as directly supporting more than 150 Canadian cannabis retail license applications and design.

www.davidsonglobal.ca  

Barry Davidson

Davidson Global Advisory Group

Strategic Business Advisory - Security & Risk Consulting - Global Connector

Jeff Ord

Jeff Ord is Cannabis At Work’s entrepreneurially spirited VP of Accounts & Relationships. Jeff has leveraged his unique ability to forge meaningful connections and built cannabis community from coast-to-coast. With a decade of experience helping small organizations grow, Jeff is passionate about creating space & place for people to become the best versions of themselves. Jeff has been hosting The Roll Call - a series of in person and online events designed to connect cannabis colleagues through conversations about gratitude.

Jeff previously served as the Executive Director of Freestyle Skiing Ontario where he led organizational transformation to service all levels of its community while also developing Olympic champions. Jeff also holds an MSc in Environmental Science, and was a partner in Envirotechnics Consulting, based in British Columbia, where he leveraged environmental monitoring contracts to help build capacity within northern First Nations communities. In his free time Jeff is an avid skier, surfer and traveler. He is also an active member of the global Burning Man community.

Health Canada

France Beaudet with Dana Bruce &

Andrew Waye

France Beaudet was recently appointed as the acting Associate Director of the Regulatory Compliance and Risk Management Division within the Controlled Substances and Cannabis Branch.  She manages a team involved with assessing compliance and managing risk with non-compliance situations.  France and her team developed the first Canadian requirements document for pesticide testing for cannabis production, managed the publication of voluntary recalls of cannabis products and recommended the suspension and revocation of several Cannabis licenses. France has a masters degree in Earth Sciences. She has occupied a number of positions within Health Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada where she developed strategies to address regulatory inconsistencies, managed the coordination of program evaluation in the context of gaining efficiencies with consultations with the Canadian public and indigenous communities, published Regulatory Amendments for the mining sector and a Framework to address air emissions from the petroleum industry.

Andrew Freedman

Andrew Freedman is the first real " Cannabis Sommelier & quot; his focus on pairing cannabis, beer, cocktail, wine and gastronomy are completely unique and original.
 

Andrew worked in the cannabis trade for over a decade. Noticing that there was a lack of
scientific language for describing cannabis he became very interested in blind tasting wine.
His expertise in growing and extracting cannabis led to a passion for viticulture and oenology.
 He soon found himself living on a vineyard working as a cellar hand at an estate winery. While honing his palate he became a WSET 3 and one of few Canadian Wine Scholars.

Andrews passion for cannabis and wine led him to begin teaching what he had learned and
created " The Cannabis Sommelier" YouTube channel.

Andrew currently teaches seminars about cannabis and wine pairing, cannabis cocktails and
cannabis dining. Andrew is one of the first people in the world certified by the American Culinary Federation in Cannabis Cuisine & Edibles. Andrew also hosts and presents cannabis
dining events across North America.

Andrew has been featured in The Hollywood Reporter, LA Weekly, Hightimes, The Globe & Mail and many more.

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Patrick Steffes

Patrick Steffes is a professional chemist with 25+ years of experience in the analytical instrumentation business, including service, sales, and management.

Pat was consulted in labs from Hassi Messaoud, Algeria to Quito, Ecuador.  He has provided start to finish solutions for labs across North America, including lab design, commissioning of analytical equipment, method development and method validation.  Pat provides expertise in the GMP regulatory environment, including qualification design and review.  

Pat continues to provide solutions for cannabis analysis across North America. He is the President of Fonebone Services Inc.  www.Fonebone.ca    

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Vinodha Chetty

Vinodha is the Quality Assurance Manager and A/QAP at Tantalus Labs and is responsible for managing and maintaining the Quality Management System at Tantalus. She has a Masters degree from The University of British Columbia, with over six years of experience in Cannabis, Biotechnology, Pharmaceuticals, and Analytical Chemistry. She designed and implemented the Audit program at Tantalus Labs, focussed on Internal, External and Supplier Audits, playing a major part in developing strategies for Continuous Improvement. She is also responsible for analysing, interpreting and managing lab test data. She has a keen interest in digital innovation within the cannabis space and expanding that at her
organization.

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Stephanie Ostrander

With humility, humour and lots of energy, Stephanie has accomplished a lot in the six years she has worked/ volunteered/ advocated in the cannabis industry.

She was the cofounder of the Women Grow Edmonton chapter, a successful cannabis business networking group that is still going strong today as Green Spark. She was the reluctant Chair of the Alberta Cannabis Stakeholder Group that was instrumental in helping to bringing about the current privatized retail model of Alberta. After discovering she is actually quite tech challenged, she sold Cannabiz Social, a social media company serving the
cannabis industry that she blindly founded. Stef has been the Account Manager for Keystone Labs since 2018 and loves the many hats she wears at the company. This includes community engagement and the opportunity to launch events such as C45 Quality, Growing Summit, 420 Networking in the Okanagan, Cannabis Facility Success Seminars and chairs the C45 Event committee. She happily lives in Nelson BC and supports micro cultivators in her role as
Advisor to the BC Craft Farmer’s Coop. Stef loves riding her bike while dodging logging trucks on Hwy 3A, spending time with her husband Rocky and dog Juno on their little StarCraft fishing boat, traveling and providing unwanted advise and perspectives to her two grown kids.

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