Meet
Christi McAdams
Christi McAdams
Chairman and CEO
Professional Life, Before Cannabis (BC)
Christi McAdams is a lifelong entrepreneur, owning her first license in the nightlife industry at only 18 in Topeka, Kansas. During college she worked for Evander Holyfield’s record label, Real Deal Records, in Atlanta, GA and founded Surefire Entertainment which hosted “rave” events from the Midwest to Florida. At 21, McAdams dropped out of her senior year in college at AIU, obtained a liquor license, and founded Full House Liquor Distribution. At 23, McAdams invented a product for the beauty industry, Ms Tipsy’s, and moved to Southern California to be near the manufacturer. Within 3 months of being in California, her products were being carried by 10 national distributors. McAdams was recognized by the Orange County Register as a leading entrepreneur. In 2007, she developed a new product and service for the real estate industry, Citi Connect, and was providing it to the largest commercial real estate companies in the United States (CB Richard Ellis, Collier’s International, Grubb & Ellis).
By 2008, after losing practically everything, the financial crisis forced McAdams to Las Vegas where McAdams cofounded an entertainment industry, members only card, the VIG (Vegas Industry Group) card to provide discounts and incentives to industry employees to support each other’s businesses.
What prompted the move to cannabis professionally?
“My father called to tell me that we have been lied to, that cannabis is an amazing plant with incredible benefits and it’s going to bring about the biggest evolutional change we will see in our lifetime.”
Professional Enlightenment, After Destigmatization (AD)
Christi McAdams has been a marijuana establishment license owner in the United States since 2014. She joined the industry by founding a production lab in Southern California which produced award winning concentrates. Only 1 year later she partnered on the 17th licensed production lab in Nevada where she developed an artisan brand of concentrates, High Standard. When recreational cannabis use was legalized in Nevada, the state was requiring 3rd party distributors to provide the service, so McAdams founded one of Nevada’s largest distribution companies, Focus Distribution. While CEO at Focus McAdams also founded four cannabis ancillary companies including Focus Staffing (later renamed Highlite), a staffing agency focused on providing temporary labor to cultivation facilities, production labs and cannabis kitchens. Highlite Staffing has hired and/or placed over 800 employees since its inception in 2019.
McAdams is Chairman of Cannabis Community College, an online, educational platform developed to aid job seekers and employees wanting to gain the essential industry knowledge and education that is required by most states to work in the cannabis industry. Her aspirations with Cannabis Community College are to make it an international cannabis educational platform, sharing industry expertise from every legal market around the world. McAdams most recently founded the Global Cannabis Industry Networking Group where she works with cannabis ambassadors from approximately 30 countries regarding various industry topics to share with industry enthusiasts on webinars provided to Cannabis Community College students, graduates, and members.
Future Goals:
“My immediate future goals include evolving the CCC platform internationally and starting a podcast, Dazed and Confucius, where we talk with industry professionals about far out concepts in science, spirituality, philosophy, metaphysics, etc.”
