Brand identity · Community platform · Industry advocacy · New York · 2020–2023

When New York legalized cannabis in 2021, I wanted to understand it — not casually, but completely. The regulations, the licensing process, the equity questions, who was going to get access and who was going to get shut out. I spent three years learning it seriously.

What I found was a community of people — entrepreneurs, advocates, former operators from the underground economy — who were all trying to navigate the same complicated, politically charged process with almost no reliable information. So I built a platform for them.

The platform launched as the Uptown Cannabis Coalition, rooted in the Washington Heights and Inwood communities where I lived. As the audience and mission expanded citywide, it evolved into MarySays — a name that said what it was. A voice that cut through the noise and just told you what you needed to know. We grew to 3,000 followers through interviews with industry insiders, in-person education events, and honest, useful information at a time when almost none existed.

I also advocated publicly for fairer licensing rules — particularly for people from communities most affected by decades of prohibition who were being systematically excluded from the industry they'd helped build. And I designed brand identity and packaging for cannabis companies trying to do it right: credible, considered, and built for a category the world was still figuring out how to take seriously.

The platform didn't become the business I'd planned. But it became something I'm proud of — a community that trusted the information it was getting, and a body of brand work that proved you could bring real craft to a space most people were still treating as a novelty.