Team – Cannabis Travel Association International

Meet Our Team Members

Laura Hand | Board Member

Laura Hand is the CEO and Founder of Laura Loo Experience Design (LLXD). LLXD helps cannabis brands execute their vision by crafting a delightful brand strategy for every touchpoint of the customer journey to provide the experience their customers want and deserve. Laura’s background consists of starting her career as a web designer specialized in digital UX strategy for financial institutions and health care businesses. In 2016, Laura was promoted to vice president of VGM Marketing, an internal agency that specializes in marketing for the 25+ businesses of VGM Group, Inc. She led a team of more than 20 marketing experts dedicated to finding creative and strategic solutions to help VGM expand its healthcare services and better serve their customers. In 2019 she left the corporate world to realign her focus to the cannabis industry to honor her family. The loss of her brother to a drug-related heart attack and my father to brain cancer has forever shaped her life. She believes that proper education and access to cannabis would have changed their outcome.

Georgi Gordon | Board Member

A Founder and Principal of GBG & Associates, Georgi has created and implemented a wealth of strategic marketing and communications plans for travel and hospitality clients. Continuing to serve the tourism industry, she has expanded her focus to bring her travel sector expertise to the Cannabis Tourism and Travel industry. Georgi believes all communication is not just defined as Business to Business or Business to Consumer, it is all People to People. Cannapreneurs and businesses can reach out to GBG & Associates to create and implement B2B branding and marketing communication strategies for professional partners such as service providers, software creators, customer feedback solutions firms, financial servicing companies, legal services, marketing and sales organizations, architects, and professional trade associations. Consumer facing businesses can be assured of GBG’s commitment to branding, design, marketing and communications that support and further visibility and create a healthy sales environment.

Jerred Kiloh | Board Member

Mark Waller | Board Member

Mark R. Waller, CPA, co-founder and managing partner of Morem & Waller, CPAs, PLLC, has 15+ years of experience working as a public accountant as well as a controller in the private sector. He partners with CEOs, founders, and interested parties in the cannabis industry to help them stay compliant, achieve world-class financial records and financial reporting, and provide tax planning, preparation, and filing. A graduate of the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Mark lives in Minneapolis with his wife, Brigitte, and two children, Malcolm and Coco.

Ali Fakhri | Board Member

Ali Fakhri is the CEO and Founder of EventHi. EventHi is an event management platform built for the cannabis culture. Ali’s background consists of working for and with two of the largest Fortune 500 companies, leading sales and business development. Ali considers himself an entrepreneur at heart, launching his first business at 20 years old. After being introduced to the medical cannabis industry, he started attending events; months later, he began sponsoring and coordinating events. This experience allowed him to see many issues that the cannabis events industry faced. After months of research, he began developing EventHi to help bring a solution and fill a void for the cannabis industry. Ali is building an ecosystem through technology with a mission to bring people together offline.

Advisory Board Members

Brian Applegarth

Brian Applegarth founded the California Cannabis Tourism Association in 2017 and is the creator of The Cannabis Trail, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and celebrating the cannabis history of California. Brian is a cannabis tourism subject matter expert, educator and international speaker on the topic. Brian has lived, worked or traveled to over 50 different countries and holds a BA in International Studies from U.C. Irvine. Brian is inspired by building bridges between the travel and cannabis industries, and he helps businesses develop and implement customized cannabis-related tourism strategies that drive success.

Amanda Reiman

Dr. Amanda Reiman, the founder of Personal Plants, is an activist, professor, and researcher with twenty years of experience studying the relationship between people and plants. Her experience as the Manager of Marijuana Law and Policy for the Drug Policy Alliance enabled her to make real change in how the world treats medicinal plants like cannabis. Amanda was also the first chairwoman of the Medical Cannabis Commission for the City of Berkeley and taught classes on drug use and policy at UC Berkeley for over a decade. She strives to empower, enlighten and guide others to take their healing and creativity journey into their own hands by spreading knowledge and access to information and inspiration.