Women Create Their Own Opportunities In New York's Growing Weed Industry

ON A RECENT THURSDAY evening in downtown Manhattan, nearly 50 women and a few men, ranging from millennials to baby boomers, gathered in a sleek co-working space to talk about weed.

- Madison Margolin

Each month, a different group of enterprising women gives a presentation at Women Grow, a national organization founded in Denver in 2014 that connects, educates, and empowers women in the cannabis industry. Before and after the feature presentation, women have a chance to network with other aspiring entrepreneurs or industry veterans, fostering connections that may help with their own canna-businesses.

The group at the most recent meeting included lawyers, nurse practitioners and an edibles chef, and the presenting company was AnnaBís, a line of luxury accessories to help women keep their medicinal cannabis products safe, secure, odor contained, and separate from everything else in their purse.

Beside a projector screen, a table was set up with various handbags, cut from luxurious Italian leather and designed to be smell-proof. A group of women sipping champagne and munching on finger foods huddled around the table, mingling before the night’s formal programming began. “These bags have been to bar mitzvahs, weddings, and they’ve even been to a wake, I hate to tell ya,” one of the AnnaBís designers told the group, as she demonstrated with a sample bag. Some of the bags, which can cost in the triple digits, have secret compartments where women can keep their stash.