
These 6 Women Are Changing the Face of Orange County’s Cannabis Scene
JENNIFER MCGRATH
In the spring of 2013, a green cross hung on the side of a yellow brick building near the intersection of Pacific Coast Highway and Warner Avenue in Sunset Beach. It was the signal for Patient Med-Aid, a medical-marijuana dispensary that activists Marla and David James had just opened. At the time, however, it was illegal for dispensaries to operate in Sunset Beach. And it was Jennifer McGrath’s job as Huntington Beach city attorney to shut down any storefronts that popped up.
KEIKO BEATIE
Keiko Beatie’s résumé lists 30 achievements—and that’s just what she threw together in an email. She started her career in the music industry, boasting among her list of clients Eddie Van Halen, Cheap Trick and Eddie Money. “Everyone was experimenting with everything under the sun,” Beatie says. “I didn’t really drink, and I certainly didn’t smoke cigarettes. . . . But I did smoke [cannabis].”
CINDY BURGE
“It’s crazy how life’s just kind of steered me here,” says Cindy Burge, the original general manager at Evergreen in Santa Ana. “Sometimes I look back, and I’m just like, ‘Whoa, how did I get here?'”
SHERRI BELL
Before Apple’s “Think Different” campaign, John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed—a man who cultivated hundreds of apple orchards in the Midwest to create hard apple cider—wrote this in his letters: “Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the problem children and the round pegs in square holes: the ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. You can glorify, vilify, quote or disagree with them. The only thing you can’t do is ignore them, and that’s because they change things. . . . While some may see them as the crazy ones, they’re the geniuses. The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”
BRANDINE STRAND
“You can’t write a story about Orange County’s women of weed without including Brandine,” says Rama Mayo, a co-founder of Green Street, a cannabis creative agency. “She’s a boss. She’s been in the industry for years, and she has the second-largest distribution company in the space.”
NICHOLE WEST
“Hustle and heart will set you apart,” Nichole West wrote in a recent Facebook post announcing that the Colorado dispensary chain she works for is opening yet another location. Originally from Vista, West landed in Long Beach when she was 17 years old to attend Cal State Long Beach. After a couple of years, she dove into commercial real estate.