Unicorn Latina Taking the Cannabis Industry By Storm with Christine De La Rosa, EP #121

I met Christine recently at SXSW when she spoke on a panel about the cannabis industry. I was so impressed with her knowledge of the industry and her energy that I knew I wanted her to share her wisdom on the show.

Christine is the founder and CEO of the People’s Ecosystem Company. She was recently named one of the cannabis leaders who will shape the industry in 2022. In 2021 she was on the list of the top 10 women to watch for in the industry. In 2020 she was named one of the 35 most influential women in the cannabis industry. She spent the last 20 years working in systems, database, and telecom, and throughout her career she has been a social entrepreneur, focused on local communities. A debilitating disease is what took her into the cannabis industry and she is now a leader in the space.

You will want to hear this episode if you are interested in...

  • How Christine’s lupus diagnosis and the failure of synthetic medication led her to cannabis (2:31)

  • How she found her place as cofounder of the People’s Ecosystem(10:29)

  • How the People’s Ecosystem helps businesses and people (14:27)

  • The importance of financial literacy in preparing the next generations for success (21:18)

  • How safe banking has been the biggest resistance in the cannabis industry (27:07)

  • The importance of being with people in a physical space to build community (33:58)

When illness leads you to your bigger purpose

Christine had been working her way through a successful corporate career in a powerful position when she got sick. It was the kind of sick that just gets worse. Finally it culminated in her having a pulmonary embolism while driving her car and landed her in the hospital. Her identity changed from powerful career woman to sick person. She was diagnosed with systemic lupus, a chronic condition that was supposed to plague her for the rest of her life. She spent the next 5 years mostly in bed, on several strong medications, and nothing got better. She was facing dying alone, at home, in pain. Then, in 2015 during the holidays, she felt called to try something different. She read about cannabis online, but at that time, the information was limited. She tried it anyway. Within 9 months, she stopped taking all of her pills and hospital treatments, and her ability to walk, move, think and start a business came back to her.

Confronting false cultural stereotypes

As a Latina, Christine had to overcome several stereotypes associated with using cannabis: lazy Mexican, thug, etc. But when she did her own research and saw the true nature of cannabis as ancestral plant medicine, she realized she could have healed her body years earlier if she had been introduced to it within a different context. This is what led her to focus her work on sharing cannabis as a medicine going forward. Instead of seeing marijuana as a drug that sends black and brown people to prison, she is committed to showing the power of cannabis to heal.

Co-founding the People’s Ecosystem

When Christine got better from her lupus, she was ready to help people who were in her shoes. She started small and began creating regimes for people with chronic illnesses through a collective-type model. She thought they would maybe be able to help 100 people but within a few months, 4500 people had come to her for support. The people who were coming to her for help looked like her, had a similar backstory, and didn’t feel comfortable going to white-centric legal dispensaries, especially if they had been arrested for using marijuana before. That led Christine to opening a legal cannabis business catered to people of color.

Resources & People Mentioned


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