ABOUT US
The CEASD aspires to be unrelenting visionary advocates in cultivating, shifting and solidifying equitable pathways for historically marginalized, disenfranchised, and oppressed community members.
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The CHEM
Pillars of Total Equity
Economic Equity: The assuredness of:
1) economic repair and reciprocity,
2) access to opportunities and services that secure and grow economic resources such as income, savings, assets, and capital, and
3) possessing personal and collective agency over the flow of economic resources through a household or community.
Environmental Equity: The assuredness of access to and maintenance of:
1) clean air, water, land, and soil,
2) clean, natural, and safe outdoor spaces,
3) clean and safe indoor spaces,
4) clean, safe, and consistent housing options, and
5) clean, safe, and sustainable business practices.
Human Equity: The assuredness of access to experiences, opportunities, and resources that optimize:
1) an individual’s knowledge, skills, ability, capability, adaptability, introspection, empathy, enlightenment, self-regard, and self-actualization, and
2) their physical, mental, and spiritual fitness.
Social Equity: Fairness and empowerment through policy and regulation, as well as through the distribution of social resources and services to ensure that policy and societal infrastructures:
1) assure economic, environmental, and human equity,
2) demonstrate cultural respect and preservation, and
3) facilitate the social belonging, cooperation, cohesion, trust, participation, protection, and productivity of all people.
Equity Justice Advocates
The task of developing a cannabis industry that builds equitable outcomes takes not just a team, it takes a community. Meet some of your community members.
Andrea St. Julian
Andrea St. Julian is a San Diego-based attorney whose thirty-year practice focuses on state and federal appeals. Her work is dedicated to the representation of the indigent, many of whom are casualties of the war on drugs.
Andrea has a deep history of working with the community on issues that include crime, policing, cannabis social equity, and other social justice issues. She is the co-founder of a nonprofit impact litigation organization known as Community Advocates for Justice and Moral Governance (MoGo), as well as co-chair of San Diegans for Justice, a political action committee supporting police reform. Andrea is also a board member of the ACLU, San Diego and Imperial Counties.
Several years ago, at the request of community members, Andrea began working to ensure that cannabis social equity was woven into the framework of the local cannabis industry. In early 2021, Andrea became a founding member and the facilitator of the San Diego County Cannabis Stakeholders’ Group (CSG), a group comprised of dozens of local cannabis businesses, organizations, and individuals. The mission of the CSG is the creation of a healthy and rational cannabis industry with social equity at its center.
Khalil Ferguson
Khalil currently serves as the President for the United CORE Alliance (UCA), which engages populations and communities most harmed by the War on Drugs to create pathways for job placement in emerging markets, facilitates educational opportunities to increase economic mobility, and organizes legal support to formerly incarcerated individuals. Khalil’s focus on strategies for combating gentrification and supporting inclusive economic development programs has resulted in appointments to the City of Sacramento’s Measure U Tax Oversight Committee and the City Manager’s Inclusive Economic Development and Investment Committee.
Khalil’s work is guided by an intimate understanding of what inclusive economic development means, and why it is important to help level the playing field and increase market share for entrepreneurs of color. His data and research driven perspective - along with connections to Drug War impacted communities and millennials of color is exactly what the community needs. He can help bring extremely important data, relationship and resource-oriented solutions to achieving safety through carving equitable pathways into the legal market.
Under Khalil’s leadership, the UCA has been instrumental in helping the city of Sacramento in forming its cannabis equity policies. Recently, the city added 10 additional permits specifically for drug war impacted communities. Additionally, Khalil was integral to the establishment of the California Cannabis Equity Grants Program which provided $30 million in grant funding to jurisdictions throughout the State of California. He also serves as the secretary for the Democratic Party Black Caucus Legislative Committee and is the Chair for the Cannabis Equity Trade Certification Policy Committee.
Khalil holds B.A. degrees in International Relations and Economics from California State University, Sacramento.
Pattie Harris
Pattie Harris travels nationally and internationally, teaching consumers and consulting with businesses about cannabis and hemp. She has been teaching consumers about cannabis therapeutics since 2016. She works with a number of cannabis companies around the country consulting for sustainability and responsible business practices. As an event promoter Pattie organizes large projects in the cannabis industry and writes content for curricula on a wide variety of hemp and cannabis topics.
Her background is in teaching, developmental psychology, neurology and autism spectrum disorders. Pattie is graduating from the Chicago School of Professional Psychology in July 2022 with a Master of Psychopharmacology. Her cannabis research highlights teaching people with autism, PTSD, and chronic pain how to use cannabis effectively. She has been selected to showcase her work through a poster presentation at CannMed 2022.
Additionally, Pattie is a cannabis patient, who has type 1 diabetes and significant polyneuropathy. She was addicted to opioids and in 2009 did some research to find out cannabis (THC) could help to get off those drugs. It took 3 years to wean herself off opioids because no doctors supported my decision to use cannabis. I am an avid learner and realized the value of this plant as medicine and have been learning about it ever since then.
Blue Quisquis
Blue Quisquis is a creative, experienced, and passionate entrepreneur who likes nothing more then to continuously create, seek, and develop new opportunities, especially in the Native American Cannabis Industry. Blue is CEO/Founder at SINC IT/Native American Cannabis Industry Consultant. He is the CEO/Founder of the National Native American Cannabis Association (C-NACA). Blue is a 20 year vet in the casino industry and an advocate for tribal sovereignty and self-reliance in the legal cannabis and hemp industry. He promotes education and intertribal support for Native American tribes in cannabis and hemp production.
Blue’s entrepreneurial spirit was apparent from an early age. By the time Blue was 4 he could play and deal casino card games, then his father taught him what the word profit meant. Soon afterwards, he began collecting and recycling can’s, he also started shining his dad’s shoes for a $1. Blue’s favorite part of being an entrepreneur and owning his own company Emerald Enterprise inc is working for yourself, because it allows him to be a father and husband. Blue’s vision is to bring his experience and expertise to the new Native American cannabis industry. Despite his busy business career Blue also makes time to be involved with his community and professional organizations. He is a member of the San Pasqual Band of Kumeyaay and is a volunteer committee member on the San Pasqual Cemetery Committee.
Anthony Avalos
As a 3rd and 4th generation San Diegan, Anthony has witnessed the impact a family unit has on community as well as the impact community has on the family unit’s wellbeing. As a survivor of the failed drug war, Anthony is acutely aware of the disproportionate trauma that some communities continue to experience. The pharmacological and economic powerhouse that is cannabis represents both direct and indirect pathways to community healing. Anthony has studied Human Resource Management as well as obtained multiple certifications through Columbia Care and Americans for Safe Access PFC program. As a certified patient-focused cannabis expert, Anthony has developed retail SOP’s, curriculum and facilitated cannabis education programs for our most vulnerable San Diegans.
Anthony has logistical expertise in HRM as well as c-suite support and has assisted both legacy operators and MSO’s brand development. This has cultivated an understanding of cannabis business needs while developing standards of equity with multiple stakeholders within the emerging cannabis industry. Anthony is dedicated to honoring the work of those that came before us by creating the most effective cannabis social equity program in the nation.
Margit Whitlock
Margit E. Whitlock AIA LEED AP | Principal in Charge of Architecture and Interior Design | Architectural Concepts
Inc. a San Diego, CA based design firm. Ms. Whitlock is responsible for creating the concepts that drive the
creative process. Her professional experience includes all aspects of architecture, design and the building
process including project programming and site analysis, interior design, custom FFE, construction documents,
permit processing and construction administration. She is a licensed architect in the states of CA, AZ, NY, PA,
TX, FL and HI. To foster her passion about the built environment and her community, Margit is a board member
and past President of SDAF (San Diego Architectural Foundation) a 501c3 non-profit. She is a member of the
County of San Diego Cannabis Stakeholders Group, BEEP volunteer and Habitat for Humanity and NEWH past
board member. For the past thirty years she has focused on commercial design and construction with projects
nationally and internationally. Her project list includes hospitality, retail, restaurants, historic and cannabis
facilities.
Ms. Whitlock is an accomplished speaker with engagements at multiple ARDA conventions, HD Boutique show,
Friends of San Diego Architecture as well as being frequently published in magazines such as Developments,
Resort Trades, Hotel Business, Hiatus, Vacation Industry Review and Resort Management and Operations.
She received a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Oregon with academic strengths in urban
planning and design and extended studies in Art History and Architecture at the University of Copenhagen,
Denmark.