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Investor Relations
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Section Title
Leadership Team
Ambrose Jackson
Chairman and CEO
Prior to launching and gaining licensing for Illinois cannabis companies Parkway Dispensary, Helios Labs and Highwaymen Security, Ambrose Jackson spent 15 in business management and organizational leadership in the healthcare industry. The primary functions he was responsible for included Regulatory Compliance, Patient Safety, Quality Improvement, and Consumer Experience.
Ambrose is also a practitioner the Toyota Production System model, having implementing structured management systems for world-class healthcare organizations, leading to effective business management practices, decreased lead times and labor cost, and increased business profitability.
Sonia Antolec
General Counsel
Judge Sonia A. Antolec devotes her career to actively working to remove barriers to justice for marginalized communities and advocates for social equity in everything she does. Judge Antolec is the first single mom and multicultural woman appointed as a Judge to the Illinois Court of Claims when Governor J.B. Pritzker appointed her in March 2021.
Prior to that, she was the Director of People and Legal for The Mom Project, and she spent 13 years working in government, including two terms in the Cook County State's Attorney's office. In her second term, she was the Director of Legal Hiring and Recruiting. She was also Deputy General Counsel and Chief Administrative Law Judge for Illinois Healthcare and Family Services. She is a 2017 Chicago United for Equity Fellow.
Alex Al-Sabah
Chief Strategy Officer
Alex Al-Sabah's cannabis experience spans 20 years, beginning as an owner operator under California's Proposition 215.
Alex has assembled an extensive network of colleagues and relationships within the cannabis industry, which will be leveraged to further The 1937 Group's operating and growth strategies.
In 2013, Alex built on his California footprint through the purchase of a small share of STIIIZY, one of the largest retail operators throughout the state. Since then, Alex has served as an advisor and investor to several cannabis startups in multiple states across the U.S. and together with his partners own a collection of 16 licenses spanning 4 states and growing to 6 states by 2022.
Eric Ice-Gipson
Chief Integration Officer
Eric Ice-Gipson is a United States combat veteran who possesses over 20 of experience within the IT industry. He acquired his Bachelor of Science in Computer Networks and Design from Western Governors University in 2007. Eric Ice-Gipson went on to achieve his Master of Business Administration from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2019 with specialization in Entrepreneurship, Business Predictive Analytics.
Eric Ice-Gipson has been integral to the IT build-outs of seven (7) of the eight (8) sites at an Illinois Federally Qualified Health Center as well as a major Research and Teaching Hospital’s Adult Emergency Department and Cancer Center. He has implemented technological protocols at all organizational levels, from the C-suite to front-end staff.
Jonathan Valdes
Chief Operating Officer
Jonathan Valdes is an owner and operator of two security and locksmithing companies serving the Chicagoland area. He entered the cannabis industry as a licensed cultivation caregiver in Michigan after meeting Ambrose Jackson, while both studying at the University of Illinois-Chicago.
In 2019, adult-use cannabis was legalized in the state of Illinois. Jonathan was connected with Ambrose Jackson, and together they built a team to apply for multiple license types as Social Equity Applicants. Jonathan's management skills, relationship development strengths, and attention to detail paid off, as his group was one of only three groups who won a licenses in three separate categories out of over 7,000 total applicants.
Brandon Van Asten
Financial Advisor
Brandon Van Asten currently serves as the Corporate Controller for a large multi-state cannabis operator. He is a CPA and previously a consultant to the cannabis industry serving over 400 cannabis license holders with regard to 280E tax, application assistance and outsourced bookkeeping. In this role, he performed financial projections for Applicants across the U.S., was an outsourced CFO to several U.S. cannabis companies, and consulted on cannabis accounting issues, including 280E.
Outside of inventory accounting, he has audited financial statements for cannabis companies in New York, Hawaii, Illinois, and Arizona (states that require audits) as well as several companies that need financial audits for their investors or Canadian parent companies.