Ashley Grace
Marketing Subject Matter Expert
Ashley Grace is a consumer packaged goods industry veteran who has worked with most of the top Food and Beverage companies at some point, has been a part of 4 David Ogilvy Award-winning (Campbell Soup, Pepperidge Farm, Brown Forman, Career Education), was recognized for Innovation Leadership by PepsiCo, and spoke twice at Nestle’s Global Digital Marketing Summit.
Ashley is also an expert in the cannabis industry – both as a user who has enjoyed amazing relief from nerve pain and migraines that persisted after a terrible accident and as an industry veteran who jumped into the business in 2015 given his passion from personal experience.
Ashley’s cannabis industry experience began as the founding Chief Marketing Officer and Head of e-Commerce for Charlottes Web. While there, he helped create the CBD category while growing the CW business to $40M and positioning CW for IPO. This invaluable experience included consumer data/surveys, data/CRM infrastructure, weekly FDA legal compliance calls (the CW FDA issue came after Ashley left), retailer questions and education, overseeing new product development, and launching the Stanley Brothers THC brand in Colorado and California.
Ashley served as the founding General Manager in charge of building the ingredients division of Caliper CBD as a B2B expansion into the Hemp market by Colorado THC soluble technology leaders, Stillwater Brands. This focus included building a $1M, clean-label water-soluble CBD beverage business serving Vybes, GT Kombucha, Bimble, and Recess. As the founding Chief Marketing Officer at HempFusion, Ashley helped expand retail sales by 2000 stores, launched the brand’s e-commerce operations, and oversaw 4 marketing test markets to evaluate various forms of CBD marketing.
Ashley co-founded The H. Hemp Company where he became deeply familiar with the nuances of hemp sourcing, growing, extracting, formulating, testing, payment processing, banking, shipping, etc. Ashley also served on the Board of Directors for BDS Analytics (cannabis industry POS data leader) and helped BDS create a partnership with SPINS to close the data loop in the Hemp/CBD POS data category.
A Bachelor of Science in Finance from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business forms Ashley’s business consulting foundation upon which he has leveraged his strengths as profiled in Gallop’s Strength Finders (Strategic, Deliberative, Futuristic, Analytical and Responsible) to become one of the most knowledgeable cannabis industry executives.
