Tiffany Walters: A Rochester native’s quest to transform New York’s cannabis landscape

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If anyone encapsulates legal cannabis in Rochester, it’s Tiffany Walters.

In her 39 years, Walters has developed expertise from industries ranging from cannabis to communications to child care, which have enabled her and her partner, Jumaane Hughes, 44, to build a statewide cannabis training and information platform that could become a key driver of workforce development in New York’s legal cannabis industry.

Rochester – the city and greater metro area in which she was born, raised, and still lives – contain disparate assets (farmland, an urban center, a population greater than 1 million) that could collectively yield a successful legal cannabis industry, but its retail prospects have been hamstrung by court injunctions more than any other hub in the state, increasing the importance of a statewide platform being headquartered in the Finger Lakes city.

“All the components that we need to have a very successful cannabis ecosystem are right here in Rochester, and I think Tiffany and Jumaane are definitely a part of the puzzle that makes Rochester rock,” said Jeff Medford, a Rochester-based legacy operator who runs a cannabis cultivation “safe space” in the city called The Green Lounge.

The platform Walters and Hughes have built, New York State Cannabis Connect, has linked New Yorkers – from Rochester to Syracuse to New York City and beyond – to resources and networks aimed at helping them find their place in the state’s legal cannabis industry.

The duo founded NYSCC about a month after New York legalized adult-use cannabis, in March of 2021, with the intention of assisting everyone from entrepreneurs looking to start a weed business to prospective employees looking for a job within the nascent marketplace.

Specifically, the pair wanted to help Black New Yorkers, who accounted for a majority of cannabis arrests in New York City before legalization, according to NYPD data.

“We wanted to be that connection, and that vehicle, and that foundation, and offer free resources so that you could at least have a starting point,” Walters told NY Cannabis Insider.

“Fifty-seven percent of the people arrested for cannabis [in 2020] were Black,” she said. “We have to make a space for ourselves; we have to figure out how to help each other; we have to figure out how to work together.”

In partnership with New York’s Department of Labor, NYSCC has hosted networking events across the state, called Catch A Contact, which have attracted more than 3,000 people since 2022.

Walters and Hughes have published web-based training modules and built the General Resource Access Map (G.R.A.M.), an exhaustive database of support systems for those looking for careers in cannabis.

The need for services connecting people to jobs in cannabis will likely grow significantly in coming years. Statewide, the industry could create up to 60,000 new jobs, and account for $350 million per year in state tax revenue, according to a study by government relations firm Capalino.

Legal operators in New York have seen more than $112 million in revenue since last December, and a 2021 study funded by the New York Medical Cannabis Industry Association predicted up to $4.6 billion legal marijuana revenue per year by 2027.

Over the next year and beyond, Walters said she and Hughes want to double down on building tutorial materials, putting much of their energy into creating curricula and programs that could serve as standard training for all cannabis licensees and employees in New York State.

The platform has already connected people across the state to information and contacts in the weed industry, and it could become an important accelerant for the state’s marijuana sector, said Michelle Fields, an attorney and manager at Black Farmers United NYS.

That’s despite New York’s failure to fully launch the industry more than two years post-legalization.

“They have really pushed through all of the hurdles that they are facing as a small organization, and they’re still having an impact,” Fields said.

With its ever-changing regulatory environment, New York’s legal cannabis industry has proven to be a difficult landscape to work within. But, historically, working around challenges has never deterred Walters much.

Partners in cannabis

Growing up on Rochester’s Columbia Avenue during the ‘80s and ‘90s crack cocaine wave – and corresponding heavy-handed enforcement – provided Walters with a front-row seat to the War on Drugs at an early age. Including in her own home.

Multiple family members, including her mother who passed away in 2018, lived with substance abuse issues, which they often funded through criminal activity, Walters said.

“My mom was addicted to drugs, some of my aunts and uncles were addicted to drugs; it was life. I was born in ‘84, this is what the ghetto in Rochester looked like,” she said.

“I don’t typically talk about that: My mom was in and out of jail, she was a booster, a thief – she even robbed banks. So I was exposed to a lot.”

While Walters understood from an early age the disastrous effects drug addiction can have on anyone’s life, she also learned that conflating marijuana with hard drugs like crack and heroin is a category error.

She first tried smoking weed with friends when she was about 14, but didn’t really dive into cannabis culture until she attended Monroe Community College at 19. That’s where she met Hughes, who would become her partner in business and in life – the two have a child and have been together for 21 years.

And for a time during cannabis prohibition, they were also partners in crime.

The two met through mutual friends at Monroe Community College in 2003. Hughes, who grew up in Rochester’s west side, first bonded with Walters over their mutual interest and enjoyment in cannabis. It was during these early days the two started taking trips to Canada, where the drinking age was 18, and stores could legally sell cannabis seeds.

At the time, before legalization was on the horizon in New York, good weed wasn’t always easy to come by. Now-a-days, cannabis users can walk into a dispensary and buy specific strains based on terpene and cannabinoid content, but back then, bags of bud were often just identified as B-sters, kine bud and headdies.

But Walters and Hughes wanted to grow weed that looked like the centerfolds in High Times magazine.

“The whole point of growing this cannabis wasn’t to try to become profiteers of this plant,” Hughes said. “It was to create a better plant.”

Walters and Hughes experimented with growing by piecing together information gathered from the internet and magazines. It took three or four crop failures – and a friend from the Adirondacks to help them hone their growing skills – before they successfully harvested smokeable weed.

But the exposure to better weed also exposed them to law enforcement.

Walters was living at her aunt’s house in Irondequoit, a working-class suburb five miles north of Rochester where Black residents accounted for just under 10% of the town’s population of approximately 50,000 in the early 2000s – compared to White residents, who made up 83%.

There, Walters said, the two were often targeted by police for smoking weed, one time arresting Hughes for possession of about an ounce. He was charged with a misdemeanor, and felt lucky that was all that happened.

“Being a minority individual from the inner city,” Hughes said, police use cannabis “as an excuse to escalate things. I’ve seen the cops use it as an excuse to humiliate you; I’ve seen cops use it as an excuse to financially decapitate you.”

But their biggest legal scare happened when they were still college students growing weed for personal use in a Rochester duplex. Police were searching for a fugitive in the adjoining unit and trying to gain access to search for the suspect.

The array of plants Walters and Hughes were growing could have exposed them to serious charges, but they were able to move the cannabis out of the building to Walters’ mother’s apartment. They then had to move the plants a second time, which killed the crops.

Following the scare, the two remained passionate about cannabis, but shifted their focus to their education and careers in a time when few people took the prospect of legal cannabis in the U.S. seriously.

Walters went on to graduate from community college with an associate degree in communications, and later earned a bachelor’s in communications and public relations from SUNY Brockport, where she graduated magna cum laude. She worked in public relations, sales and implementation roles at companies including Sprint, LensCrafters and Petco.

In 2015, Walters and Hughes opened a daycare business, which has been free of any infractions in a strictly regulated environment. Statistically, this is no easy feat; a 2016 New York State Senate study reported an average of at least eight violations for each of the state’s 2,244 group daycares between 2013 and 2016.

This experience would later help them advise people looking to start legal cannabis businesses, Walters said.

“I understand what they need to do in order to develop standard operating procedures, and operation methods, so that they wouldn’t get violated,” Walters said.

When New York legalized cannabis in 2021, it was an exciting but bittersweet moment for Walters and Hughes.

The two were both energized, and immediately began thinking strategically about how they could be part of this newly legalized industry. But by the time it happened, Walters’ mother and Hughes’ father – both of whom had been supportive of cannabis – had died.

The death of Hughes’ father hit hard. He enjoyed cannabis and supported legalization, but opted to indulge in alcohol more than weed, mostly because it was more socially acceptable. He died from health issues partly caused by drinking about a month before adult-use marijuana became legal in New York.

By the time then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the MRTA into law, Walters and Hughes had decided they wanted to be on the ancillary side of cannabis, rather than plant-touching. They also figured that their combined experiences running a heavily regulated business and doing public relations, in addition to their college era experience growing weed, positioned them to build a resource that could highlight available resources and create new ones for people new to cannabis and/or business regulations.

The two soon came up with the New York Cannabis Connect concept, and started working on it in April of 2021. They officially launched the website a few months later, in August.

NYSCC’s use case is multifaceted. It includes a job board, information about state regulations and training opportunities, a forum for licensees and prospective licensees to connect, and other features.

But, ultimately, they would like to create and license training curricula that entrepreneurs can use to learn about regulations, and employers can use to teach new workers about state laws.

“The feedback that we’ve been receiving is that people feel like there aren’t opportunities, they don’t know where to find opportunities … and for the employer: how they can find people who are interested in this field,” Walters said.

The Office of Cannabis Management has hosted informational events about the legal cannabis industry, along with training programs. The agency has run in-person and online events about each license type and how to apply, as well as requirements and regulations for licensees. The OCM has also offered the Cannabis Compliance Training & Mentorship Program, a 10-week class meant to teach legacy operators about how to operate a regulated business.

And while the OCM’s work is an important institutional effort, NYSCC adds a deep connection to the communities its services are meant to support, said state Sen. Jeremy Cooney, who represents Rochester in the state legislature and has partnered with NYSCC on several occasions.

“Cannabis Connect is doing the grassroots work to ensure New Yorkers can fully participate in this emerging market,” Cooney told NY Cannabis Insider. “I commend Tiffany for her commitment to our shared mission of an equitable program throughout New York.”

Future revenue

Since dispensaries in the state’s Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary program began planning and opening businesses, NYSCC has created a revenue stream by providing job placement and business implementation services, Walters said.

In the long run, Walters said, NYSCC’s revenue model will include charging for those services in addition to licensing training modules. The idea for training came from Walters’ experience in daycare, where she knew there were organizations offering courses in subjects like first aid and CPR for her employees.

Additionally, Walters said, the training modules create a way for prospective employees to show weed companies that they have some experience in the field. People who have grown weed illegally for years don’t have a certificate proving their knowledge, but a training program can give them some documentation showing they have a basic understanding, she said.

One of the goals Walters and Hughes want to achieve in providing these connections and educational opportunities is to encourage minorities – especially Black New Yorkers – interested in entering cannabis to look beyond retail.

Minorities should also consider creating brands, and using licensing agreements to work with licensed cultivators, as well as explore other non plant-touching opportunities, Walters said.

“Let’s not, all of us as minorities, get tricked into going to the retail license; we need to be getting all of the licenses on the chain,” Walters said.

Catch a Contact

The Catch a Contact job summits, in partnership with the state Labor Department, have proven successful in placing jobs and creating brand awareness for NYSCC.

Walters did most of the promotion for the first summit – held in Rochester in July 2022 – but at the time, she wasn’t sure if they’d even see 100 attendees.

They ended up hosting 180 people, and two attendees got jobs at the event. A few months later, Walters and Hughes were surprised to find people lined up around the block for their next event in Brooklyn.

In total, according to Walters and Hughes, more than 1,350 people have attended one of their nine Catch A Contact events, and over 5,000 people have attended either virtual or in-person events associated with NYSCC. Nearly 50 people have been hired for jobs via Catch A Contact or NYSCC’s job board, and those have an 80% retention rate as of six months from their date of hire.

“It has grown into something I never could have imagined,” Walters said.

NYSCC has been resonating with people across the state, and growing its reputation as a clearinghouse for information and contacts in New York’s cannabis industry.

“Even though they’re located in Rochester, their bandwidth has been to cover New York State, especially in the five boroughs,” attorney Michelle Fields said. “It gives them a really powerful position to really scale and reach a larger demographic.”

Medford said the platform could become vital for small businesses, largely due to the combination of Walters and Hughes’ skills in business development and operating in a heavily regulated industry, and their understanding of the cannabis community.

“What makes them unique is they kind of tapped into the culture of cannabis,” Medford said. “They really open up some wonderful opportunities to the community … we need jobs, we need employment, we need people to be educated about the jobs that are available.”

New York’s slow rollout for the cannabis industry has, in some ways, limited NYSCC’s progress in recent months – especially amid a court injunction that stopped hundreds of CAURD businesses from opening between August and December (the injunction was lifted on Dec. 1).

But, as Walters said, NYSCC is still growing, building its training curricula, and serving as a key source of information for people seeking contacts in the industry.

Access to this education and connections can go a long way to creating an equitable cannabis industry in New York, Walters said.

“When we’re talking about generational wealth, when we’re talking about actually making an impact,” Walters said, “we’re talking about wages, C-suite positions, and these things that aren’t available right now, because the industry is in its infancy.”