Advisory Board

Av Singh is one of Canada’s leading authorities on organic agriculture. After completing his post-doc at the University of Minnesota on pasture-based livestock production, Singh worked at the Organic Agriculture Centre of Canada and served as the Organic and Small-Scale Farming Specialist in Nova Scotia, for over 15 years, and recently held the Just Us! Chair in Small Farm Sustainability. Emphasizing a union of traditional knowledge with science, Av works with growers to cultivate an appreciation of plant:soil interrelationships. Av credits his extension of holistic, system-based design solutions to having visited over 2000 farms, across five continents. Dr. Singh has authored over 200 peer-reviewed papers, chapters, and extension articles and has been an invited speaker to over 500 workshops, conferences, symposia as well as guest-lecturing at over 30 universities in Canada, the US, the UK, and India. Currently, Av and his colleague Randy Flemming serve as Cultivation Advisors within the cannabis industry. Av is also the Chief Science Officer with Green Gorilla (a Cannabidiol Company) and formerly served as the Chief Agronomist with the American Cannabis Company. Av is also serving as the Vice-President of the Canadian Organic Growers and is proud to be a member of Slow Food Canada, Food Secure Canada, and the National Farmers’ Union. Av is also a faculty member at Earth University (Navdanya) in India where he annually delivers courses on agroecology and organic farming.

Bill started working in the Greenhouse industry at 15 and has never looked back. Now, with over 4 decades of growing experience, he is turning this hard earned knowledge into the training of qualified Cannabis growers. After completing his BSc (Agr) in Soil Science at the University of Guelph, Bill co-managed a Cut Flower/Garden Centre Greenhouse in London ON. After seven years of growing, he returned to the University of Guelph to complete an MSc in Plant Nutrition/Physiology. Upon completion of his MSc, he was hired to turn around a struggling 450,000 square foot Greenhouse in Nova Scotia. As Production Manager, Bill transformed the operation from top to bottom by training growers, writing production plans and building a team atmosphere over a five-year period. Subsequently, he purchased Anmar Greenhouses in Fenwick, ON with his wife Linda. There, Bill developed protocols to be compliant with the CFIA’s Greenhouse Certification Program, introduced IPM, installed irrigation methods to be environmentally compliant and expanded the operation. After 11 years of successful operation at Anmar Greenhouses, Bill decided to enter the education field in order to train the next generation of growers. In 2007, he started teaching in the Greenhouse Technician Program at Niagara College Canada (NC), of which he is now professor and coordinator. Four years ago, Bill started providing advice to groups considering entering the Cannabis industry and he has continued to be highly involved. Working with a phenomenal team at Niagara College, and valuable input from LPs, Bill was instrumental in the development of the Commercial Cannabis Production program at NC, which will commence in September 2018. Bill has recently launched Achene Consulting, which provides expert growing advice to the Cannabis industry. He is also Special Graduate Faculty in the Plant Agriculture department at the University of Guelph.

Daniel is the Marketing Manager for Agronomic IQ, the most advanced temperature, humidity and grow room HVAC equipment in the world. He has been with the company since January 2019 and is leveraging his marketing experience from the automotive sector. Daniel graduated from the University of Guelph with a degree in Political Science, and gained marketing expertise through the Advertising and Marketing Communications program at Georgian College.

David Hyde, M.Sc. CPC is Canada’s top independent security consultant. Over a 32-year career, David has advised major governments and corporations, secured some of Canada’s most iconic landmarks and built the security program for a $19 billion global corporation with 60 million sq ft of facility assets. David’s security advisory firm, David Hyde & Associates, has extensive experience in security consultation within the growing regulated cannabis sector across Canada and internationally.

Over the past 4.5 years in the Canadian context, David Hyde & Associates has: (1) provided security consulting services to 165+ MMPR/ACMPR license applicants; (2) attended 22 Pre-license Inspections with Health Canada and; (3) worked with 24 Licensed Producer sites. David recently became the first Associate Member of the Cannabis Canada Association and sits as the only Canadian member on the Security Committee for the Foundation of Cannabis Unified Standards (FOCUS).

David holds a M.Sc. (w/Distinction) in Security & Risk Management from the Univ. of Leicester & Certificate in Security Management from the Univ. of Calgary. He completed The Wharton School Development Program for Security Executives and is a Certified Advanced Level C.P.T.E.D. Practitioner. He is certified to perform Threat Risk Assessments and is regularly called upon by legal counsel for expert testimony on the adequacy of facility security programs.

For the past 12 years, David has taught crime prevention and security at the University of Calgary. He is one of only 4 Canadians to have been accepted as a member of the world-renowned International Association of Professional Security Consultants (IAPSC).

George Dickinson (aka Max Yield) is the founder and president of CannaPro Projects. Over a 28 year career in professional horticulture George has been a commercial flower grower in a Niagara greenhouse operation, a lighting design and installation specialist for worldwide research companies and large commercial growers, and an importer of specialized flower genetics from worldwide plant breeders. Over the past 9 years in the cannabis industry, CannaPro has helped consult, design, build and supply over 200 cannabis producers in 6 different countries. In 2018 CannaPro Europe was launched in Zaragoza, Spain to service projects and customers in Europe and soon CannaPro USA will be launched to tackle the USA market. George is also a co-founder of Growhaus Supply Co., a cannabis specific supply company offering Canadian cannabis producers all the necessary personal protection, janitorial, safety and disinfectant products required for producers to remain GMP and Health Canada compliant.

David holds a M.Sc. (w/Distinction) in Security & Risk Management from the Univ. of Leicester & Certificate in Security Management from the Univ. of Calgary. He completed The Wharton School Development Program for Security Executives and is a Certified Advanced Level C.P.T.E.D. Practitioner. He is certified to perform Threat Risk Assessments and is regularly called upon by legal counsel for expert testimony on the adequacy of facility security programs.

For the past 12 years, David has taught crime prevention and security at the University of Calgary. He is one of only 4 Canadians to have been accepted as a member of the world-renowned International Association of Professional Security Consultants (IAPSC).

Katy has spent most of her adult life advocating for patient rights and cannabis legalization. She has been cultivating cannabis with her personal production license for 8 years and believes that the safest way to ensure that you have a clean, affordable product is to grow your own. She has created a team of professionals at Grow Op Hydroponics that help navigate cannabis consumers through the sometimes confusing world of cannabis cultivation.

Selina is the Director of Marketing & Communications at Kanata Earth; an indigenous Canadian cannabis company concentrated on cultivation, genetics and testing. Educated in marketing along with a Direct Marketing Accreditation (with Distinction) with the Canadian Marketing Association, Selina has spent the past 18 years in marketing and communications, with the last 13 highly concentrated in digital. She has worked for large advertising agencies like Carlson Marketing (now Aimia) and has worked on VIP brands like Ford of Canada, Microsoft, and BMO (Bank of Montreal). In 2014, Selina spent two years in a marketing leadership role at one of Toronto’s hottest social media tech startups, Wattpad; a global company that revolutionized and serialized reading for the social web. Selina has helped several startup companies over the last decade and is a true entrepreneur at heart. For the last three years Selina has been exclusively concentrated on the cannabis industry helping startups and brands in the Canadian cannabis ecosystem. She’s worked with small up and coming edible and topical companies as well as startups looking to break into the micro-cultivation space. She is experienced with the cannabis licensing system and will be launching a micro-cultivation business with her husband in 2020.

Mr. Srinivasa Reddy, is the CEO of Phytoteq Innovations dedicated for the controlled environmental agriculture and sciences. He has 13 years of experience in plants and its importance for the human life, at national and international level. He served as board of director, CSO, COO in various companies, and is a member of ASABE, ASHS. His visionary thinking about the source of food and medicine from nature encouraged him to collaborate, partner with various advanced technologies and research and development teams across the globe to produce best quality crops in controlled environment. His vision of being sustainable, low cost, and high quality includes vertical farming in a scientifically optimized controlled environment. His education covers wide range of understanding about plants’ behavior in controlled environment, genetics, bio-chemical pathways, photo-biological engineering, tissue culture, cancer research, nutrient and metabolic engineering. He has explored several countries to pursue his post-graduation degrees and has been a global leader in cannabis industry. Recently he co-founded a company, BOTONIQALIFE Inc. in India, for exotic vegetables and nearly 300 native and international herbal grow-cultivate-extract-formulate-pre clinical and clinical for cosmetics, medicinal and various other purposes for human kind. His knowledge, education and network certainly makes him different and unique among thousands of people. He believes in serving best to the society will reward the real purpose of life.