Lori Ferrara

Lori Ferrara is co-founder and a managing partner at Treehouse Global Ventures, the first woman investor of the Arc View Group and one of the leading investors and trusted source in the cannabis industry. Ferrara was a former television and media executive.

Ferrara is an experienced adviser and a sought-after investor shark, a seasoned mentor, a mother, a pioneer. Ferrara is a 30-year veteran of highly regulated industries—including international categories such as television distribution and cannabis, where she’s made a habit of breaking through male-dominated industries’ glass ceilings via her tenacious entrepreneurial drive and fierce work ethic.

For more than a decade in the mid-’80s, Ferrara managed syndication operations at Mediatech, Inc. for TV’s biggest titles, from Inside Edition to Jeopardy, Geraldo to The Oprah Winfrey Show. Years later Ferrara opened her own shop, Picture Perfect Partners, which delivered television programming worldwide via satellite for some the largest syndicators in the entertainment industry—including Warner Bros., Tribune Entertainment and Disney.

Ferrara began researching medical cannabis while she nursed her husband, Jim, through a battle with stage 4 tongue cancer in 2012 and fought her own way through an early stage breast cancer diagnosis in 2014. She delved into the ways cannabis component cannabidiol (a.k.a. CBD) was being used as a preventative treatment for potential relapses. As she watched the cannabis industry’s early development, she knew it would need experienced leadership, entrepreneurs and diverse visionaries to legitimize and professionalize the business of regulated marijuana.

Ferrara soon became the first female investor member of The Arcview Group, a network that now consists of 650-plus accredited investors who have put in more than $150 million into more than 160 companies.

Today, Ferrara’s Alexava Holdings, Inc., is a boutique private equity firm focused on mainstreaming cannabis businesses. She was a leading investor with Medicine Man, one of the legal world’s largest and most profitable medical cannabis growers, dispensaries and consulting firms. She is a lead investor with ancillary businesses Atlas Plant Trainer, BLMG Holdings and Rooted Lyfe. And Ferrara has also advised and helped develop business for other marijuana companies, including Lucid Mood, Treatibles, MyDx and Dymapak.

Ferrara’s latest creation is Treehouse Global Ventures, a fund she co-founded that will raise capital for women-owned businesses in the cannabis space. Her vision for Treehouse Global Ventures is to empower, inspire and mentor these female entrepreneurs while also managing a successful, female-led fund.