Jill Reddish

Cohort 14, MCCN, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Global Cannabis Network Collective

What drew you to the MCCN degree track?

I liked seeing a curriculum designed around some of the “soft skills” that are needed in business, especially regarding community building and communications, but with plenty of technical education built in. I also liked how the Comm Lead program had a lot of local partnerships and stayed plugged in to businesses and nonprofits alike. Most importantly, I liked seeing a program that’s dedicated to evolving and staying relevant. I joined in 2014, a time when Twitter had become an important communication channel and when Facebook Groups were a rich resource for community builders, but having seen the birth and launch of these channels, I knew things would just keep evolving throughout my career. Finding a master’s program that expected the media landscape to keep evolving was important to me, and ten years later, that expectation and skillset around how to keep learning and stay relevant has paid off! 

How does the focus and ethos of the MCCN intersect with your work today? 

I co-founded and run a professional network for international cannabis businesses, called the Global Cannabis Network Collective. We operate a little like an international chamber of commerce, but we go beyond hosting webinars and providing access to discounts for our members: we’re the “room where the deals get done.” We make introductions for our members to help them advance their business and expand internationally across the growing cannabis supply chain. The MCCN helped me understand how to run a community but also how to create a safe space for CEOs to be honest about their goals and challenges, and how to professionally leverage those authentic relationships. If I understand the ethos and motivation that drives a CEO who joins our network, then I can make a better introduction to potential clients or strategic partners who share similar values because I know they are likely to be aligned and be successful together.  

If you could design a course for the MCCN degree track, what would it be?

Stakeholder Buy-In for Community Management. I hear a lot from CEOs about the different pressures they face in answering to investors as much as the customers they’re serving, and it’s very similar to expectations for non-profits or educational institutions as well. Leaders have multiple stakeholders whose expectations they must keep in mind, and it’s a constant balance between delivering against those. It can be easy to lose sight of, but skills I learned from MCCN about how to truly understand your “why,” how to build relationships with multiple stakeholders, how groups make decisions (Shout out to my instructor Gerry Philipsen!) and how to tailor your message to different audiences all come into play in my business. Being pulled in multiple directions are real challenges that leaders have to face, and the ones I see who navigate them with the least stress (because it’s never stress-free) are those who have a strong sense of their “why” and can keep their teams and stakeholders focused on that.

What is one of the best pieces of career advice you’ve ever gotten?

“Done is better than perfect.” The real world is messy, especially in an emerging marketplace like cannabis. People are just trying to keep moving and get to their bottom line, so I’ve had to let go of a lot of perfectionism and keep my eye on getting things done to keep moving forward, most especially as an entrepreneur. When you realize everyone is dealing with that balancing act too, you can let go of a lot of stress about being perfect. But, always take the time to copy edit!