Just a few short years ago, a career in legal cannabis wasn’t an option. Now, people can jump in with both feet. Such was the case for Sean Strickland, the Buyer and Lead Extraction Technician at our Washington facility. Sean has been with Avitas since the beginning, pitching in on our very first harvest back in August of 2014. He’d been on track to go into computer networking, but once he discovered cannabis, there was no going back.
Getting Into Cannabis
Sean was invited to see what Avitas was all about by his uncle, Jason Smit, our Master Grower in Washington. Sean was intrigued and decided to dive in as a processing assistant. He worked in processing for a year before transferring over to work in the lab and to explore R&D. Sean shifted his focus away from computer science and began to study chemistry and plant biology in earnest as he helped define and implement lab best practices back in the earliest days of Avitas. Being at Avitas from the start has had a significant impact on Sean’s trajectory, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. He says, “It was amazing to be involved with cannabis from the very beginning. I’ve seen the company move from a friends and family operation to a multi-state movement.”
Making a Way
Being pioneers in the cannabis industry hasn’t been without its challenges. “We grew a lot more quickly than even we expected,” He laughs. “All of the sudden our facilities couldn’t keep up with demand, and we had to move fast to be able to fill all of the orders that came flowing our way.” It may have caused a few headaches at the time, but even Sean admits that rapid growth was a great problem to have.
Living the Dream
Today, Sean works with our Science Director, Dr. Amber Wise, and continues to streamline lab efficiencies to create the best cannabis oil cartridges on the market. “Working with weed and at the forefront of a brand new industry is awesome. It’s very rare that something like this pops up and I’m so glad that I was able to hop onboard.”