| Shanita Penny is a senior vice president at Forbes Tate Partners. As an internationally recognized strategy consultant and certified Project Management Professional, Shanita combines talent and passion for the cannabis industry to achieve exceptional results for businesses and operators. Before joining FTP, she ran her own boutique cannabis consultancy, helping clients establish and scale compliant, successful cannabis businesses. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Alliance for Sensible Markets and on the Advisory Board of Regennabis. Shanita is a proud alumna of North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University, as well as the University of Baltimore and Towson University. |
Question –
Can you explain your work in the public health and health equity space and what drew you to this work?
My key focus at Forbes Tate Partners is to advise healthcare, tech, and pharmaceutical clients on addressing some of the most pressing public health issues and inequities. Providing strategic direction, identifying and engaging stakeholders, and helping tell local and national stories about their efforts and outcomes are all integral to this work. I was drawn to the public health and health equity space over 10 years ago when I started advocating for medical cannabis legalization.
Cannabis public policy impacts both and requires thoughtful and intentional policy development to improve public health and health equity. As we legalized cannabis in states throughout the country, green deserts, like food and healthcare deserts, were an unintended consequence, leaving many under and never-served populations without access to medical cannabis. Criminal justice reform is also a pillar of my cannabis advocacy and encounters with the criminal justice system have proven to negatively affect health outcomes for individuals and communities.
Question –
How does stakeholder engagement play a key part in advocacy today?
Knowing who is for, against or even agnostic towards an issue or organization is critical to a project or initiative’s success. Deciding whether and how to engage stakeholders is important; oftentimes it’s not enough to attempt to get buy-in or ask for something if you haven’t engaged the stakeholder to some degree throughout the process. Awareness about an issue or your existence and mission is a great place to start. You never know who will become a supporter or at a minimum, not be an impediment. Stakeholders may also have work or relationships that can be leveraged to fast-track or overcome challenges in advocacy.
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What do you find to be most rewarding about the wide-ranging collaboration you foster at FTP?
Radical collaboration! Empowering diverse individuals and organizations to work together in a space that allows for different thinking and doing. I’ve always believed that an individual can do more and better with the right people. Since joining FTP I’ve been amazed at how many times one of my colleagues points me in the direction of another colleague who happens to have an experience or connection to the “missing piece” of a problem I am trying to solve, for the firm or a client.