Jessica Harshbarger has deep cannabis sector experience. She was a founding employee of a medical cannabis company’s first Illinois dispensary location back in 2015. During the launch of the dispensary, she served as the Dispensary General Manager and performed this role for three and a half years. As the General Manager, she oversaw all aspects of successfully running an Illinois-based medical dispensary, including marketing, sales, customer service, wellness planning, community outreach, operations, cannabis acquisition, inventory, state inspections, compliance, and administering state compliant protocols for training, bookkeeping, and audits. Her cannabis knowledge as a consumer goes back nearly 20 years. However, she did not become an advocate for cannabis as medicine until after being diagnosed with a rare blood cancer back in January of 2011, Essential Thrombocythemia (E.T.) with a JAK2 mutation. Faced with a treatment option that would entail a lifelong regimen of chemotherapy, she explored other alternatives and found that cannabis had an apoptotic effect on Leukemic cancer cells. With her doctor’s approval, she began using medical cannabis to control her platelet count in 2015. Today Jessica has reduced her platelet counts from the 900’s to the 500’s using only CBD rich cannabis oil (R.S.O.) and turmeric root powder and has never gone on chemotherapy. (Normal human platelet counts are around 150.) Jessica gained knowledge on medical cannabis products, strains, and their uses through personal study, research, her personal use, cultivation center samples and tours, and working with patients over the last four plus years. Her passion is to help patients and dispensary agents alike to get the most out of cannabis use, and she strives to teach as many people about this as she can. In the fall of 2018, she founded her own cannabis education company, which has developed and delivered training programs for the public, medical professionals seeking continuing education credit, and dispensary staff seeking state certification. She has also provided consultative services for existing medical dispensaries and new dispensary applicants, as well as personal one-on-one patient consultations. In this new venture Jessica began creating cannabis educational course material and hosting educational training sessions; as well as providing personal consultations for patients. She has since developed three (3) Continuing Medical Education Credit Courses (CEU’s); ● Cannabis 101 ● Hemp vs. Cannabis for CBD ● Transitioning from Opioids to Cannabis; And has created one (1) Continuing Medical Education Credit Course (CME) for Doctors called: • “Understanding Cannabis”. All four (4) of these courses are certified through the Continuing Education Institute of Illinois. • IL Certified Responsible Vendor, Adult Use Cannabis Training Course listed on the IDFPR website under her business name, Empowering Health for IL

Jessica is considered to be an expert among her industry peers and is exceptional at teaching people how to use each method of cannabis consumption, and what products work best for each symptom and condition. She knows IL cultivators and their products, cannabis strains, terpenes, cannabinoids, ingestion methods, safety precautions and standards, dosages, medical effects, Laws and rules regarding the programs here in IL, as well as Laws and rules around working in a dispensary. Her passion for teaching others about cannabis is unmistakable. She continues to host local cannabis workshops and training courses today. Her recent courses have covered the following subjects; cooking classes, vape tips and tricks, medical vs. recreational cannabis, cannabis for Veterans, PTSD and panic disorders-how cannabis can help, yoga and cannabis, incorporating cannabis safely into your workout, and dosage and safety tips with cannabis, ask the pharmacist (with Joe Freedman), and many other topics related to the proper use of cannabis. Jessica Harshbarger personally uses R.S.O. daily for her blood disorder; smokes concentrates, vape cartridges, and flower from many different cultivators; uses topicals; and bakes her own edibles. She also used her cannabis knowledge to help her 24 year old son through his chemotherapy for a Ewing Sarcoma cancer diagnosis the family received in June of 2019. Friends, industry colleagues, family, and acquaintances all contact her regularly for advice on cannabis & CBD. Jessica has toured the Pharmacannis, Cresco Labs, Green Thumb Industries, Bedford Grown, and Grassroots Cannabis cultivation center facilities; and has attended many industry events throughout her career here in IL cannabis. Jessica is remarkably familiar with all products available through the medical cannabis market here in IL and how to properly open and optimally use each of them. She has not only taught dispensary staff, the public, and medical staff about cannabis and the IL program; but she has also spoken as an advocate for cannabis at the following events:

Some of Jessica’s IL Advocacy Work

1. Patient presenter for Migraines & E.T. with JAK2 at the IL petition hearing May of 2015

2. Speaker IL Cannabis Rally June 2015

3. On CBS News Click Here

4. In the Chicago Tribune, Medical Cannabis her solution Click Here

5. In the Daily Herald Click Here

6. Live Radio Interview WBEZ 9/2015

7. Phone interview Associated Press 8/2015

8. Oct. 7th, 2015 spoke on behalf of intractable pain at the IL Medical Cannabis Program petition hearing.

9. Interviewed for CPACIL’s YouTube series Oct. 7th 2015 at the petition hearing.

10. Featured on MPN network (for people with one of blood cancers collectively known as myeloproliferative neoplasms) Click Here

11. CME Speaking Engagement (Continuing Medical Education Credit Course) at Northwestern Memorial Hospital -The Windsor. August 28th 2019

12. IL Activities Professionals Association Annual Gala- CME Speaker Oct. 4th 2019

13. Since August 2018 I have developed & presented many CEU & CME educational sessions on various subjects surrounding cannabis, as well as hosted public educational sessions throughout the city & suburbs of Chicago.

14. Speaker- Public Comments on Recreational Cannabis

• Naperville City Council meeting August 20th 2019

• DuPage County Board Meeting Sept. 10th 2019

• Several other local towns (Highland Park, Deerfield, Schaumburg, Elgin)