This Entrepreneur Wants Women to Get Comfy With Cannabis
Anna Duckworth on how she made it happen
Name: Anna Duckworth
Job title: Co-founder and chief content officer, Miss Grass
Age: 35
From: Kingsburg, N.S.
Currently lives in: Venice, CA
Education: BA in art history and cultural studies, McGill University; post-graduate BA in journalism, University of King’s College
First job out of school: Nannying in Italy
What do you do when you’re far from home and employed in a job where no one will listen to your progressive ideas? If you’re Anna Duckworth, you take your vast knowledge of the cannabis industry and co-found Miss Grass, a cool AF magazine and shop for women dedicated to all things weed consumption and education. “The idea is to give people the tools to be conscious consumers and to help them understand that to engage with this plant is a really incredible opportunity, but it is a complicated one,” says Duckworth. “[We’re] in powerful position to effect change, to shift the fabric of the political landscape in [America]. And obviously to make weed accessible to everybody.” Can we get an amen?
After completing a post-grad journalism degree, Duckworth worked in Canadian radio, magazines and film before moving to Los Angeles three years ago. Serendipity landed her a high-profile role as head of content at cannabis start-up Dosist (“basically the Apple of weed”), but she grew disillusioned as the company took off. “I realized really quickly that cannabis is an incredibly political conversation, that there’s no way to disentangle the conversation about weed from the conversation about race politics, particularly in the U.S.,” Duckworth explains. “I became really motivated to tell that story.”
She founded Miss Grass with Kate Miller, whom she met while at Dosist. The pair raised over $4 million in funding in Silicon Valley—not an easy feat in the male-dominated world of venture capitalism. “We had a moment in our initial fundraise [where Miller and Duckworth raised $650K], where we realized ‘We need to go in there and behave like we deserve this money.’ That’s how men operate in those same situations. Women have been socialized not to do that. As soon as we shifted that small tone in how we conducted ourselves in conversation, we closed the [second] round immediately.”
At Miss Grass you can read personal essays (“Why I Turned to Cannabis to Manage My Eating Disorders”), get educated (“Legal Loopholes Are Keeping Native Americans out of Cannabis’ Richest State”) and shop for safe, tested cannabis-infused products that help with sleep, pain, sex, periods and skincare. It’s a smorgasbord of cannabis content—but, sadly, Miss Grass still cannot ship to Canada, something Duckworth hopes will change soon. “We want to be in Canada badly, and if it wasn’t a matter of regulatory issues around CBD, we would’ve been there when we launched in the U.S.” We don’t doubt that Duckworth will make it happen.
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Name: Anna Duckworth
Job title: Co-founder and chief content officer, Miss Grass
Age: 35
From: Kingsburg, N.S.
Currently lives in: Venice, CA
Education: BA in art history and cultural studies, McGill University; post-graduate BA in journalism, University of King's College
First job out of school: Nannying in Italy
What do you do when you’re far from home and employed in a job where no one will listen to your progressive ideas? If you’re Anna Duckworth, you take your vast knowledge of the cannabis industry and co-found Miss Grass, a cool AF magazine and shop for women dedicated to all things weed consumption and education. “The idea is to give people the tools to be conscious consumers and to help them understand that to engage with this plant is a really incredible opportunity, but it is a complicated one,” says Duckworth. “[We’re] in powerful position to effect change, to shift the fabric of the political landscape in [America]. And obviously to make weed accessible to everybody.” Can we get an amen?
After completing a post-grad journalism degree, Duckworth worked in Canadian radio, magazines and film before moving to Los Angeles three years ago. Serendipity landed her a high-profile role as head of content at cannabis start-up Dosist (“basically the Apple of weed”), but she grew disillusioned as the company took off. “I realized really quickly that cannabis is an incredibly political conversation, that there’s no way to disentangle the conversation about weed from the conversation about race politics, particularly in the U.S.,” Duckworth explains. “I became really motivated to tell that story.”
She founded Miss Grass with Kate Miller, whom she met while at Dosist. The pair raised over $4 million in funding in Silicon Valley—not an easy feat in the male-dominated world of venture capitalism. “We had a moment in our initial fundraise [where Miller and Duckworth raised $650K], where we realized ‘We need to go in there and behave like we deserve this money.’ That’s how men operate in those same situations. Women have been socialized not to do that. As soon as we shifted that small tone in how we conducted ourselves in conversation, we closed the [second] round immediately.”
At Miss Grass you can read personal essays (“Why I Turned to Cannabis to Manage My Eating Disorders”), get educated (“Legal Loopholes Are Keeping Native Americans out of Cannabis’ Richest State”) and shop for safe, tested cannabis-infused products that help with sleep, pain, sex, periods and skincare. It’s a smorgasbord of cannabis content—but, sadly, Miss Grass still cannot ship to Canada, something Duckworth hopes will change soon. “We want to be in Canada badly, and if it wasn’t a matter of regulatory issues around CBD, we would’ve been there when we launched in the U.S.” We don’t doubt that Duckworth will make it happen.
FLARE Archived Content
To see the original article, search for it on the Flare archive: https://flare.fashionmagazine.com
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