Jeremy Unruh, Esq., M.B.A.

Senior VP - Public and Regulatory Affairs

PharmaCann Inc.

Jeremy Unruh serves as the PharmaCann senior vice president of public and regulatory affairs.  

Jeremy is responsible for the company’s strategic external matters, including legislative policy and public affairs; media relationships; organized labor; and coordination with state and local regulators.  He works closely with PharmaCann’s finance team to facilitate investor and banking relationships.  He manages lobbying efforts in eight statehouses and Washington, D.C., and is at the tip of the spear as PharmaCann works to optimize its operations across the company’s eight-state footprint. 

Jeremy was PharmaCann’s first employee, initially serving a general counsel and chief compliance officer, and later focusing on the company’s external affairs: 

• Manages interaction between the company and state regulatory agencies relating to the licensed cultivation and distribution of regulated cannabis products.  
• Developed the initial legal and regulatory compliance systems for PharmaCann’s operational facilities.  
• Helped prepare winning competitive state cannabis license applications in New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio and Virginia.  Awarded the most licenses won in Illinois by any single group.  Earned the top score (and the first license) in the New York State medical cannabis application process. 
• Developed and operationalized nearly 500,000 square feet of state-of-the-art cannabis cultivation and production space, along with nearly a score of highly-regulated dispensary facilities. 
• While serving as chief compliance officer, personally managed some of the first state- sanctioned marijuana facility compliance inspections ever conducted east of the Rockies. 
• Managed and negotiated company union relationships in multiple states, including New York, Illinois, and New Jersey. Responsible for negotiating labor peace agreements, bargaining unit recognition, and collective bargaining agreements. 
• Led litigation efforts, including administrative challenges, constitutional claims, real estate claims, and open records matters. In two instances, achieving the awards of a ~$20 million Ohio cultivation license and a ~$8 million Ohio processing license to the company.  In another, managed New York State licensing litigation to a successful settlement with state cannabis regulators.  
• Leads media efforts, operating as a primary spokesman for the company in all markets and at the national level.  Helped lead industry’s adult-use campaign efforts in New York and Illinois, among other markets, by overseeing public affairs activity and developing industry policy positions. 
• Worked with the company's New Markets team to identify and create strategy for the penetration of new or emerging markets, including Illinois, New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, Massachusetts, Georgia, Missouri, West Virginia, and others. 

Beginning his career as a prosecutor, Jeremy was trained in trial advocacy by the United States Department of Justice at the National College of District Attorneys in Columbia, S.C.  Before his appointment as the first-chair prosecutor in the courtroom of the Chief Judge of the Criminal Division of the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, Jeremy successfully investigated and tried drug cases, homicides, financial, and sexual abuse crimes. 

Jeremy went into private practice for a national law firm that would reach the American Lawyer Top 100 during his tenure.  Jeremy’s practice focused on commercial litigation, internal compliance investigations in the financial services and healthcare sectors, and product liability defense.  He was the lead trial attorney on the national product liability trial team for a Fortune 100 industrial company for many years.  He joined the firm’s Chicago office in 2006, where he helped grow the Chicago law firm from a handful of lawyers to an office of more than 100 lawyers when he left to join the cannabis industry in 2015.   

Jeremy has a B.S. from Kansas State University.  He earned a Juris Doctor from Washburn University School of Law where he was an inaugural recipient of the Environmental Law certificate.  While serving as an assistant state’s attorney in Chicago, Jeremy attended DePaul University Kellstadt School of Business Management at night and earned his M.B.A.  Jeremy lives in Winnetka, Illinois with his wife and three children.