MJBizMag July 2021 - 76

IndustryPlayers | New Hires & Promotions
By Omar Sacirbey
A look at some recent
hiring moves in the
marijuana industry
Versatile CFO Adds California
Supply-Chain Company To Resume
H
erbl Solutions, a cannabis distributor and
supply-chain solutions company in California,
appointed accounting veteran Mark
Shamber as chief financial officer.
Shamber has crunched numbers for Big 4
accounting firm Ernst & Young, sporting giant
Reebok, New England hospital system Day Kimball
Healthcare and Fortune 400 food distributor and
grocery retailer SpartanNash, where he was CFO.
But it was Shamber's tenure at United Natural
Foods Inc. (UNFI)-also as CFO-that landed him
at Herbl. Shamber spent seven of his nearly 13
years at UNFI reporting to Mike Beaudry, who was
the company's president and later the founder
and current CEO of Herbl. He also worked with
Jackie Hartwell, another UNFI alum whom Beaudry
recruited.
Hartwell called Shamber in February to see if
he knew any CFOs looking for a career change. In
March, Shamber learned his new CEO was hiring
another CFO and that he would soon be let go.
Shamber then reached out to Beaudry about the
CFO post.
" There's a lot of
similarities to the
cannabis industry
today and where
organic foods were
in the late '90s/
early 2000s. That
was exciting to
me, " Shamber told
MJBizMagazine. " I
looked at this as an opportunity to (use) all the
things that we learned growing the business at
UNFI to help the cannabis space as well as Herbl
succeed. "
What did Shamber do at UNFI that he hopes to
replicate at Herbl?
" The team and I at UNFI managed the balance
sheet and put us in a position to grow, " Shamber
said. " I hope to do the same thing here. Whether
we need to borrow, raise funds or do it from our
cash flow from operations, I want to put us in a
position where we've got the proverbial fortresslike
balance sheet. "
Dillard currently serves as partner
Sidney
Dillard
and head of corporate investment
banking at Loop Capital Markets,
one of the largest privately held
investment banks in the U.S., where
she is responsible for setting and
executing the firm's growth strategy.
Dillard serves as lead adviser to her
firm's corporate clients on their capitalraising
and advisory needs.
Before Loop, she was senior vice
president and division manager at
The Northern Trust Co., focusing
on corporate client services and
relationship development.
She is also philanthropically
Cresco Builds Board
Cresco Labs, a vertically integrated
multistate operator headquartered in
Chicago, appointed Sidney Dillard to
its board of directors.
76 MJBizMagazine | July 2021
active, serving as board chair for the
Girl Scouts of Greater Chicago and
Northwest Indiana and as a board
member for the National Association
of Securities Professionals. She also
serves on the Obama Foundation
Inclusion Council.
Harborside Buoys Cultivation Team
Harborside, a vertically integrated
cannabis business headquartered in
Oakland, California, appointed Travis
Higginbotham Jr. as vice president
of production. He will oversee the
company's cultivation, post-harvest,
processing and packaging facilities in
Salinas, California.
Most recently, Higginbotham was
co-owner and vice president of sales
and business development at The
Hemp Mine, a vertically integrated
producer of hemp genetics and hempderived
products. Higginbotham also
served as director of research and
development for Battlefield Farms, a
1.8 million-square-foot greenhouse
Mark Shamber
MJBizMag July 2021

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