Board of Directors

Justin Dye has more than 25 years of experience in high-level strategic management, mergers and acquisitions, operations, private equity and corporate finance. Mr. Dye played an integral role in the private equity consortium that acquired national grocery chain Albertsons, Inc., where he led company expansion with more than $40 billion in acquisitions, divestitures and real estate transactions. In his tenure at Albertsons, sales grew from approximately $10 billion to more than $60 billion. Previously, he held senior management and corporate development roles at Cerberus Capital Management, General Electric and Arthur Andersen LLP. He earned his bachelor’s in political science from DePauw University, graduating with academic honors.

Garwood is the founder and is currently the managing member of Liberation Capital, LLC, a private equity fund that is focused on providing modular, repeatable waste to value project finance where he has been active with its investments for 10 years. He is also the co-owner of Zysense, an entity providing high precision measurement instruments for research. Prior to Liberation Capital, Garwood, held a variety of senior leadership positions with General Electric including President and CEO of GE Water and Process Technologies, President and CEO of GE Fanuc, and President of Garrett Aviation and worked for numerous years at the strategic consulting firm, McKinsey and Company. Garwood received a BS of Chemical Engineering from North Carolina State University and an MBA from the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Mr. Riera has over 30 years of experience in investment banking and fund management and was the Country Head for Bankers Trust in Venezuela for over a decade in charge of Investment Banking and the broker dealer vehicle. He also served as a consultant with McKinsey & Co., and Head of Mergers & Acquisitions for Citicorp Investment Bank in Venezuela. Mr. Riera has provided critical support in the negotiation of the Company’s acquisition strategy and Chairs the Audit Committee of the Board and is a member of the Compensation and Governance Committees. Mr. Riera holds a degree in Economics from Universidad Católica Andres Bello and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania.

Since 2010, Brian Ruden has owned and operated cannabis businesses under the Starbuds brand. He has grown this brand into multi-state operations including Colorado, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Washington D.C., and international markets. Under Mr. Ruden’s leadership, Starbuds has become one of the most recognized and successful retail cannabis operations in North America. Mr. Ruden received his law degree from the University of Denver, Sturm College of Law, and before entering the cannabis industry, he was a tax attorney in Colorado.