Ari Sherman
Company: Hemp Health
Title: President and co-founder
Age: 31
Jourdan Samel
Company: Hemp Health
Title: CEO and co-founder
Age: 29
For the past 12 months, the editorial staff at Marijuana Venture has compiled a list of candidates for our third annual 40 Under 40 feature. This year, we narrowed our list down from hundreds of worthy candidates to come up with a cross-section of personalities across the U.S. and Canada, from salt-of-the-earth farmers to tech savants. All of them have unique stories, successes and ambitions and all represent the excitement and promise of the cannabis business.
We feel honored to share their stories and look forward to watching them push forward in our ever-evolving industry.
Ari Sherman and Jourdan Samel have set their sights on a goal bigger than product development, bigger than making money and even bigger than helping someone feel relief using their products.
The natural foods brand Evo Hemp and its parent company, Hemp Health LLC, were created “to facilitate the evolution of the United States family farm,” Sherman says. “The Hemp Health mission is to lift rural communities out of poverty with industrial hemp farming.”
Evo Hemp is the retail arm of that mission, developed to deliver hemp-based products to the consumer market, from energy bars to protein powder to hemp hearts, oils, snacks and extracts. Today, the Evo brand can be found in more than 3,000 retail stores, including big names like Whole Foods, Kroger and Costco.
Sherman says the pair, who worked in real estate and construction management before founding Hemp Health, are most proud of getting their products into those big box stores, where they can reach large numbers of people who may or may not be aware of the benefits of hemp.
“Our favorite part about working with cannabis is the chance to educate millions of consumers about its benefits,” Sherman says.
It’s been quite the ride so far for Sherman and Samel, who say even they have been surprised about how quickly the public perception of cannabis is changing, not just in the U.S., but in places like South Africa, Belize and Colombia, where Hemp Health has upcoming projects ready to take off and hopefully make a difference.
“We are working on bringing industrial hemp and good paying agriculture jobs to poor rural communities all over the world,” Sherman says.