As Iowa starts to make its initial foray into the cannabis industry, which is still in its infancy in the US, getting into the industry is a wild west of patchwork policies and constantly shifting opportunities.

Laura Hand and Alissa Gardner have had a first-hand take on it for the last several years.  And for both of them, it's personal.

Laura Hand is the Founder of Laura Loo Experience Design, a customer experience design consultancy that works primarily with hemp and cannabis entrepreneurs.

Hand founded the firm after 16 years of experience in her previous executive-level marketing role to realign her focus in honor to her family, having seen first hand the benefits that proper education and access to cannabis would have had in changing the outcomes for her brother, lost to a drug-related heart attack, and to her father who passed from brain cancer.

And Alissa Gardner, at the height of her successful real estate career as a broker and owner, in a move most people wouldn't have the courage to do, Gardner walked away. Took a year off. Rested.

The clarity that accompanied the decision to rest was astounding. Since then she has keynoted conferences and seminars for HR professionals, business teachers and professors, and other entrepreneurs. Gardner challenges her audiences with her Rest>Run: Confessions of a Workaholic curriculum, leaving them with an awareness and a strategy for their own journey of rest.

A natural extension of this personal journey of rest, Gardner launched Farm to Health Organics, a premium hemp/CBD line of wellness products for people and their pets. Gardner educates on the body's endocannabinoid system and the benefits of incorporating hemp products into a healthy lifestyle to rest, relieve pain, and improve one's sense of wellbeing.

Gardner also helps run Iowa Hemp, a three-generation family-run Heritage farm in Rowley, Iowa that is one of only about 30 licensed & approved hemp production farms in Iowa.