Giadha A. DeCarcer is the Founder and CEO of New Frontier Data, the authority in data, analytics and business intelligence for the worldwide cannabis industry. An entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience in business strategy, execution, management and business development, DeCarcer’s began her career in banking, and progressed to technology, data analytics, intelligence collection and reporting, and emerging markets across multiple sectors, domestically and internationally.

DeCarcer has launched, built and operated four data-centric businesses, including disruptive technologies for the innovation behind Progressive’s Snapshot and Verizon’s Hum.  She is considered an expert in strategic positioning and risk management in emerging high growth markets, as well as a seasoned professional in government and commercial intelligence data collection and analysis. These core focus areas, along with unwavering entrepreneurial drive, have defined Giadha’s career and her vision for New Frontier Data.

DeCarcer is an official member of the Forbes Technology Council; her work has been featured in Forbes, Fortune, CNBC, Fox News, CNN Money, Bloomberg, WSJ and many other top-tier news outlets worldwide, as well as in documentaries and books, including “Mary Janes,” “The Marijuana Show,” “The Great Green Gold Rush,” and “Breaking the Grass Ceiling,” among others. Number 7 on the list of the 20 Most Influential Women in Cannabis by greendorphin, DeCarcer has also been designated as one of The Most Powerful Women to Watch in D.C., is a two-time Stevie Awards Maverick of the Year recipient, a 2019 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year finalist and Moxie Award nominee, and a winner of the Washington Business Journal 2019 Women Who Mean Business Award.

Her commitment to education and information sharing inspired her to create The InterCannAlliance (ICA) in 2018. The ICA is a New Frontier Data-led initiative to foster best practices and knowledge sharing amongst newly emerging cannabis markets, introducing what she has coined the “Nine Foundational Pillars” of a healthy and stable cannabis sector. Her continuous pursuit of knowledge has remained the ultimate constant throughout her life and career, also illustrated in her many mentoring and volunteering efforts such as the creation of Women Entrepreneurship Reinforcement (WeR), a program designed to mentor and coach female entrepreneurs establishing their first business. 

New Frontier Data, headquartered in Washington D.C., has been recognized in DCInno as one of 17 DC area startups to Watch for 2017 and PC Mag named the company one of just 15 Blazing Hot Tech Companies to Watch. Since the company’s inception in 2014, New Frontier Data has generated the most earned media of any reporting company covering the cannabis industry crossing 15 billion in earned media reach. As one of the winners of the Best in Biz Awards 2019, Most innovative Company of the Year, New Frontier Data is also at the center of the 116th Congressional discussion on federal legalization, providing vetted and unbiased data and analysis to regulators as they assess the potential socio-economic impact of cannabis federal legalization in the United States.  

Giadha A. DeCarcer is fluent in five languages including French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.  Born in Italy, raised in France and Spain, Giadha earned an Associate Degree in Business Administration from Miami Dade Community College, a Bachelor of Arts degree in International Relations & Trade from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Master of Arts degree in International Security from the Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

Interview Transcript

Max  

Welcome back to Episode 53 of the Built on Purpose podcast with Max Hansen brought to you by YScouts where we higher purpose aligned and performance proven leaders. Today, our guest is Giadha DeCarcer, the founder and CEO of New Frontier Data. Giadha, is an internationalist born in Italy, raised in Switzerland, France and Spain. All places I can't wait to travel back to she has lived in six countries across the globe. She speaks five languages and has a keen appreciation for cultural and economic dynamics. Giadha an analyst and strategist by training, a serial entrepreneur by practice identified the lack of critical data and analysis through her own attempted cannabis industry research. Despite ridicule from her peers across banking, technology, energy and defense. She jumped at the opportunity to bring big data, the pillar in any modern burgeoning industry to cannabis. She has built her team of unparalleled experts from fields just as diverse as their own in 2014, New Frontier data started collecting data streams and cannabis, normalize them, and centralize them to provide vetted polished and actionable reporting to the industry before and better than anyone else worldwide. Ladies and gentlemen, let's welcome Giadha DeCarcer.

Giadha  8:57  

Max, thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure.

Max  9:00  

Awesome. Well, I'm gonna start out let's start off for talking about New Frontier data. I just think it's, it's, it's awesome. I want to hear you know, kind of what you guys do. I obviously, the introduction gave a little, little, little piece or a little intro to what you guys do. But ultimately, what problem are you solving and kind of how did you arrive at this?

Giadha  9:22  

Well, the problem the core problem is visibility and risk mitigation into this booming industry on a global scale. This is an industry that was born of a movement it was some stigma and transparency into it from a financial perspective, from an opportunity and risk assessment perspective was challenging. Arguably, it continues to be challenging. So what we've set out to be to do is leverage cutting edge technology such as Big Data technologies to begin collecting information in a responsible, objective and comprehensive manner, slice it and dice it. So study So that we can get to the point where we're providing actionable intelligence as close to real time as possible to again, stakeholders. Are those looking to become stakeholders in this now global sector.

Max  10:14  

Awesome. And let me add a little bit on and I and I read a little bit on it, but I'd love to hear it straight from you. What How did you build up the skill sets to finally launch this company? Like, what were the building blocks of understanding and getting your feet wet in big data and getting confident enough to jump into a new industry and apply that those those skill sets?

Giadha  10:36  

I mean, isn't the whole you fake it until you make it isn't that sweet spot. So if this is you mean, me personally, it was serendipitous I, I say with as much humility as possible that it almost feels like it was meant to be, I had very diverse careers that fit perfectly into new frontier data. So I started as a financial analyst with JPMorgan Chase, right out of college. So I really sort of got the opportunity to understand how financial analytics impact a lot larger company and a market when you're looking at more financial type vehicles or investment opportunities. I then, because of 9/11, I left banking altogether, because I was in New York. And as most of us in New York at the time, it had a massive life changing impact. So I left banking, and I decided that I wanted to join the war on terror. So I got my masters and I decided to go into intelligence collection, then really honing the skills on how do you turn human human, so human collected information into something that's actionable, all the way to the president and to our national security. And then after that, which was a gruesome experience, a very gratifying one, but certainly a very, very difficult career to have. I left after three, four years, and I decided to go into emerging markets. You mentioned I speak languages, I was very fortunate to travel the world. So I figured, you know what, I have financial analytics, I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do with intelligence collection at that point. And so I decided, you know, it was around the time when we were experiencing it, the financial and economic sort of crisis. And so a lot of US companies were looking at the BRIC nations is when the BRIC nations was really hot. So I was like, Well, let me go into emerging markets. When you combine experience in the financial industry, with understanding how to leverage technology and how to collect information for humans to turn it into intelligence and then understanding appreciating an emerging market, then you combine the three, candidly, you have new financial data, where financial analysts with high tech technology collecting information trade into intelligence for an emerging market. So serendipitous, is really the word that I would focus on here for for the answer to that question.

Max  12:58  

Such an awesome story. So let's take me back to when you were when you went on your, your own search for data and cannabis, what did you find? What did you find? Was there anything out there was it was there a lot of bias?

Giadha  13:14  

a lot of closed doors, and a lot of people looking at me like I was asking them to show me their undergarments. When I asked for data. And the industry remember that the especially the early folks in the industry, were not folks that