The Blueprint Always Changes Hands
Before there was Amazon there was Kmart!
Before there was Nike there was Converse.
Before there was Apple there was the Blackberry and IBM.
Before Oprah Winfrey, there was Phil Donahue.
Donahue made talk television raw. Real. Unfiltered. He gave the audience a voice and turned
conversation into something people couldn’t look away from.
Then Oprah stepped in.
She didn’t copy Donahue.
She expanded him.
The Oprah Effect:
She turned daytime television into influence, then into power, then into empire.
Donahue opened the door.
Oprah built the house.
Berner Kicked the Door Open. Now the Women Are Walking Through It.
The Man Who Made Weed a Brand
Cannabis didn’t start in dispensaries.
It started in living rooms, garages, trap houses, and backyards. It started with people who didn’t
have licenses, protection, or permission. It started with risk.
Long before the polished storefronts and curated menus, cannabis was survival. Growers slept
next to their plants. Dealers moved product quietly. Mothers prayed nobody would ask too
many questions about how the bills were being paid.
Then came a shift.
A rapper from San Francisco: Berner, born Gilbert Anthony Milam Jr. did something the industry
had never seen before.
He didn’t just sell weed.
He built a brand.
Through Cookies, Berner fused hip-hop, streetwear, and cannabis into a single identity. His
reputation started in music, but he leveraged that platform to scale cannabis into culture.
Not just product.
Merchandise.
Genetics.
Retail.
Visibility.
Cookies wasn’t just something you smoked.
It was something you wore.
Something you followed.
Something you recognized.
And that changed everything.
For the first time, cannabis wasn’t hiding.
It was marketing.
It was branding.
It was business.
Berner didn’t invent the plant or rap.
But he proved cannabis could move like Nike, Supreme, or any other cultural powerhouse.
He broke what insiders now call the green ceiling the invisible barrier that kept cannabis stuck
in survival mode instead of scale.
But breaking a ceiling and building an empire are two different jobs.
And history has already shown us what comes next.
Cannabis is standing in that same moment right now.
Berner opened the door.
The next phase won’t look like Berner.
It will evolve past him.
And it won’t come from corporate cannabis.
It will come from someone who built it from the ground up.
More specifically…
It will come from a woman.
“We’re Not Surrogates. We’re Carrying This Industry.”
Thunder Walker doesn’t soften her words.
“Berner cut the umbilical cord between cannabis and branding,” she says. “He showed the
world this plant could become a real business. No shade to him he broke the green ceiling. He
appeared on the cover of Forbes. But it’s still going to be a woman who pushes the baby out
and delivers it.”
That’s not theory.
That’s lived experience.
Walker isn’t talking about people who show up for photoshoots in grow rooms.
She’s talking about operators.
“Have you ever trimmed a plant?” she asks. “Have you popped a seed and waited months for it
to grow? Have you mixed nutrients, fought mold, handled compliance, redesigned packaging
because the state rejected it?”
She leans into the part most people avoid.
“Have you sat in a tax office trying to explain cannabis revenue to someone who already thinks
you’re a criminal? Have you negotiated rent in a green zone where the price doubles or triples
the moment they hear the word cannabis?”
Then she goes further.
“I’ve had seventeen CPS cases and an Adult Protective Services case,” she says. “All because I
work in this industry.”
The stigma doesn’t stay at work.
It follows you home.
“You go to PTA meetings and people look at you different. Parents don’t want their kids at your
house. They don’t want to be associated with you.”
This is the cost of carrying the plant.
Not posing with it.
Carrying it.
“There’s a difference between being in cannabis and building cannabis,” she says. “Selling t-
shirts? You’re part of the culture. We respect that. But don’t confuse that with carrying this
industry.”
She doesn’t mince words.
“When I see millions of dollars put behind somebody just so they can pose next to plants, that’s
posturing. That doesn’t mean anything.” It’s not a steady flow of customers in a dispensary or
on the legacy market asking for the next celebrity product. You have to be apart of the life.
Then she draws the line.
“We’re not surrogates,” she says. “We’re the ones actually carrying this for nine months. We
take the hits. We take the judgment. We take the risk.”
The Women Doing the Work
The next Berner won’t come from a boardroom.
It will come from the ground.
From women who built their businesses without shortcuts.
In Oakland, Amber Senter built distribution when the system barely existed. No headlines. No
spotlight. Just infrastructure.
Distribution is invisible.
But without it, nothing moves.
In Maryland, Hope Wiseman built a dispensary that people trust.
Not hype.
Trust.
That’s harder to scale and more powerful when it does.
In Los Angeles, Kim Prince turned cannabis into a cultural experience.
Art on the walls. Cannabis on display.
She didn’t follow the retail model.
She rewrote it.
In Northern California, Maya Elisabeth stayed rooted in the plant.
While others built brands, she built product.
That difference separates operators from marketers.
The Ones Building the Future
Some people build companies.
Others build ecosystems.
In Florida, Roz McCarthy built Black Buddha Cannabis and a national network connecting
entrepreneurs called M4MM.
She didn’t just build a brand.
She built access.
And in Oklahoma, Thunder Walker is building something the industry hasn’t fully recognized
yet.
A media-driven cannabis ecosystem.
She founded Proud Mary Cannabis a boutique style dispensary ranked number 3 by Google in
Oklahoma City.
She built Pressure News Media.
She launched the Smoke Currency Tour.
Her Fan Club The ThunderKats are a cult like movement of the next generation of influencers.
She created The Thunder Walker Experience.
She hosts The Clawback Conversation.
She’s developing City Girls and The Candy Trap Collection.
Retail.
Media.
Events.
Products.
That’s more than business.
It’s infrastructure and an ecosystem.
The same kind of infrastructure that turned Cookies into a movement.
Only this time, the voice is different.
Less polished.
More real.
More accountable to the people actually doing the work.
The Finish Line Isn’t Built Yet
Cannabis is still unfinished business.
Federal legalization hasn’t landed.
Banking is still unstable.
The rules are still shifting.
Berner proved cannabis could become a culture commodity.
But culture is only the beginning.
The next phase is power.
And power doesn’t come from posing.
It comes from building.
Somewhere in this industry between the growers, the retailers, the storytellers, and the women
carrying all of it: Genetics, Culture, Compliance, Wellness, Real Estate and Politics.
One of them is going to take this across the finish line.
And when she does, people will try to call her the next Berner.
But they’ll miss the point.
She won’t be just the next Berner.
She’ll be truly The Mother of The Cannabis Industry.
