[PRESS RELEASE] – MEDFORD, Ore., Feb. 3, 2025 – Grown Rogue International Inc., a craft cannabis company born from the amazing terroir of Oregon's Rogue Valley, announced the hiring of Josh Rosen as the company's chief strategy officer.
As CSO, Rosen will be responsible for leading Grown Rogue's capital allocation, business development and communication strategy, all in support of helping the company execute its vision to build a national craft cannabis brand.
Prior to joining the company, Rosen held numerous positions in the cannabis industry including executive chairman and CEO of 4Front Ventures and CEO of Vireo Growth Inc. Before joining 4Front in cannabis, Rosen worked as a private equity portfolio manager, with the family office of John Sperling, who was a prominent drug reform philanthropist, and before that as an investment research analyst, primarily with Credit Suisse. Rosen continues to serve as a managing partner of Bengal Capital, a cannabis investment and advisory firm.
"In our collaboration with Vireo, we experienced firsthand how Josh approaches team building, operations and capital allocation. Given Grown Rogue's current trajectory and ambitions, we jumped at the opportunity to formally add him to our team," Grown Rogue CEO Obie Strickler said. "I'm excited to more fully lean into Josh's deep industry knowledge, capital markets experience, strong leadership skills, and professional relationships to provide value to Grown Rogue shareholders.
"As engaged investors, Josh and the Bengal team were instrumental in helping us shape Grown Rogue's recent past. One of the primary catalysts to adding Josh is to allow me to continue to be operations-centric as the scale of our business grows and we receive increasing inbound opportunities for partnerships and collaborations."
Rosen said: "Growing craft quality cannabis efficiently is the engine of the industry and much harder than most realize. Having spent considerable time with Obie and Grown Rogue's operations team, I've been repeatedly impressed by the pride and commitment they take every day to honing their craft, which I've come to believe is vital to long-term success in this industry.
"I'm excited at the opportunity to augment one of the strongest performance cultures I've come across, with the underlying goal of helping Grown Rogue fully capitalize on its capabilities and supporting continuous improvement as the business grows."
In connection with his appointment as CSO, the company has granted 2 million stock options (the "options") to Rosen. Each option shall be exercisable at a price of $0.87 for one subordinate voting share of the company (each, a "share") for a period of four years from the date of grant and are being issued under the terms of the company's Omnibus Equity Incentive Plan. One million options vest in equal portions each month for a period of 24 months starting at the time of grant, 500,000 options vest in 24 months from the date of grant and 500,000 options vest in 36 months from the date of grant.
The options, and any shares issued upon exercise of the options, are subject to a four-month and one-day resale restriction from the date of grant. The grant of options to Rosen is a "related party transaction" within the meaning of multilateral instrument 61-101 – Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions ("MI 61-101"). The company has relied on the exemptions from the valuation and minority shareholder approval requirements of MI 61-101 contained in sections 5.5(b) and 5.7(a) of MI 61-101 in respect of such insider participation.
