Announcements
Announcing! Melanie Rose Rodgers leads the Cannabis Impact Fund.
We are thrilled to announce Melanie Rose Rodgers as the interim Executive Director for the Cannabis Impact Fund. Melanie is perfectly poised to help us to achieve our mission to promote racial justice, heal the planet, and support communities in need. Dedicated to education, advocacy and social responsibility, Melanie inspires people to take action and curates multiple events throughout the year bringing the community together to empower positive change. We are very grateful for her commitment and passion for access to medicine, justice, and healing.
Her passion for cannabis advocacy and civic engagement brought her to two U.S. Federal Court lawsuit hearings and on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, advocating for medical cannabis and patients’ rights at a national level.
In 2018, Melanie founded Safe Access Colorado, a Colorado chapter of Americans for Safe Access (ASA) whose mission is to help unite the medical cannabis patient voice and community. Safe Access Colorado was recognized and awarded ASA’s 2019 Chapter of the Year. Safe Access Colorado had a successful 2019 legislative session and expanded medical cannabis access to all Coloradans, adding Autism and ‘Any Condition for Which an Opiate is Prescribed’ to the list of qualifying conditions.
Melanie is an advocate for drug reform policy and all plant medicine. In October 2018, Melanie was one of six Denver residents who petitioned Denver City Council to decriminalize psilocybin mushrooms via a ballot initiative. She was instrumental in helping pass Initiative 301, volunteering to collect signatures and organizing two educational events leading up to the historic May 2019 election, in which Denver became the first city in the US to decriminalize psilocybin mushrooms. For the last 3 years, Melanie has helped organize record sealing and expungement clinics in Denver during National Expungement Week. Last year, she was recruited to go work with Initiative 81, Washington DC’s ballot initiative and successful campaign to decriminalize entheogenic plants and fungi. Melanie has a zest for life; in her free time, she likes to travel in her RV, play the violin in a band with her husband and host peer support women’s circles and community events.
In addition to all of her efforts, Melanie has her own company, Influential X, which provides marketing, consulting and organizing community events and fundraisers. She inspires people to take action and curates multiple events throughout the year bringing the community together to empower positive change.
Welcome Melanie!
