Vangst Launches New Executive Talent Service
More than 210,000 people are directly employed by the cannabis industry
Vangst, the cannabis industry’s premier talent resource, announced that it is now offering a new Executive Talent service, and Jennifer Bedford will join the company as the vice president of Executive Talent. In her role at Vangst, Bedford will support the emerging cannabis market with strategic executive searches to recruit rapid-growth leadership teams.
Today, more than 210,000 people are directly employed by the cannabis industry with a 75% growth in employment over the last two years. As cannabis companies increase their ranks and states continue to legalize, Vangst’s new Executive Talent service will secure leadership-level talent with Bedford’s expertise. Vangst now offers exec-level recruiting to assess the complex requirements, experiences and skill sets to scale the needs of these quickly evolving enterprises.
“Before hiring Jennifer at Vangst, we engaged her for our VP of Revenue search. It was hands down the best experience I’ve ever had with an executive recruiter,” said Karson Humiston, founder and CEO of Vangst. “She connected us with leaders at Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Vettery, LinkedIn, and all the major tech-hiring companies and presented us with so many ‘unicorn’ candidates that it was honestly hard to make a decision around who to hire. She was extremely thorough and included backdoor reference checks and performance assessments; I felt like I had the full picture on each candidate.”
As a 20-year veteran headhunter, Bedford is an expert in partnering with founders, executives and investors, and will execute leadership-level searches at Vangst. She comes from Signal Partners, a top Los Angeles executive search firm built to service investor-backed and owned operations, where she launched its cannabis practice. Prior to Signal Partners, Bedford serviced the consumer-facing tech sector and before that cut her teeth at Korn Ferry International.
“I’ve had my eye on Vangst since its inception and knew that Karson was in a unique class of founders ready-made for this explosive consumer sector,” Bedford said. “With the coming hyper-verticalization of labor marketplaces, I knew Vangst would be the one to watch in the cannabis industry. It’s such a privilege to join this killer team and complement Vangst with a recruiting offering at the executive level.”
