Kris Krane is CEO and Principal of Kranewreck Enterprises, where he works as an independent consultant to the cannabis industry. In this capacity he serves as a senior advisor to a licensed social equity retail cannabis dispensary licensee in Boston, MA, a vertically integrated production, cultivation, and retail operator in Maine, and a vertically integrated licensed cannabis operator in Michigan.
Kris is also a principal owner and President of Anderson Leonard Pharmaceuticals, a licensed cultivator, producer, and exporter located in the Republic of North Macedonia.
Until July 2021, Kris Krane served as President of 4Front Ventures, a cannabis company designed for long-term success and built upon battle-tested operating capabilities at scale, experienced and committed leadership, a strategic asset base, and a commitment to being a magnet for talent. 4Front is recognized as one of the leading Multi State Operators in the legal cannabis industry, operating cannabis dispensaries, cultivation and production facilities across the United States.
Kris also served as President of 4Front subsidiary Mission Partners, which has operated medical and adult use cannabis dispensaries under the Mission brand in Arizona, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Mission’s reputation for excellent operations with an advocacy focus resulted in CNBC featuring the brand and reporting live from Mission’s store on the South Side of Chicago for an entire day in February 2020.
After completing an acquisition of Cannex in 2019, 4Front became the largest wholesaler/producer in Washington State, and is currently completing a build out of a state of the art production facility in Southern California. 4Front’s cultivation and production division Brightleaf is in the process of bringing it’s proven market leading brands from Washington to 4Front’s operations in California, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Michigan.
4Front’s subsidiary, 4Front Advisors, is recognized as one of the nation’s leading medical marijuana dispensary consulting firms, dedicated to ensuring the highest standards of operations in the industry. 4Front Advisors experienced unparalleled success in helping clients navigate the complex regulatory process necessary to obtain medical cannabis business permits in state regulated markets, assisting clients in procuring over 50 dispensary and cultivation licenses in seven states in highly competitive application processes.
Under Mr. Krane’s leadership, the company developed some of the most professional best practice operating standards for retail dispensaries, largely based on professional standards from the retail, hospitality, and medical cannabis industries. Since Kris Krane and his partners founded the company in February 2011, it grew from a start up with three staff members to a nationally recognized Multi-State Operator with over 500 employees that is publicly traded on the Canadian Securities Exchange.
Kris is a regular speaker on the cannabis conference circuit. He has spoken at every Marijuana Business Daily Conference since it’s inception in 2012 through it’s most recent 25,000 plus attendee conferences in Las Vegas. Kris has also been a featured speaker at dozens of conferences, including investor and banking focused events like Canaccord, VIII Capital, Benzinga, and ArcView, cannabis business focused conferences like Green Flower Media, Cannabis Business Executive, Green Market Report, and The Cannabis Conference, and policy focused conferences organized by NORML, Students for Sensible Drug Policy, the Drug Policy Alliance, and Americans for Safe Access.
In recent years, Kris has become a sought after expert on the developing international cannabis market. He is a partner and owner in Anderson Leonard Pharmaceuticals, a company recently licensed by the government of North Macedonia to cultivate cannabis and produce cannabis infused products for export to global medical cannabis markets. This license represents one of less than 100 that have been granted on the European continent. He has been a featured speaker at international conferences, including delivering keynote addresses at the Marijuana Business Daily Latin America Conference in Bogota, Colombia and the ArcView Investor Forum in Vancouver, Canada. He has also spoken at the International Cannabis Business Conference in Berlin, Germany, the Medical Cannabiz World Summit in Malta, the Help Not Harm Medical Cannabis Summit in Dublin, Ireland, and the ArcView Investor Forum in Barcelona, Spain.
Kris writes a regular column on cannabis politics and industry for Forbes Magazine. His work has been profiled in media outlets including The New York Times, CNBC, Fox Business Network, Forbes Magazine, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, and USA Today. Kris has been personally profiled in the Boston Globe and Boston Magazine, in part in recognition of the work Kris and 4Front did in assisting the passage of Question 4, the ballot initiative that legalized cannabis for adults in Massachusetts, as well as in MG Magazine for his work as a pioneer in advocacy based entrepreneurship. Kris also is a regular guest and co-host of the popular Marijuana Today podcast, which ranks among the top 2% most downloaded podcasts on iTunes.
Prior to forming 4Front, Kris served as Director of Client Services for CannBe, where he helped develop many of the best practices that have become the backbone of 4Front Advisors’ operations. Kris got his training in the medical cannabis industry at Harborside Health Center in Oakland, CA, which at the time was the largest medical cannabis dispensary in the country. While at CannBe, the company helped open or revamp some of the more successful dispensaries in Northern California, including Harborside San Jose, SPARC in San Francisco, and Elemental Wellness in San Jose.
Kris has dedicated his career to reforming the nation’s drug policies, having served as associate director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws from 2000-2005 and executive director of Students for Sensible Drug Policy from 2006-2009. At NORML, Kris was responsible for tracking marijuana legislation in all 50 states and coordinating grassroots networks to support the organization's reform efforts. As the organization's chapter coordinator, Kris helped increase the number of NORML chapters to over 120 nationwide.
During his tenure at SSDP the organization experienced rapid growth at the chapter, national and international levels, increasing from chapters on 40 college campuses in 2006 to over 200 when Kris left the organization in late 2009. During this time the organization led a successful Congressional campaign to scale back the HEA Aid Elimination Penalty, the law that automatically denies federal financial aid to students with drug convictions, removing the penalty's retroactivity and restoring aid to tens of thousands of students. In his capacity as SSDP Executive Director, Kris appeared on television news programs including Fox News Weekend Live and Today in New York, and has been featured on National Public Radio, Court TV Radio, Wisconsin Public Radio, The WWRL Morning Show with Armstrong Williams, and dozens of local radio shows nationwide.
Kris continues to stay involved in the advocacy side of the cannabis issue. In summer 2020 Kris was appointed by Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker to the Governor’s Adult Use Cannabis Health Advisory Committee. He served on the drafting committee for the 2016 ballot initiatives to legalize cannabis for adults in Massachusetts and Arizona, and played an advisory role in the successful Massachusetts initiative, for which 4Front in-kind donated office space at it’s downtown Boston office to serve as campaign headquarters. Kris has formally and informally advised legislators and regulators in states across the United States, as well as regulators in a handful of countries around the world. Kris currently serves on the Board of Trustees and as Treasurer of the Board for Students for Sensible Drug Policy, and serves as Vice-Chair and member of the Board of Directors of the National Cannabis Industry Association. At the state level, Kris has served on the board of directors of the Cannabis Business Alliance of Illinois, the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Association and the New Jersey Cannabis Industry Association. He also served as Associate Editor of the 2011, 2013, and 2015 editions of the ArcView Market Research Reports, the most comprehensive and widely quoted reports on the size and scope of the legal marijuana market.
Kris currently lives in the Albany Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois with his wife Jennifer Janichek, an adjunct professor at Harry Truman College and Wilbur Wright College in the Chicago community college system, and their two young children Lillian and Theodore. Kris is an avid fan of major league baseball fan and has been a lifelong suffering New York Mets fan. He is a seasoned traveler and enjoys experiencing new places and cultures whenever he gets the opportunity.