As a  CEO of "I-Hemp Katalyst," I am dedicated to Katalyzing change in the industrial hemp market, my role encompasses a broad range of responsibilities and activities to undertake to transform the industrial hemp industry:

We got hemp textiles to Patagonia and other hemp growers to form a hemp tool bag for Patagonia and recognized that White Earth natives and Navaho Indians and South Dakota natives made this bag.

It is a large plus that this new growth industry can sustainably help people and the planet for years to come. Farmers can grow hemp in rotation with corn and soybeans, adding diversity to their farming operations and their soil.  We can have bio-friendly products such as packaging, plastics, building materials, clothes, protein, and animal bedding.

Hemp’s innate material qualities allow for elegant one stop solutions to building science problems the industry has struggled with for years including, dealing with moisture management, fire rated assemblies, IAQ, net carbon storing solutions, and continuous thermal boundary optimization.

Hemp has a great potential to become a cost-competitive natural building wall system compared to other natural building wall systems out there. It certainly has a better chance of doing that than most of the other styles of natural building.

At KSU, I teach environmental systems and design studios; for the last four years, my studios have been focused on designing and building affordable, net-zero housing. I am very interested in the potential of natural materials, particularly low-process-energy materials, to replace petroleum and chemically based materials in our buildings. Hemp is a fascinating material because it can also be grown and processed locally.

 Exploiting agricultural commodities to capture and store the carbon in a useable fiber with the most incredibly sequestering commodity on this planet is important to Prairie PROducers