Beth Stavola had retired from Wall Street to focus on raising her six children in 2012 when she got an offer to invest $1 million in an Arizona marijuana business.
It was a lot of money. It was in an industry that was still illegal in most of the country. But what really concerned her was ... what would she tell her parents?
"We were kind of saying, 'Oh, we’re just buying commercial real estate,'" Stavola said. "That was true. We were buying commercial real estate. But it was actually to grow marijuana plants in. I don’t know that my parents were thrilled about it initially."
Seven years later, Stavola is a powerhouse in the cannabis industry, her fingerprints on everything from legal weed in Nevada to a medical marijuana dispensary in Atlantic City set to open by the end of the year.
And her initial investment has a chance to pay off big. A cannabidiol company she started was sold last month for $10.4 million in stock and moved into a spiffy new office in Red Bank.