Angela Bacca began covering the cannabis industry as a student journalist in San Francisco in 2006. Since then, she has authored hundreds of articles and edited, managed, and/or co-authored over a dozen books, mostly on cannabis horticulture and medicine, in addition to editing and managing various cannabis-centric digital and print magazines. Her work has focused on cannabis economics, politics, science, horticulture, cultural issues, non-cannabis herbalism, and complementary and alternative health topics. She has extensive experience working with the cannabis industry’s top horticulturalists, genomicists, physicians, researchers, and businesspeople on complex educational editorial development in a wide range of formats.
Bacca was born and raised in Southern California and lived in San Francisco and Oakland for ten years, where she became involved in the cannabis industry at a pivotal time: shortly before President Obama took office and the Green Rush began. She developed an interest in the economics of cannabis legalization while earning her MBA and covering California’s Proposition 19 campaign run by Oaksterdam University founder Richard Lee in 2010. Since that time, she has lived in Salt Lake City, Utah, where she worked as an advisor to Utah State Senator Mark Madsen as he ran the state’s first medical cannabis bill in 2015. The bill failed in the Senate by one vote but led to the successful Proposition 2 campaign that made Utah a medical cannabis state in 2018, efforts which she supported through the local non-profit TRUCE Utah. She spent four years living in Portland, Oregon, as the state rolled out the nation’s third adult use legalization law. These experiences and her own as a medical cannabis patient for over 20 years have influenced her non-profit advocacy supporting patient advocates fighting for medical cannabis legislation in conservative states.
As Oaksterdam’s Director of Academics, Angela designs and oversees all educational curricula. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from San Francisco State University and a Master’s in Business Administration from the Lorry I. Lokey Graduate School of Business at Mills College.