CEA Industries Inc. (CEAD)

[RULiquid]

Brandy Keen, vice president of sales at Surna (SRNA), a company that purchases cannabis-related intellectual property, observes that her industry has a mixture of women from traditional and non-traditional professional backgrounds.

"I think maybe this industry, being a little bit more of a liberal industry, it would segue into women maybe being more comfortable having a voice in the industry," she said, "so I think that probably contributes."

Keen's professional background was in semiconductor sales, but she was drawn into the cannabis industry because of a personal issue.

"My husband has epilepsy, and used to take a drug that said on the warnings, 'We do not know how this drug works.'" she remembers. "And that was always terrifying to me, that he had to take this drug that we really didn't know what it was doing to his brain. And so we moved to Colorado and he started using cannabis oil, and he has not taken that drug in three years."

Keen acknowledges not everyone will prosper as the cannabis industry expands. "And the only way to predict who the winners and losers are," she said, "are the people who have a solid business model and solid management, and are doing the right things."

But she's also encouraged by the number of women who are opting for a career in cannabis. "There are a lot of women who are very smart, very confident, running very difficult businesses to run," she said, "and doing a damn good job at it." http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cannabis-a-new-job-frontier-for-women/