Dewmar International BMC Inc (DEWM)

[Det_Robert_Thorne]

The latest Southern Roots team is interesting

Southern Roots already had a team established and Marco said US Hemp Corp would be formulating their team for them. Do you think that team listed on the website was selected by US Hemp Corp?

Call me cynical, but based on the team who started Southern and the current team, I would think so. I suspect that because some of the comments in the articles mentioned the desire for minority-owned businesses as applicants for the SU contract, some adjustments to the team were made under the advice of DEWM's US Hemp.

It's too bad that the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine hasn't captured the Southern Roots site, because I wish that I could see the composition of the team from before July, 2017, when based on photo dates, I think the site was updated to include new members. DEWM announced it was consulting for an applicant for SU a couple of weeks later.

http://southernrootstherapeutics.com/

According to the Louisiana Secretary of State site, Southern Roots was formed on Jan 19, 2017, and it's address at 2900 Westfork Dr, Suite 401 in Baton Rouge is a Regus Business Center. What's interesting is that the company was formed by Jacob Irving and Leah Simon, yet they're relegated to the third row of the team.

It seems odd to me that you would place the photo of the African-American male CEO, A-A male head of security and A-A male chemist (with his own company in Texas) in the top row, unless you're trying to make a ham-handed political statement (especially when the Mission Statement says that Southern Roots is "woman-owned").

The left column with Tucker and Tyson also speaks of a brand management (hint, hint) effort.

Along with Dr. Ford, most of the group has other jobs, but on their Linkedin pages, nobody seems to mention Southern Roots:

CEO Alken Square: http://thesquarebutton.com/about
https://www.linkedin.com/in/allen-square-567a87/

Iam Tucker: http://www.ilsiengineering.com/iam-tucker-bio/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/iam-tucker-5b084510/

Tod Tyson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/todd-tyson-47116215/

Leah Simon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leah-simon-727616/

Kevin LaGrange: http://professionalarts.com/our-company/staff/kevin-lagrange-p-d/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-lagrange-4867a0124/

Sure it's a cynical view, but I believe that Allen and Tucker were brought in to help fulfill a need for more minortity participation in the application. I suppose that's fine, but it might have been somewhat obvious to the SU selection committee.