Bright Women, Bold Futures 2026 Collective: Katie Motta
Bright Women, Bold Futures: The 2026 Collective
The Bright Women, Bold Futures campaign is more than a photoshoot, it is a living archive of the architects of the modern cannabis landscape. This year, we are honoring a collective of visionaries who refuse to wait for permission. These are the Entrepreneurs scaling new heights, the Advocates rewriting the rules of equity, the Educators stripping away stigma, and the Community Builders creating spaces where we finally feel seen.
They are bold in their leadership and bright in their vision, proving that when women lead, the future isn’t just different, it’s better.
Katie Motta, Founder and CEO of Jade Stone and Alluring Media Co 
From the high-energy halls of the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC to the frontlines of cannabis branding, Katie Motta is redefining how the world sees the plant. As the Founder and CEO of Jade Stone, a boutique brand strategy and design agency and and Alluring Media Co, Katie leverages a sophisticated background in fashion, photography, and creative strategy to bridge the gap between feminine or “canna-curious” consumers and professional, polished brands.
Katie’s journey is one of the most compelling pivots in the industry, moving from a childhood shaped by the fear of the War on Drugs to becoming a visionary who uses design to open minds. Today, she focuses on stripping away outdated stereotypes and helping women-led and modern brands find their voice through visual storytelling.
1. What originally called you into cannabis, and how has your relationship with the plant evolved alongside your leadership journey?
I was one of the last people anyone would have expected to build a career in the cannabis industry.
I grew up in a household shaped by the war on drugs. I had severe anxiety as a younger person, and my family’s warnings were vivid and stuck with me deeply. They told me that if I were ever in a car with a friend who had a joint in the car, even out of sight, and we got pulled over, I would be going to jail too. That image haunted me. I made my friends promise they had nothing on them before getting in my car. I didn’t allow it in my house. I policed my environment because I was genuinely terrified. A bad edible experience in college that left me hallucinating only deepened that fear. Cannabis was clearly not for me, and I had no plans for it ever to be a part of my life. What changed that was my first cannabis design client.
My background is in fashion, lifestyle, and product photography, and when I launched my parent agency, Alluring Media Co., I built it around beauty, wellness, and lifestyle, leading as a creative director and shaping brand vision from that lens. In late 2021, I was approached by someone in my entrepreneurship accelerator cohort to help design a feminine-focused rolling paper brand to better cater to the female consumers he felt were being ignored in the accessories space. I was transparent about my unfamiliarity with the industry, but he trusted my team’s vision, so I dove headfirst into researching for the project.
What I found surprised me. I started hearing people’s real stories about using cannabis for chronic pain, for sleep, for anxiety, for healing. These were hardworking, intelligent, deeply passionate people – nothing like what I’d been told by my family. I had carried a stigma about cannabis users for my whole life, and that stigma started to unravel quickly.
But something else came into focus, too. When I looked at the branding across the industry, weed leaves, red-eyed cartoon characters, slime drips, spray paint, I realized that the imagery itself was part of the problem. Stigma doesn’t just live in policy or in people’s words. It lives in visuals. It lives in the aesthetic signals we send about who a product is for and who it isn’t. And everything I was seeing was sending a very clear message that women like me, who were canna-curious but cautious, who were feminine and appreciated aesthetics, weren’t welcome, weren’t considered, and weren’t the point.
That’s when it clicked. If I had encountered branding that looked like the wellness and lifestyle products I actually buy, I genuinely believe I wouldn’t have been nearly as afraid of this industry growing up, and my family wouldn’t have been either. I realized that design has the power to open minds that policy and conversation sometimes can’t reach, and nobody was using it that way for women in cannabis.
So I built Jade Stone, a cannabis strategy & design agency, specifically to change that. I’ll admit I worried that my lack of personal cannabis experience would undermine people’s trust in me to bring their brand visions to life. What I’ve discovered is the opposite. Not being deeply immersed in cannabis culture means I can see these brands the way a general consumer sees them, someone curious, maybe hesitant, deciding whether this world has a place for them. That is exactly the perspective most cannabis brands are missing, and it’s one that’s hard to access when you’ve been inside the industry for years. My outsider origin isn’t a gap in my credibility. It’s one of my greatest strengths.
As for my own relationship with the plant, it’s evolved in ways I never expected. I went from someone who wouldn’t allow cannabis anywhere near me to someone who now uses CBD for muscle relaxation and stress management. I’m still learning what works for me, and I’m nowhere near done exploring. But I’m open in a way I never thought I’d be, and I advocate genuinely for anyone who wants to do the same, on their own terms, at their own pace.
I came into this industry as a skeptic. I stayed because I realized design could be one of the most powerful tools for changing how the world sees cannabis, and I wasn’t willing to leave that work to someone else.
2. What is a lesson you learned the hard way that now informs how you mentor, hire, or collaborate with others?
The hardest lessons in business rarely announce themselves. Sometimes they show up as a slow, creeping gut feeling as time goes on.
Early in building Jade Stone, I hired someone whose technical skills were exactly what I needed. But over time, I started noticing discrepancies in his invoices, double charges, hours tacked on from previous weeks he claimed he’d “forgotten” to include. At first, I gave him the benefit of the doubt, then gave it again, because that’s who I am. I’m deeply empathetic, and I kept telling myself that assuming the worst would make me the problem. By the time I finally trusted my gut and confronted him, the damage was done, roughly $5,000 in wages I genuinely don’t believe were earned. And when I called him to discuss this with him, he didn’t take any accountability. He laughed it off, told me to “calm down”, and was completely dismissive. The gaslighting was almost worse than the lost money.
I did implement a 90-day trial contract for all new hires after that (which I recommend to everyone), but honestly, the paperwork wasn’t the real takeaway. What that experience forced me to look at was my own empathy, and how I was letting it work against me.
People in business will tell you empathy is a liability, but I disagree completely. I think it’s one of the most powerful leadership tools there is. But like any tool, it has to be used correctly. I was extending empathy to someone who hadn’t earned it, and in doing so, I was actually betraying myself. I’ve learned to distinguish between empathy as a strength, holding space for people, leading with understanding, building trust, and empathy as a reflex that leaves you vulnerable to people who will take advantage of it.
That shift now lives in how I hire. I barely focus on technical skills in interviews anymore; skills can be taught, and a strong portfolio speaks for itself. What I’m really looking for is character, integrity, and self-awareness. I ask questions that get to the root of who someone is as a person, not just what they can deliver. I’m a really strong judge of character, but I need the right conditions to be able to read people well. That hire happened over Zoom, with his camera off, and I was so focused on his abilities that I bypassed the instincts I normally rely on. I won’t make that mistake again.
Trust your gut. Extend empathy to those who’ve earned it. And always, always make sure they turn their Zoom camera on.
3. What is a defining moment in your career that quietly shaped the leader you are today, but that most people don’t know about?
Most people assume that defining moments look like positive breakthroughs. Mine looked like two bosses who taught me exactly who I never wanted to become.
Before Jade Stone, I worked for a man who negotiated a lower hourly rate in exchange for mentorship. He had business knowledge, real estate experience, and general guidance. It sounded like an opportunity to really learn and grow, but it started almost immediately with hostility. He would get aggressive and short with me, be rude on calls, and generally be all business. I didn’t enjoy working with him, and felt like I was ready to quit. But about a month or so into working with him, he gave me a raise and told me how great I was doing. I felt like maybe I was wrong about his feelings. Maybe he did actually see my value, and I was just misinterpreting him.
What it actually was, I didn’t fully understand until a few months later, when he was walking me through hiring strategies on one of those mentorship calls. Casually, almost proudly, he told me that one of the best ways to retain employees is to give them a raise early, because it makes them feel appreciated enough to stay, even if you treat them poorly otherwise, like he’d done with me.
I remember the moment it clicked what he had just said. The raise I had received, the one that made me second-guess my own instincts, that made me think maybe I was misreading his aggression and rudeness, was a calculated move. He had admitted, without a shred of remorse, that he had psychologically manipulated me – a young woman, a new entrepreneur, someone who had come to him trusting that he genuinely wanted to help her grow. He said it so casually, it felt criminal. I was furious. And I never forgot it.
Earlier in my career, I worked for a woman at a luxury retail store, my first real job in that world, at around 19 or 20 years old. She had incredibly high standards, and I believe she was working hard to prove herself as a leader in a space that didn’t always take women seriously. But her version of leadership was rooted in fear, not growth. When I made mistakes, talking honestly to a corporate visitor about a difficult customer, not recognizing a theft tactic I’d never been taught, she didn’t pull me aside and teach me. She iced me out. She made me feel stupid for not knowing things nobody had ever shown me. I spent days sick with anxiety waiting for her to speak to me again, convinced I had done something unforgivable, with no idea what it even was.
What both of these experiences gave me, as painful as they were, was a blueprint for the kind of leader I was absolutely determined to be.
I teach people. When someone on my team doesn’t know something, that’s information about what they need, about what I haven’t communicated clearly enough. I see myself as a team captain, in the mud with them, not coaching from the sidelines. And it goes both ways. I learn from the people I lead just as much as I hope they learn from me. I come into every working relationship genuinely excited to absorb different skills, different ideas, different perspectives. I’ve never believed that being the boss means having all the answers, and I never will.
I also protect their peace fiercely; the pressures I carry as a business owner stop with me and never trickle down to them. When I give raises and bonuses, it’s because they were genuinely earned, never as a manipulation tactic, ever. I make sure they don’t work late nights and weekends the way I do. If they’re sick or burnt out, I tell them to step away and not to worry about how the work will get done; we’ll manage. I treat everyone on my team as an equal who happens to be playing a different position because that’s what they are.
I think about those two bosses more than people might expect. Not with anger anymore, but with gratitude because they showed me, in vivid detail, exactly what leadership looks like when it’s driven by ego, insecurity, and control. And they made me want to spend my entire career doing the opposite.
4. When you think about legacy, not success, what do you hope other women see as possible because you chose to lead boldly?
When I think about legacy, I think about the girl I used to be. Overly anxious, scared, skeptical of everything and everyone, controlled by fear in ways I didn’t even fully understand at the time. I’m building this for her.
Women belong in cannabis just as much as men do. We’ve always been here. We’re not going anywhere. And the industry is better, more human, and more accessible because of us. I want my legacy to live in the businesses built, the brands elevated, and the doors held open because we chose to stay.
But it goes beyond representation. I want to change what people believe cannabis actually is and who it’s actually for. Cannabis consumers are not who my family described to me growing up. They’re mothers, lawyers, athletes, creatives, people you pass in the grocery store without a second thought. They’re people using this plant to sleep, to heal, to manage pain, to find calm. This is a real industry, filled with real people, deserving of the same respect and legitimacy as any other. And I believe stigma can be dismantled through design and through the way we choose to show up visually and tell these stories.
That’s the part I hope people remember about what I built. Not just that Jade Stone served women and modernized the cannabis industry, but that it showed how design can shift perspectives and open conversations that nothing else could. That a brand, built thoughtfully and strategically, can make someone who was once terrified of this industry feel like it was made for them all along. Because that someone was me.
To the young women out there, I want you to know that building something in business as a woman is hard. People will underestimate you, take advantage of you, and try to make you feel like you don’t belong in rooms you’ve more than earned. Do it anyway. Be real, be relentless, and refuse to let fear write your story the way it almost wrote mine.
I show up fully for every client who trusts me with their vision, I fight genuinely for the women around me, and I help prove, one brand at a time, that cannabis deserves to be seen differently. And I believe the vision I’m building will be a reality within my lifetime.
5. Beyond your title, what responsibility do you feel you carry as a woman building in this industry?
The responsibility I feel as a woman in this industry goes far beyond just running an agency the right way.
Changing the stigma and perception around cannabis is something I think about constantly, not just as a business objective, but as a genuine obligation. How this plant is presented to the world, how it’s talked about, how it’s marketed, how it’s designed, all of it shapes whether someone’s mind opens or closes to it. I feel personally responsible for making sure that every brand I touch moves the needle in the right direction, toward something more accessible and more honest about what cannabis actually is and who it serves.
But I also feel a deep responsibility to women, in cannabis, and in business broadly. To make sure there is space for us in this industry, that we are protected in it, and that we are seen as the essential contributors we’ve always been. Women have always been in cannabis. We just haven’t always been centered in it. That’s changing, and I want to be someone who helps make sure it keeps changing.
What I care most about, though, is redefining what female leadership actually looks like. For too long, the message to women in business has been to lead like men, to be harder, louder, more aggressive, to adopt qualities that were never ours to begin with. But being a woman in this space is a superpower. We bring perspective, emotional intelligence, and empathy that are genuinely rare in this industry, and the business world consistently underestimates just how powerful those qualities are in a leader. They build trust, retain talent, and create brands that actually connect with people.
Quiet leadership is real. You can lead with grace and with fire at the same time, without overshadowing the people around you, without ego, without performing strength in a way that doesn’t belong to you. I feel responsible for showing that. To prove that a female leader doesn’t have to follow the rules that were written before she arrived, she gets to write her own.
That’s what I want women in business to see when they look at what I’m building. A different way. One that is entirely, unapologetically ours.
Katie Motta isn’t just designing logos; she is designing a new reality for the cannabis consumer. Through Jade Stone, she is ensuring that the “Bright Future” of this industry is one defined by clarity, accessibility, and high-level strategy.
One Story. One Movement. Many more to come.
Katie is a cornerstone of our Bright Women, Bold Futures collective, a group of leaders proving that when we lead with authenticity, we change the world.
Stay Tuned. Our next spotlight drops soon. You won’t want to miss the next voice shaping what’s next in cannabis leadership.