Wana Brands Foundation

A Note from Nancy Whiteman, Founder & CEO of Wana Brands and Wana Brands Foundation: I have always had a strong desire to give back to the industry, to the communities that we serve, and to the world at large. Our company mission of enhancing lives has always been intermeshed with my personal mission to do my part in making the world a better place. In October of 2021, Wana Brands completed a transaction with Canopy Growth Corporation. This transaction enabled me to found the Wana Brands Foundation. Starting a foundation is an interesting and challenging experience. When I founded the Wana Brands Foundation about a year and a half ago, one of the first questions we needed to address was the purpose of the foundation. With so much need in the world, how would we go about choosing where to put our time and resources? Because of our history as a company, this question was perhaps easier for me than it might be for others. For many years, Wana Brands (the company, not the foundation) has had an active Corporate Social Responsibility program. We've supported a diverse group of organizations including social justice, housing, food security, climate change and sustainability, safety, community and connection, and mental health. These are all issues that speak to our hearts. For me, the most exciting thing about the Canopy transaction was the opportunity it provided to build on our existing framework at a much larger level than I ever imagined was possible. While we are focusing on a variety of issues that appear to be separate, what we have learned so far is that they are all far more interconnected than we originally understood. I plan to use this page to share some of our thought process in setting priorities, how we think about the programs we want to support, and how we evaluate impact. These are early days for the Foundation and we still have a lot of learning to do about how to be impactful and conscious givers. I hope you will join us on our journey