Amanda Rositano

CEO | Co-Founder

Soulstar

Amanda Rositano has been pioneering east coast cannabis for over a decade. She is the founder and CEO of Soulstar, a female-led cannabis company building a portfolio of diverse and high performing businesses in emerging adult use markets, and a partner at Seven Stars Consulting. 

Soulstar has secured one of the only 16 social equity DIA cultivator licenses to launch Connecticut’s recreational market. Soulstar has also secured a retail dispensary license to launch its first store in Northern NJ in early 2023. 

Amanda is the former president of NETA, where she was a key member of the start-up team that successfully launched one of the first vertically-integrated cannabis businesses in MA and transacted the first legal sale east of the Mississippi. Under Amanda’s leadership, NETA’s stores became two of the highest grossing cannabis dispensaries in the US, and NETA was acquired by Surterra Wellness in 2019 in one of the largest private acquisitions of a cannabis company at the time.
 
Amanda’s work toward safe, legal access and a healthy, diverse, and vibrant cannabis industry began during her time working in the MA legislature, where she advocated for medical marijuana laws and helped to shape state regulations for broad patient access under the newly formed MA medical marijuana program. 
 
Amanda helped to launch and later served on the board of the Commonwealth Dispensary Association (“CDA”) in Massachusetts, where she played a key role in shaping and influencing regulatory policies and program improvements to the benefit of consumers, communities, and cannabis businesses. Amanda is currently serving a second term as an appointee to the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission’s Cannabis Advisory Board (“CAB”) and was a leading voice in the Commission's move to create licensing exclusivity periods for social equity and economic empowerment cannabis business applicants.

Amanda is committed to promoting and supporting diversity and inclusion in entrepreneurship, especially in the cannabis industry. Amanda was part of the founding membership team that launched Mass CultivatED, a public-private nonprofit partnership heralded as the country’s first “jails to jobs” cannabis program and serves as a volunteer with a year-long mentorship and entrepreneurship accelerator program called Entrepreneurship for All, EforAll. In New Jersey, Amanda and the Seven Stars team offered pro-bono services to lead the successful application of one of the state’s first licensees, Siembra, a female-and minority-owned micro-cultivator.