For Alex Paulakovich, building a successful cannabis company requires more than developing products that sell. It means preserving the culture that built the industry, surrounding yourself with people who complement one another, and remaining willing to learn as the market evolves.

As executive vice president of Nuthera, Paulakovich has helped guide the Missouri company from its application-stage beginnings through manufacturing, cultivation, and retail, developing brands that include Panda, Infinity, and Indi Vape, along with Fresh Karma dispensaries.

“It’s a balancing act in the industry,” Paulakovich explained. “As it gets more commercialized and more people become a part of it, balancing the grassroots aspect of where it all came from while also bringing it to the mainstream is something that we do really well.”

For Paulakovich, maintaining that balance is essential.

Broader acceptance introduces cannabis to new audiences, but she believes companies should be careful not to erase the culture and history that made legalization possible.

“Keeping that original vibe, where cannabis came from, while also introducing it to a much wider audience of people is extremely important to me,” she said. “The culture of where it came from can kind of get washed away at times, and I don’t want it to do that.”

Paulakovich’s path began far from the executive office.

A Kansas City native, she moved to Colorado when she was 21, arriving as the state’s adult-use industry was beginning to take shape. Her first job involved trimming harvested cannabis before she worked her way into cultivation operations.

“I started trimming on the trim table. That’s kind of where my story originated,” Paulakovich recalled. “I was one of the first women they let walk around and be in charge of one specific room.”

The work was physical and demanding. It included hand-watering plants, moving soil, transplanting, and completing the daily tasks required to operate a commercial cultivation facility.

Over six years in Colorado, Paulakovich developed experience managing cultivation facilities and overseeing compliance. That background eventually led True Level Investments, the company behind Nuthera and Fresh Karma dispensaries, to recruit her during Missouri’s medical cannabis application period.

She initially expected to oversee cultivation.

When the company was awarded a manufacturing license but not a cultivation license, her responsibilities abruptly changed.

“They were like, ‘Do you want to run the manufacturing facility?’” Paulakovich recounted. “I’m like, ‘I guess I will run the manufacturing facility.’ I really just had to lean into everything.”

Manufacturing introduced processes outside her existing area of expertise, but Paulakovich approached the challenge by asking questions, working with experienced professionals, and learning each part of the operation.

“Every aspect of it outside of cultivation and compliance was kind of new for me,” she said. “There’s really no task that I’m not willing to try and figure out. I’m always down to ask questions, even if they’re stupid ones, and learn as much as I can.”

That willingness to learn became increasingly important as her role expanded. As Executive Vice President, Paulakovich works across operations, compliance, sales, marketing, retail, and public-facing responsibilities.

“It is everything,” she explained. “Anything that has to do with the company, I have my hand in and am dipping my toe in. It’s really the whole picture.”

From cultivation to the consumer

Paulakovich’s cultivation background continues to influence how Nuthera approaches manufacturing and retail.

Understanding how a plant performs does not end with yield or appearance, she explained. A cultivar may produce well in a cultivation facility but perform poorly during extraction. Another may produce desirable concentrates but be inefficient to cultivate commercially.

“The good old saying in manufacturing is, ‘Fire in, fire out,’” Paulakovich said. “If you’re getting good input material, then you’re going to have a good product coming from that.”

That knowledge also carries into retail. Understanding how products are cultivated, extracted, manufactured, and tested helps employees communicate differences in quality and format to consumers.

“You’ll never be able to fully understand the consumer, but you can at least understand where they’re coming from,” she stated.

Missouri consumers are not a monolithic group, Paulakovich noted. Purchasing behavior changes by region, experience level, desired effect, and product category. Brands must be able to serve experienced consumers while remaining approachable to people entering a dispensary for the first time.

That philosophy helped guide the redevelopment of Indi Vape (https://nuthera.com/indi-vapes/).

Nuthera retained the existing formulations but moved the products into color-coded AIO hardware under the “Vape the Rainbow” campaign.

“We didn’t change the formulation at all,” Paulakovich explained. “It was a whole revamp of the brand, which started with the hardware.”

Selecting that hardware required extensive testing. Paulakovich wanted a device that was sleek, portable, and easy to understand. Associating individual colors with familiar flavors helped make the line more recognizable and approachable.

“I probably tried every single disposable hardware out there and landed on that one,” she recalled. “People have loved it. It’s been super successful.”

Since the redesign, Indi has since become the best-selling vape brand in Missouri.

“We are currently the number one vape in the state, which I couldn’t be more proud of,” she said.

Building recognizable brands

The decision to bring Nuthera’s gummies and chocolates together under the Panda name came from a similar effort to create a clearer identity.

Paulakovich said the company had struggled to communicate a unified story across its collection of sub-brands.

Bringing Panda Fruits and Panda Chocolates together under a shared identity allowed Nuthera to emphasize familiar flavors, playful branding, and a consistent visual presentation.

“We felt like we could get the vibe that we wanted across a little bit more with the Panda brand,” she said. “We want to be fun and familiar.”

Paulakovich credited Andy “Baggadonuts” Soloducha with advocating for the Panda identity.

“He was really the leader of that change,” she recalled. “People were way more receptive to Panda, so we followed his lead and really leaned into it.”

Paulakovich also credited former marketing director Bryn Chaney with helping translate her broader vision into branding and creative work.

“I’m a systems person,” Paulakovich explained. “I definitely have the vision. I know how I want it to look and how I want it to feel, but I struggle to communicate that.”

Working with people who possessed complementary abilities allowed that vision to become tangible.

“She was able to bring me all these fresh ideas and cool ideas that I could never voice,” Paulakovich said of Chaney. “She changed my brand for sure.”

   

Among Nuthera’s brands, Infinity holds particular significance for Paulakovich.

Developing the concentrate line required her to learn while simultaneously establishing everything from its identity to its initial product selection.

“That one took so much of my time and energy,” she recalled. “It was all so brand new to me. It was so cool that I was just super pumped about it.”

The brand debuted on 4/20, with the team intentionally selecting the cultivars and concentrate products it wanted to introduce first.

“That labor of love came from really leaning into the product and wanting to put something good out into the market.”

The advantages and limitations of vertical integration

Nuthera began as a manufacturer that depended on relationships with independent cultivators for raw material. The company subsequently added cultivation, allowing it to operate as a vertically integrated business and exercise greater control over its supply chain.

Paulakovich said both operating models offer advantages.

Without an affiliated cultivation facility, she visited operations throughout Missouri, learned how other companies approached production, and selected material from different cultivators and cultivars.

“You almost have more flexibility because you can shop around,” she explained.

Vertical integration provides consistency and control, but it can also make introducing new genetics more complicated. Commercial phenotype hunts require significant space, time, and resources, with no guarantee every plant evaluated will justify continued production.

“You can almost get locked in a little bit as a fully vertical because these are your consistent strains and this is what you’re always doing,” Paulakovich said. “It makes it harder to introduce that variety.”

Her experience sourcing from independent cultivators also helped establish relationships across Missouri’s industry. Those connections remain important even when purchasing material is no longer the primary reason for communicating.

“I almost miss having to go out and source all this stuff all the time because you’re able to talk to everybody and see what people have going on,” she acknowledged.

Paulakovich wants consumers to understand that Nuthera’s products and brands were developed in Missouri by a Missouri-based team.

“We started in Missouri. All of us are Missouri people,” she emphasized. “We didn’t bring any outside brands in.”

She credited Director of Edible Production Seth Galusha with creating the company’s chocolate and gummy recipes and highlighted Matt Kemper’s role in building the extraction operation.

“So many people affiliated with Nuthera have had their blood, sweat, and tears put into every single product that is made in that place,” Paulakovich said.

Paulakovich said the operation grew from her and Galusha working together in a room to approximately 100 people working at its manufacturing and cultivation facility.

She described Nuthera as a young company whose leadership and employees were given an opportunity to build something of their own.

“This is a lot of young, local people who were given an opportunity to live out their dream,” she said. “We’re taking advantage of it every single day to try to do something cool.”

Missouri’s preference for homegrown companies has helped reinforce that identity.

“People want to support Missouri brands, and I think they should support Missouri brands,” Paulakovich stated. “There are a lot of people who have been in it since the beginning and put their blood, sweat, and tears into this.”

Finding people who fit the puzzle

Paulakovich considers the people behind Nuthera more important than any single brand or product.

She does not believe every employee needs years of industry experience. Instead, she looks for passion, adaptability, work ethic, and an ability to contribute something the existing team lacks.

“I was given a chance,” she said. “I don’t need people who have all this expertise. I care about the passion and how we work together.”

Cannabis operations routinely face regulatory changes, packaging deadlines, production challenges, and shifting consumer preferences. Paulakovich values employees who can respond to those changes without losing sight of the company’s larger goals.

“People who are able to roll with the punches really mean a lot to me,” she explained.

Four of the company’s first five hires remain with Nuthera, according to Paulakovich. Other employees have advanced from roles at Fresh Karma dispensaries into leadership positions within Nuthera’s operations, inventory, and distribution departments.

She compares building the team to assembling a puzzle.

“You don’t always have to get along with everybody. You don’t always have to have the same ideas,” Paulakovich said. “You can’t have multiple versions of the same puzzle piece and try to put together this puzzle and have it make sense.”

Different backgrounds and perspectives make the organization stronger, she explained. Her job is not to find people who think exactly as she does, but to identify the abilities the company needs and create an environment where those individuals can grow.

“I want to find somebody who is really good at all the things that I am not good at,” Paulakovich said. “Then it just makes everything better.”

Creating room to grow

For people hoping to enter the industry, Paulakovich recommends gaining practical experience and remaining open to unfamiliar responsibilities.

“I think the cannabis industry is a little bit of baptism by fire,” she said. “You really need to come inside of the cannabis industry to understand the cannabis industry.”

The range of possible careers is far broader than cultivation or dispensary sales. Manufacturing operations alone require employees specializing in extraction, edible production, packaging, inventory, compliance, and distribution.

“Pick a discipline and start running with that,” Paulakovich advised. “If you work hard in this industry and you want to learn and grow, there’s an immense amount of opportunity.”

Whether someone should specialize or develop experience across departments depends on the individual, she said.

Paulakovich is motivated by building teams, systems, brands, and businesses. Others may find fulfillment by mastering cultivation, extraction, confectionery, retail, or another discipline.

“I like building the vision and building the team to make it all happen,” she explained. “But I need people who are more specific, who say, ‘I love growing cannabis, and that’s what I want to do.’”

That combination of specialists, builders, and complementary thinkers has become the foundation of Paulakovich’s leadership philosophy.

“You have to have all different types of people, all different types of backgrounds, and all different scopes of knowledge,” she said. “That’s what it takes to make this crazy train go down the tracks every day.”