Meet Brooke Westlake

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Brooke Westlake a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Brooke, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
I believe my resilience comes from my early age of learning to rely on myself. I learned young because my mother was a single mom with three kids. My brother and sister are twins, and they were from my mom’s first marriage. They are also 7 and half years older than me. My mother remarried my father and had me. When I was seven years old, my mother left my father. He was a severe alcoholic and drug addict. In fact, his addictions are what killed him in 2016.

My mother chose the safety of her children over physical and emotional harm. My mother didn’t have a college education to fall back on, so it was up to her to ‘make it’ for the sake of her and her three children. I was cooking dinners for myself by the time I was in the 4th grade, as my mom worked swing shift in the casinos. I also began baby-sitting to earn money for many things my mother could not afford. I don’t believe any of these things are bad. While it made my childhood hard in some ways, I found the resiliency from within to survive and thrive.

I believe the other ways I embraced resiliency for being a woman, mother, student, business owner, advocate and leader has been through all my own personal life experiences. I’m a single mom of two boys who have an eight-year age gap. Through their own growing up and development, I have learned that shielding them from some parts of life is in their best interests while allowing them to experience other parts of life are also in their best interests. I speak the truth to my children when they ask questions. Even if the answer is shocking.

Part of my resiliency has been the truth of my story, journey, and life. All the mountains climbed and valleys I have survived showed me my purpose and calling were bigger than me and bigger than I could have imagined. My own personal resiliency has been a beacon of light as I overcame obstacles as a parent, mother, leader, business owner, or person.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
Growing up, I loved learning. So much so that I eventually earned three higher educational degrees, being the first college graduate in the family. I hold a Masters and Bachelors in Criminal Justice from the University of Nevada, Reno. I also hold an Associates degree in Art from Truckee Meadows Community College.

I was inspired and wanted a career in medicine. After realizing that medical school just wasn’t what I wanted, I was able to work in healthcare in other capacities. I was a surgical tech. I worked for big pharma and the last ten years of my 20-year healthcare career, I was the Vice President of Sales for a privately held medically manufacture. We worked with every industry you could think of, and I loved it, my work, and the people I met along the way. In 2018, the company closed. I decided to get my Masters degree. Upon graduating with my masters degree I was actively seeking to open a cannabis testing lab. The combination of my education and work experience seemed to be a good fit. The problem was that the State of Nevada had been buried in lawsuits.

Thankfully I was born with an entrepreneur spirit. I saw many areas within the industry that needed help, exposure, and advocacy. I launched the Women in Cannabis Expo in January of 2020. That year proved to be a transitional one for me and the world as we all navigated our way through COVID. This gave me an extension of time to build up my first WICE event that took place in September of 2021. It was well received so I hosted 4 WICE events around the United States in 2022. In 2023 as I prepared to set up WICE events, we had to shift, because I got an offer to be on a brand-new game show on Fox, called “We Are Family”. I saw this opportunity as an extension for my brand, and extension of me networking with other people from around the world.

2023 was a defining year where I had to shift focus, but it also allowed me the time I needed to write my autobiography title “From Crowns to Cannabis” out later this year. Part of that journey and story shares my childhood, pageants, career, and my shift from healthcare industry to the cannabis industry. This also allowed me to prepare to host three mixers for WICE and our annual WICE event August 30, 2024. Find more information on our site at www.womenincannabisexpo.com

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
The three qualities I have lived by for the past five years are connect, inspire and learn. Each day I try to connect with someone new. In person or online. This has helped me expand my network and help continue to promote my brands.

I like to inspire others by sharing parts of my inspiration story to help others because so many people have no idea what each of us as individuals have experienced or overcome. I try to inspire one person each day in person, in my writing, in a text message, a phone call or a discussion. People don’t know that I have had 17 surgeries including 3 separate surgeries for pre-cancer and one life saving emergency surgery whereby I lost an entire section of my colon. That part of my life meant I had to try harder and inspire as many people as possible before my dance card of life is filled up.

The last part of my three qualities is learning. I love to learn. I love learning from others, by reading or by life happening. I believe we each need to embrace learning and as much of it as we can. Life is all about learning. Owning a business is all about learning. No two journeys will ever be the same. There is always something to learn even if you don’t think there is. Maybe you learned patience, kindness, friendship, teaching, advocacy, leadership, or ownership.

The advice I give to folks for their journey is to connect, inspire and learn. The best way to do this is to plan, pray and hope for the best. Meaning, be realistic about each part of the process. The journey of the thing’s folks are working on and have a vision for takes time and many steps. Some of the steps to go from point A to B will look nothing like what you thought they would look like. The journey to develop improvements starts by looking at the path you have already taken and the current path your on. This provides a vision for what they should apply toward their future path. Be kind to yourself when navigating through. No two life journeys will ever look the same.

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
I wholeheartedly believe 1,000 percent in the power of collaboration. I refer to this part as connecting. The current space of connection I’m looking to expand upon includes my book “From Crowns to Cannabis”, and my WICE mixers along with our WICE main event. I will continue to connect with companies, businesses and partnerships that want to grow and lift each other up together in the cannabis industry. We do that being on the same page.

That same page could be on the business side of helping companies gain exposure for being a top sponsor for WICE. I would like to connect with companies looking to shine a light on women in the cannabis space by having me come and speak with their leadership team and employees.

Partners or collaborators can find me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Leafwire, TikTok, YouTube. They can also always drop me an email: womenincannabisexpo@yahoo.com

Contact Info:

Image Credits
Deborah Lopez Photography

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