ThndrStrm Strategies was built by people who came up the hard way — not through marketing degrees or agency internships, but through years of doing real work inside movements, campaigns, and industries that don't have room for theory without practice.
It started in the cannabis industry — one of the most complex, contested, and misunderstood spaces in American politics and business. Building brands, running advocacy campaigns, and fighting for policy change in an environment where the rules were constantly shifting taught ThndrStrm something most consultants never learn: that strategy without deep contextual knowledge is just guesswork dressed up in a deck.
That foundation — built in the trenches of cannabis reform, political campaigns, and community organizing — is what ThndrStrm brings to every engagement.
Kaliko Castille has spent over a decade doing strategic work at the highest levels across three of the most demanding arenas in public life: the cannabis industry, electoral politics, and nonprofit advocacy.
His career began in the marijuana reform movement — starting as an activist and NORML intern before helping build a political action committee, launching a dispensary, and eventually leading marketing and business development for the National Cannabis Industry Association, the leading federal trade association for the cannabis industry.
That work put him in rooms where policy, politics, and commerce intersected — and gave him a rare, ground-level understanding of how organizations build power, lose it, and rebuild it again. He later served as President of the Board of Directors for the Minority Cannabis Business Association, where he helped lead significant policy initiatives — including the creation of MCBA's National Cannabis Equity Report, the development of model cannabis legalization policies for state legislatures, and federal lobbying for equitable cannabis policy. Under his leadership, MCBA was named Trade Association of the Year at the MJBizCon EmJay Awards.
From there, Kaliko brought that same strategic lens to the political campaign world — working on statewide races across Oregon, including the gubernatorial campaign of State Treasurer Tobias Read, and running for State Representative himself in 2022. He knows what it feels like to be on the inside of a campaign, making decisions under pressure with imperfect information and a ticking clock.
Today he leads ThndrStrm as its principal strategic advisor — bringing that decade of C-suite and executive-level experience directly to the small businesses, nonprofits, and campaigns that need it most.
A brilliant plan that sits in a document is worth nothing. ThndrStrm builds strategies that are designed from the start to be implemented by real teams with real constraints — not ideal teams with unlimited budgets.
Impressions, follower counts, and engagement rates are easy to chase and easy to fake. The organizations ThndrStrm works with are focused on outcomes — votes, dollars raised, communities built, policies changed — not numbers that look good in a report.
ThndrStrm is not interested in creating dependency. The goal of every engagement is to leave the organization sharper, more capable, and fully equipped to execute without outside help. If we've done our job well, you won't need us forever.
Generic strategy is almost always wrong strategy. ThndrStrm invests deeply in understanding the specific world each client operates in — the political dynamics, the community relationships, the historical baggage, the cultural nuance — before offering a single recommendation.