Lightning
Strikes

When Kaliko joined the National Cannabis Industry Association as a business development hire, the organization had no way for members to sign up digitally. No button on the website. Paper forms. A manual pipeline. An industry trade association at the height of the cannabis boom — operating like it was still 2010.

He didn't start by selling harder. He started by building the infrastructure that would make scale possible — digital membership signup, Hubspot CRM, an in-house creative team, and a content engine that could run without anyone picking up the phone. Then he pitched leadership on a 24-hour Cyber Monday deal — 20% off annual memberships — in an organization that had never offered a discount. They were skeptical. He made the case. They ran it. Fifty memberships sold in one day. No sales calls.

That year became the largest single-year membership growth in NCIA's history.

ThndrStrm was brought in just over a month before the launch of the very first Emerge Virtual Cannabis Conference — a brand with zero existing audience and a hard deadline. In four weeks, the team built and executed a launch campaign that drove results well beyond what any new event brand should expect this early.

When Oregon State Treasurer Tobias Read launched his 2022 gubernatorial campaign, ThndrStrm was brought in to build and execute the digital strategy from the ground up. The challenge wasn't just launching a campaign — it was breaking through in a crowded field and establishing Tobias as a serious contender immediately.

Four days. That's how much runway ThndrStrm had when the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws brought Kaliko in ahead of the MORE Act vote in Congress — one of the most significant pieces of federal cannabis legislation in history.

Working against the clock, ThndrStrm built and executed a rapid response digital strategy that turned a critical policy moment into a massive audience engagement opportunity.

In 2022, Kaliko ran for State Representative in Oregon's House District 41 — applying everything ThndrStrm had built for clients to his own campaign. The race produced endorsements from major labor unions and community organizations, built through an organic digital content strategy that punched well above its weight class financially.

Running for office is the ultimate stress test for a political strategist. You're making decisions under pressure, with imperfect information, on a public stage, with no margin for error. It's one thing to advise a candidate. It's another to be one.

When Kaliko joined the Minority Cannabis Business Association's board, the organization's top membership tier was $10,000 a year. In his very first board retreat, he made the case to change it — drawing directly on what he'd learned building NCIA's membership program. The room was skeptical. A $100,000 top tier felt like an impossible ask for an all-volunteer advocacy organization.

He won the argument. Members started coming in at $30,000 and $50,000 — levels that never would have been possible under the old ceiling. The revenue unlocked everything else: a full-time Executive Director, federal lobbying capacity, and the resources to produce the National Cannabis Equity Report — now widely cited across the industry and by policymakers at every level of government.

Under his leadership as President, MCBA secured critical provisions in the base text of the SAFE Banking Act, rewrote model cannabis legalization policy for state legislatures, and was named Trade Association of the Year at MJBizCon — the industry's largest annual gathering.

The summer of 2012. Cannabis legalization was on the ballot in Oregon, Washington, and Colorado. Washington and Colorado had professional campaigns and millions in funding. Oregon's initiative — Measure 80 — was polling at 36% and being written off by national donors as a lost cause.

Kaliko and a friend decided someone needed to do something. At Hempfest — the largest cannabis activist gathering in the country — they filed a PAC and got to work. Six weeks before election day. No staff. No infrastructure. Around $10,000 raised in small-dollar donations from individuals across Oregon.

The theory was simple: maximum visibility in minimum time. Three billboards across Portland that generated earned media. 2,500 rally signs distributed across the state. Thirty large vinyl banners at busy intersections and overpasses, where commuters would see them every single day. A virtual phone bank built in partnership with national advocates. The first press release Kaliko ever wrote — picked up by media outlets across the state.

Measure 80 finished at 46%. It didn't pass — but it moved ten points in six weeks with almost nothing. Two years later Oregon legalized cannabis in a midterm election, defying the conventional wisdom that marijuana initiatives only worked in high-turnout presidential years. The 2012 campaign had proved the political viability that made 2014 possible.