Graham Farrar
CoFounder, President & Board Director of Glass House Group
Graham Farrar is the co-founder, President and Chief Cannabis Officer of Glass House Brands, one of the most rapidly growing, vertically integrated, public cannabis companies in the U.S. focusing solely on the California market. He is a serial entrepreneur with more than 25 years of experience, who has a history of taping into the explosive growth of emerging markets.
As a pioneer in the tech space, Graham served as part of the original team at software.com, a company, which enabled the collection and delivery of email, Software.com went public in 1999. Shortly thereafter, Farrar was on the Board of Directors of Seacology (http://www.seacology.org), a nonprofit focused on protecting island habitats and assisting local communities. The nonprofit funds the needs of villages — whether it be a schoolhouse or health clinic — in exchange for agreements to create forest and marine reserves. Since its founding in 1991, it had launched more than 200 projects with villages on islands in 61 countries and protected roughly 1.3 million acres of some of the world’s most vulnerable ecosystems.
After helping build Seacology, Graham went on to serve as part of the founding team at Sonos (http://www.sonos.comm), an American consumer electronics company based in Santa Barbara, California. At Sonos, Graham worked in a variety of different capacities, including product design, quality assurance, global support, business development and sales.
Farrar then ventured into the regulated cannabis industry helping found Elite Garden Wholesales, an agriculture technology company focused on developing products for the hydroponics industry and tailored soil enrichment products for cannabis crops. In parallel cultivating some of California’s first legal greenhouse grown cannabis.
In 2015, Graham founded Glass House Farms, a 150,000-square-foot greenhouse operation in Carpinteria, California. The earth friendly, state-of-the-art cannabis cultivation facility uses cutting-edge environmental controls to ensure that the coastal grown flowers deliver a consistent and premium product to the market. Under his guidance, Santa Barbara based Glass House Farms, grew to more than half a million square feet of sustainably grown, craft-at-scale cannabis in just six years. In addition, Graham
helped start the organization CARP Growers (http://carpgrowers.org) , whose members represent some of the best and most sustainable farms in the cannabis industry. The organization strives to set best practices and to earn the reputation as leaders and environmental stewards among cannabis producers across the state, as well as being a philanthropic supporter of the Carpinteria community that it is a part of.
In 2018, Farrar was awarded one of three adult-use dispensary permits in the City of Santa Barbara. In August of 2019, The Farmacy SB opened its doors as the first adult use cannabis dispensary in the history Santa Barbara. Glass House Brands has four retails stores in California and has an agreement to merge in 17 additional licenses as part of its continuing growth. Graham has been instrumental in advocating for cannabis and the cannabis industry, creating access to cannabis and supporting education around the socio-economic benefits of the cannabis industry.
In July 2021, Glass House Group completed a de-SPAC transaction that took the company public and resulted in the official name change to Glass House Brands. In September of 2021, Glass House Brands purchased an additional 125-acre, 5.5 million square-foot greenhouse in Camarillo, California. As president of Glass House Brands, Farrar is leveraging his nearly quarter of a century experience in the tech sector to drive efficiencies across the company’s now combined 6,000,000 sq. ft. cultivation facility, manufacturing, production and distributions operations, research and development, new products, and business development strategies. He also continues to capitalize on his years of experience at Seacology to create an earth-friendly and state-of-the-art cannabis and hemp company that combines technology, sustainability best practices and smart business sense with a passion for cannabis, hemp, and cannabinoids.
Graham has proudly served as a board member of the Santa Barbara Bowl Foundation for 13 years; which allows Farrar to leverage his passion for music, community and business. Graham thrives on a highly active life, which includes two multi-year sailboat adventures, piloting, and mountain biking, along with spending quality family time with his wife and two children.