Jeremy Unruh
General Counsel & Chief Compliance Officer
PharmaCannis
Jeremy Unruh serves as the PharmaCann senior vice president of regulatory and external affairs. He brings a fifteen-year track record as a government prosecutor and big firm lawyer to the developing cannabis industry.
Jeremy is responsible for the company’s external matters, including legislative policy and public affairs; media relationships; organized labor, and coordination with state and local regulators. He manages lobbying efforts in six statehouses and Washington, D.C., and is at the tip of the spear as PharmaCann works to develop its licensed facilities. Jeremy is on the executive committee of the Illinois, New York, and Pennsylvania industry associations. Most importantly, Jeremy oversees the development of the PharmaCann social equity and corporate responsibility program.
As one of the company’s original employees, Jeremy served as PharmaCann’s first general counsel and chief compliance officer, responsible for the buildout, security, and warehousing functions of PharmaCann’s first cohort of cultivation centers and dispensaries:
- Developed and commissioned two 60,000 ft.2 cultivation centers and four dispensaries in Illinois.
- Developed and commissioned a 130,000 ft.2 manufacturing center and four dispensaries in New York.
- Managed interaction between company and the state regulatory agencies of New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio and Massachusetts relating to the licensed cultivation and distribution of medical cannabis.
- Developed the legal and regulatory compliance systems for all of the PharmaCann operational facilities with more than 450 employees.
Beginning his career as a prosecutor, Jeremy was trained in trial advocacy by the United States Department of Justice at the National College of District Attorneys in Columbia, S.C. Before his eventual appointment as the first-chair prosecutor in the courtroom of the Chief Judge of the Criminal Division of the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, Jeremy successfully investigated and tried drug cases, homicides, financial, and sexual abuse crimes.
Jeremy went into private practice for a firm that would reach the American Lawyer Top 100 during his tenure. Jeremy’s practice focused on commercial litigation, internal compliance investigations in the financial services and healthcare sectors, and product liability defense. He was the lead trial attorney on the national product liability trial team for a Fortune 100 industrial company for many years.
Jeremy has a B.S. from Kansas State University. He earned a Juris Doctor from Washburn University School of Law where he was an inaugural recipient of the Environmental Law certificate. While serving as an assistant state’s attorney in Chicago, Jeremy attended DePaul University Kellstadt School of Business Management at night and earned his M.B.A. Jeremy lives in the northern suburbs of the Chicagoland metropolitan area with his wife and three children.