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Khurshid Khoja

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Khurshid Khoja is Founder of Greenbridge Corporate Counsel, a minority-owned business law firm founded in 2012, representing clientele in California and Hawaii from across numerous sectors in the legal cannabis industry. Khurshid is a business lawyer with over fifteen years of experience, and has been advising clients in the cannabis industry since 2011 on a broad array of regulatory, commercial and transactional matters.    He regularly advises clients on obtaining and maintaining state and local licenses for commercial cannabis activity; corporate formation and governance; joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions; marketing, advertising and promotions; commercial supply contracts; establishing, monetizing and protecting intellectual property rights; obtaining investor financing; and compliance with local, state and federal laws and regulations applicable to cannabis and hemp, including the Medicinal and Adult Use Cannabis Regulation and Safety Act, the federal Controlled Substances Act, the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, the 2018 federal Farm Bill.

Khurshid is also a dedicated industry advocate. He serves as Chair Emeritus of the Board of Directors of the National Cannabis Industry Association (NCIA) and as Co-chair of the NCIA Policy Council, which generates policy proposals for advancing the reform of federal cannabis laws and the protection of the legal cannabis industry. He previously served on the Board of Directors of the Minority Cannabis Business Association (MCBA), and as Co-chair of MCBA’s Policy Committee, founding board member of the California Cannabis Industry Association, and as CCIA's outside General Counsel. He also served on California State Treasurer's Cannabis Banking Working Group, which explored state and federal solutions to make banking accessible to the legal cannabis industry.  In addition, Khurshid serves on the Advisory Council of Students for Sensible Drug Policy. He has previously served on the Council on Responsible Cannabis Regulation, and as General Counsel to The ArcView Group and the Emerald Growers Association (later renamed the California Growers Association).

Khurshid has participated in legislative and initiative drafting, stakeholder meetings, executive agency outreach and rulemaking proceedings in connection with California’s cannabis laws and regulations, including Proposition 64 and the Medicinal and Adult Use Cannabis Regulation and Safety Act (MAUCRSA), as well as the MCBA’s Model Municipal Social Equity Ordinance.

Among other honors, Khurshid was profiled in The National Law Journal’s first ever “Cannabis Law Trailblazers” list, was featured in The Hemp Connoisseur magazine’s “100 People You Should Know” issue, has been named to the annual Northern California Super Lawyers Rising Stars list multiple times, and was elected a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation. His work has been profiled in multiple editions of the Arcview Market Research report on The State of the Legal Marijuana Markets, New Frontier’s State Legal Cannabis Market Profile for California, as well as Bruce Barcott’s book Weed the People, and his early days as the General Counsel of MendoGrown (later the Emerald Growers Association) are chronicled in Doug Fine’s book Too High To Fail. He has been a featured presenter at numerous professional conferences on drug policy and the cannabis industry.

Khurshid was President of the Class of 2001 at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, and is an alumnus of The University of Chicago and DePaul University. 

Education

  • J.D., University of California at Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law
  • M.A., Committee on International Relations, University of Chicago
  • B.A., With High Honor, Political Science, DePaul University

Bar Memberships

  • California