Amanda Bloom was born in Montclair, California in 1986. Today, she is highly regarded as the Founder and President of luxury cannabis lifestyle company Gatunlati, and CEO of Gatunlati’s popular brand, Blogie Blunts, a consumer favorite found in dispensaries across California. She brings a lifetime of unique experiences to her work.
After battling serious health conditions that brought her to the use of cannabis medicine, she first became involved in the business when she, as a Spiritual Healer, was drawn to the “powerful energy of cannabis.” Pained by memories of loved ones lost to cancer, she began hearing inspirational stories of those who had used cannabis to help them beat the dreaded disease, stories of how it helped others relieve their pain in their dying days. The appropriately named Bloom began growing cannabis plants and soon fell in love with them. “They have a magic and an energy of their own and you can feel how alive they are,” she says. She was determined to create a path for those looking for healthier alternatives to what was then on dispensary store shelves. One thing above all was important to her “No toxins! I wanted a company that helped people – mind, body and soul – heal and transcend.” In 2021 she made it happen, when she purchased her own manufacturing and distribution center and quickly went to work creating industry leading products and building her brands. The first thing she did was donate 70,000 dollars worth of product to veterans and patients suffering with serious illnesses like cancer, and AIDS. Later in the year she teamed up with a skilled partner on the grow side to create a hugely respected vertical company from seed to to sale.
Bloom has been called a power woman of cannabis- and it’s easy to see why.
The co-owner of AJSB Properties, she is extremely active in the investment decision making and ongoing investment oversight processes of her companies. She works closely with colleagues to create meaningful, industry leading deal structures, ensuring that proper governance is carried out at the company level.
She says she comes by her business acumen naturally, influenced by some incredible family members and growing up in her grandfather’s nationally known business in the agriculture industry. She says she is still inspired today by the way her grandfather “ran his empire and cared for everyone around him.” She remembers how hard he worked and how when times got hard, he “sacrificed his whole life” with “unmatched focus and determination and dedication,” conscious of the employees that depended on him to keep their jobs and feed their families. Another lesson she says she won’t ever forget and that she applies in her business dealings today : “My grandfather always told me that our employees were our family – the janitor is as important as the president – and to give people the space to learn, to grow and even to make mistakes in their positions. I would say ‘papa how do you do all of this?’ and he would say ‘ great leaders delegate honey – you have to trust your team.’ Today, she says, she understands more than ever what that means – and feels more connected to him today than ever. “I feel like I stepped right into his shoes and became all the things I always loved and admired about him and now I have this baby and world of my own and he makes more sense to me now than ever before.”
In addition to her obvious business acumen, it is very clear that Bloom is heart centered too. “When I sit and reflect on life,” she said recently, “I feel I’m a combination of an intuitive empath – that comes from my grandmother’s side – and a powerful business woman – that came from the Bloom side. My mothers heart, my grandfather’s mind, my aunt’s relentlessness, and my grandmother’s intuition. I follow my intuition above all and I hope I can take these things and use them to help a lot of people.”
She already has. Passionate about making a difference, she founded Changing Reins, a non profit that does incredible, important work in 2020. The organization “empowers children and adults who live with physical, mental, emotional, and social challenges to heal and transform their lives through equine assisted activities.” Her motivation to found Changing Reins came from her personal experience. She says that it was her own serious health issues that motivated her not only to want to help others heal – but to help the animals, too. She wanted to give back what they had given her. She first took horseback lessons when she was five, and throughout her personal health struggles, the time she spent with the animals became a place for her to heal and ground, a place of comfort. “I go to the animals for therapy and to escape, I just have to sit in a saddle.”
When she’s not working 12 hour days building Gatunlati into California’s foremost canna brand or sitting in a saddle, Amanda can often be found giving of her time and energy advocating for effective cannabis policy and educating about the healing nature of the plant.
