Gies Business Professor Justin Leiby has partnered with a team of Illinois Business Consulting (IBC) students to introduce critical economic metrics to its sophisticated data dashboards that are transforming the cannabis industry.

Since 2021, Leiby (right) has been working with the State of Illinois to collect and analyze cannabis industry data. Recognizing its immense potential, he annually works with IBC to provide Gies students with unparalleled hands-on experience in tackling real-world data challenges.

This year's nine-member IBC team, comprised of students from various disciplines, significantly advanced these efforts. Building on previous foundational work, they focused on unifying and standardizing several years of survey data to create a new suite of powerful dashboards. They tracked metrics related to company executives, boards of directors, and overall company performance, with a keen focus on critical areas like diversity, equity, and inclusion; compensation; and banking access.

The team presented their findings to leadership from the University of Illinois System’s Cannabis Research Institute (CRI), the State of Illinois Cannabis Regulation & Oversight Office, the Illinois Commission on Equity & Inclusion, and cannabis industry executives.

“The new cloud database and evolving stakeholder needs offered the opportunity to create new data visualizations,” said Leiby. “The team built a Tableau solution that makes it easier for everyone to extract actionable insights.”

Hands-on problem solving

A significant hurdle in the past has been fragmented and inconsistent data. The IBC team, led by project manager Jeff Shin, CS ’24, implemented rigorous schema alignment, effectively removing duplicate fields and hidden conflicts. To ensure the dashboards addressed real-world needs, the student team conducted extensive interviews with policymakers, business owners, journalists, and activists. A key takeaway was the strong demand for financial metrics from both policymakers and business owners.

“Stakeholders told us there’s a need to efficiently interpret the data, especially those that measure barriers to accessing DEI capital and banking services because of the industry’s regulation,” said Fatima Perez-Moncada, a Gies Business junior pursuing a degree in Finance, who was part of the IBC team. “They’re also looking for a way to show progress made in the industry.”

Illinois Business Consulting is the largest student-run, professionally managed consulting organization in the US with more than 260 members. With IBC, students gain real-world, project-based consulting experience and clients get access to an experienced, interdisciplinary team of students who can deliver maximum results for their business.

This IBC team’s research highlighted a critical challenge: Early-stage dispensaries often prioritize rapid hiring over diverse recruitment, a problem exacerbated by inconsistent reporting across states and a lack of centralized databases for ownership diversity and equity.

"Without addressing structural, data, and market barriers, demand for DEI information will stay low, reinforcing inequities instead of solving for them," said IBC team member Elizabeth Abraham, a freshman in the School of Information Sciences.

Breaking barriers to unlock growth

Capital and banking access barriers significantly constrain the growth of cannabis companies and amplify existing inequities, reflecting systemic biases that disproportionately affect minority-owned cannabis businesses. The team found that lowering these banking barriers is crucial for unlocking growth and equity, particularly for small and minority-owned businesses.

“This insight applies to any industry, not just cannabis,” said Van Austin, appointed commissioner on the Illinois Commission on Equity & Inclusion. “We see access to capital in minority businesses ranked as a top business concern.”

The new dashboards go beyond traditional metrics, incorporating vital diversity measures such as veteran status, arrest history, and education level. They also include social equity-related metrics, such as the percentage of non-white individuals on boards of directors.

To ensure data security and responsible use, access to the dashboards, which are behind a University of Illinois firewall and require two-factor identification, mandates completion of confidentiality training.

"It’s not a gotcha data set that’s there to evaluate a given company," said Leiby. "It’s not used for punishment or reward. It’s there to evaluate the industry as a whole."

Nadia Arif, a Gies freshman majoring in Finance and Accountancy, explained how the IBC team built the company dashboard from scratch. They segmented firms into those established before 2021 and newer entrants. The team then enriched the data with details on company size, benefits, compensation, and DEI training practices. They also addressed pain points identified in stakeholder interviews, such as the time required to raise capital and secure bank accounts, along with ongoing banking fees. The team’s efforts included interviewing 21 companies and gathering responses from 2,350 employees.

“This is great data that’s hard to come by – the level of granularity is pretty phenomenal,” commented Ed Keating, co-founder and chief data officer of Cannabiz Media, noting that fintech banking companies are eager for such insights.

Eric Zhang, a Gies Business sophomore majoring in Finance + Data Science, led the team focusing on employee compensation, job satisfaction, and stressors like workload and role conflict. This group’s dashboard also integrated metrics on organizational culture, measured by DEI factors such as race, gender, and LGBTQ status.

Connor Love, a Gies sophomore studying Finance + Data Science, spearheaded the dashboard's comprehensive documentation structure, allowing interested parties to analyze the source data behind each visualization and providing a clear roadmap for future developers.

"I really appreciate how this presentation includes a ton of rich information in well laid out formats," said Christina Sansone, CRI senior program manager. “Supporting real-world, applied research experiences for students is important to CRI and we’re grateful to Justin and the Gies team for involving us. Tableau made it easy for us to quickly identify several potential areas of future exploration that could be projects unto themselves.”

Added Van Austin, CEI commissioner for the State of Illinois, underscoring the data’s broader applicability, “When it comes to state government, the general themes we saw, such as barriers to entry and capital, can apply to all minority-owned and veteran-owned businesses.”