About Us

The CHT Story:

CHT was founded by applicants, for applicants. We are a group of cannabis and small business entrepreneurs fighting to create an equitable industry and level the playing field for people like us. We are strongly committed to changing the face of the industry to mirror the population that was most harmed by the war on drugs. The CHT Accelerator Cohort is our way of making a difference.

Our Core Values

Our Team:

Walter Moore: CEO & CTO

Walter Moore, our CEO & CTO, is an accomplished software architect, financial engineer, and entrepreneur residing in the south suburbs of Illinois. He specializes in architecting elegant, compliant, and scalable solutions to complex regulatory environments in the AdTech, FinTech, Digital Assets, and Cannabis industries. He has a Masters of Science in Financial Engineering and undergraduate degrees in Theoretical Physics and Applied Mathematics. After a non-traditional path through college and grad school (including jailtime for home cultivation) he started his career as a Financial Engineer at Hanley Group Capital operating out of the Chicago Board Of Trade Building, where he gained domain expertise in trading instruments like futures, options, and other more exotic financial derivatives, as well as software development and engineering. Throughout a series of acquisitions, he oversaw a complete rewrite of the large scale structured agribusiness derivatives structured product inventory, risk, and pricing system in order to make it scale to global usage and integrate with the new parent entity, and designed a global platform for data exchange and regulatory transparency to comply with the Dodd-Frank legislation. Our CEO was also the Chief Architect of a high frequency trading platform for use in traditional and digital asset markets in his very first startup. This included the design of a modular Ethereum Mining platform, and the buildout of a high performance graphical domain specific language dataflow centric platform called StrategyLab. He manages Ad Server API engineering teams, after a shift from FinTech to Ad Tech. He works on the cutting edge of performance, data privacy, and scaling solutions which focus on handling truly BIG DATA! Walter co-founded Perception Farms, Inc (a social equity cannabis startup incubator) in order to give back to an industry which has historically whitewashed the past injustices served in its former prohibition, something which he experienced first hand in prior decades. He intends to use his business acumen and analytical capabilities to enable Perception Farms to assist those who have been adversely impacted by the war on cannabis in their introduction and upward mobility in the blossoming legal industry. Walter started Cognitive Harmony Technologies in order to support social equity teams and bring CHANGE to an industry which has historically whitewashed the past injustices served in its former prohibition, something which he has experienced first hand in prior decades. As a cannabis business license owner, Walter knows just how difficult it is to put together a competitive application. He developed the CHT platform in order to help lower the barrier of entry for others willing to put in the hard work of assembling an application, but who would otherwise be priced out of the competition.

Charles Cherqui: Chief Business Development Officer

Charles Cherqui, our CBDO & CFO is currently a researcher in the field of theoretical physics at one of the nation’s most prestigious universities, where he examines how the unique properties of localized surface plasmons can be harnessed to create the next generation of light-harvesting, biosensing, and photonic applications. He has a Ph.D. in Physics and dual undergraduate degrees in Physics and Mathematics. In his capacity at esteemed research universities, our CBDO & CFO has been instrumental in obtaining grant funding, drafting and submitting extensive research materials for peer review, and interfacing with regulatory bodies in order to push forward academic progress. He will be leaning on these valuable skills and experiences in order to bring a world-class level of quality control and innovation to our organization. Moreover, his academic career has afforded him the opportunity to mentor over a dozen graduate students. Helping transform them from eager students with only an undergraduate-level understanding of theoretical physics into seasoned professionals that publish in the world’s most prestigious scientific journals. He is an author of over 25 peer-reviewed scientific papers. These experiences have given Charles Cherqui the ability to manage difficult projects from conception to fruition, while working with an interdisciplinary group of researchers from all over the world. Prior to a career in science, he owned a music event production company. This involved all aspects of event production, from booking artists, creating and managing budgets, hiring and managing security, sound, crowd control, and ticket booths. Many of these events numbered in the hundreds of thousands of attendants. With dozens of people working under him, he gained the necessary skills to manage large complicated business entities. In addition to the above-mentioned experience, our CBDO also has a combined 7 years of retail and restaurant experience selling goods and services directly to the public. He was assistant manager and head buyer of a Chemistry Records in Houston, Texas for 5 years, and also owned and operated a restaurant and coffee shop for 2 years. Charles co-founded Perception Farms, Inc (a social equity cannabis startup incubator) in order to give back to an industry which has historically whitewashed the past injustices served in its former prohibition. As CEO of Perception Farms, he gained extensive experience in managing the financial and accounting concerns for the company. When combined with the scientific rigor developed within his academic career, Charles is a powerhouse for CHT.

Melody Molinaro: Chief Strategy Officer

Melody is a creative, entrepreneur, and strategist with 15 years of experience and the co-founder of Sing Sing Sing, a franchise hybrid education/party service business with two locations and counting. As managing partner, she helped increased revenue by over 100% two years in a row, develop growth strategies and scaling models, and was instrumental in signing the founder of The School of Rock franchise as a strategic partner. She also helped lead a successful fundraising campaign. Her responsibilities included designing and developing the company's service offerings, SOPs, branding, and digital marketing strategies, all of which helped the company win a “Best Of Pittsburgh” award in its first year of operation. As CSO of Cognitive Harmony Technologies she manages marketing efforts and creates strategies for growth and product development. She enjoys public speaking, creating scalable frameworks for interesting ventures, writing music, and brand building.

Jordan Smith: Operations Expert

Jordan Smith, our COO and a midwest native, is the founder of an Oklahoma dispensaries brand. She has been immersed in the marijuana industry for more than 13 years. Her experience began in Durango and Denver, Colorado and encompasses every facet of the industry's dispensary, cultivation and processing departments. Incorporating corporate operations and entrepreneurship she has been a leader in the success of several operations across the country. Through legislative process consulting with companies and regulatory agencies in states such as Colorado, Arkansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nevada, Oklahoma and New Jersey, she will ensure that the industry continues to be successful and professional for both the states and business owners. Our COO graduated in Durango where she completed a degree in Environmental Sciences minoring in Biology. Her drive and professional energy bring passion and innovative business strategy to the midwest marijuana industry.

Rene Carson: Chief Legal Officer

Our CLO provides legal and compliance services for an innovative digital asset bank as one of its principal officers. In that role, our CLO developed and supervised day-to-day implementation of policies and procedures to ensure compliance with the complex and overlapping requirements in the highly regulated field of banking and money transmission. This experience dovetails with over two decades of experience aiding external and internal clients who need advice and counsel relating to regulatory and legal requirements in new and emerging industries. Our CLO obtained her Juris Doctor degree with honors in 1993, and began her legal career at a Chicago law firm, where she specialized in regulatory defense, appellate law, and litigation. After leaving private practice, she became General Counsel and Global Head of Compliance at a Fortune 500 company that provides diversified financial services across the globe. Since that time, she has served in a variety of operational, legal and compliance roles at start-up companies focused on technology, finance and innovation.