Jennifer Weiss, PhD
Founder & CEO
Our fearless founder and CEO, Dr. Jennifer Weiss, is an entrepreneur and industrial/organizational psychologist with over two decades experience in helping leaders, teams, boards, and organizations realize their potential through her thriving consulting practice. She has always been passionate about driving exceptional business results and organizational health through the optimization and cultivation of diverse talent and healthy teams from the top down, no matter the industry.
Having helped many individuals and organizations enhance their performance over the years, Jennifer has decided to put her skills to the truest test by launching a CBD startup.
Jennifer and her partner, Jeremy Dedic, became interested in CBD when it drastically reduced the daily anxiety struggles of Zada, one of their rescued Bernese Mountain Dogs. With a Masters of Science and a Ph.D. in Psychology, Jennifer knows her way around data and research, but she quickly learned that the murky waters of CBD products is full of spurious reports, questionable source ingredients, and inaccurate labels. Jennifer realized there was a need for more reliable, trusted brand names in the quickly growing but unregulated CBD retail environment. She wanted to create a company that did the research and vetting on behalf of customers, and saw the opportunity to also create custom products of her own.
The more she learned about the industry, the more she recognized the need to also provide a platform to raise up socially responsible, high quality brands run by women, people of color, and other historically-marginalized people.
Cubbington’s Cabinet slowly came into focus. It was named for Zada’s gregarious adopted younger brother Cubbington who loves the spotlight and instinctively wants to help and come to the rescue of others. The aesthetic of the brand and flagship shop in Roscoe Village, Chicago, was borne from Jennifer’s love of Victorian-era design and vintage apothecaries. With cabinetry from an 1800’s pharmacy, hand-painted ceiling tiles, reproduction gaslights, Victorian parlor furniture, and a player piano, you will feel you stepped into a Victorian wonderland.
"The more she learned about the industry, the more she recognized the need to also provide a platform to raise up socially responsible, high quality brands run by women, people of color, and other historically-marginalized people."
Having Jennifer as our CEO means we have a leader who combines the rigor of academic and organizational research with real-world experience in her approach to building a company. In this regard she is deeply committed to building an exceptional team and culture where all members feel ownership of our mission to improve the quality of life for people and their pets, and consistently raise the bar for our motto: “conscientious CBD for people and pets”. This is further enhanced by the involvement of Jeremy in the business with his expertise in cannabis and all things Creative.
In April of 2020, Cubbington's had the first batch of our carefully-crafted products bottled and ready to sell. Unfortunately, Jennifer discovered we'd been lied to about the quality of some of our non-CBD ingredients, an all-too-common occurrence in the unregulated world of CBD. When she discovered the sub-par quality of the ingredients, she took swift action and insisted every one of those bottles was destroyed. Although it set Cubbington's Cabinet back in some ways, Jennifer would not balk: she absolutely will not compromise when it comes to Cubbington's core principles.
Since then we’ve re-sourced ingredients and re-worked our recipes, double- and triple-checked all data, and completed thorough 3rd party testing of our final product.
Jennifer chose Roscoe Village in Chicago as the home for the Cubbington’s Cabinet brand because of the neighborhood’s strong sense of community and pet-friendly focus. The neighborhood and surrounding businesses have been extremely welcoming, and she is already serving as the Vice President of the Roscoe Village Chamber of Commerce!
She is also still practicing as an executive coach and leadership consultant for key clients.
After receiving her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin, Jennifer received a fellowship for her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from the Illinois Institute of Technology. Her academic research focused on bias and fairness in employee selection assessment tests and systems. She is a member of the American Psychological Association, Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, and Society for Human Resources Management. Along with helping clients be and do better, Jennifer is dedicated to her own continual growth and development. She believes I-O psychologists must continue to think bigger and stretch themselves and each other to continually increase their impact and future relevance. In this spirit, she founded a popular Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology conference series that was last funded by Google called I-O Shaken & Stirred. She is also a frequently featured conference speaker, panelist, and guest speaker.
