Two Wall Street executives have joined the team at Amercanex, American Cannabis Exchange, the first fully electronic marketplace for transparent buying, selling and exchanging cannabis. “The cannabis industry is one of the fastest growing emerging markets of our time, and it’s drawing executives from around the globe,” says Steve Janjic, CEO of Amercanex and a Wall Street commodities expert.

The new hires are Chief Business Development Officer Michael Herron, an accomplished Wall Street professional with more than two decades of investment sales management experience, and Vice President of Marketing Lisa Hopkins, former Asian-region marketing associate for Morgan Stanley.

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Herron’s experience includes building and leading multi-faceted financial institutions, helping them become multi-billion-dollar operations. He has worked for Merrill Lynch, MF Global Inc. and Viper Trading, where he pioneered a new online trade execution software for professional futures and stock traders. As a result, Viper Trading grew into one of the largest online brokerage firms on the West Coast in its first two years of operation.

Hopkins, who holds a bachelor’s in communications, went to work at Morgan Stanley as a sales assistant supporting all levels of executive staff and eventually moved into the role of marketing associate for the Asia region. She was the lead coordinator for U.S.-based conferences for Asian companies and advised senior management on investor targeting.

Amercanex is an electronic commodities exchange for licensed wholesale and retail distributors of cannabis on a fully disclosed market. It ensures fair and orderly transactions, as well as efficient dissemination of price information for any product bought, sold or exchanged, Janjic says. Thirty-seven states and the District of Columbia have either legalized some form of marijuana use or possession, or are in the process of doing so.