Tej is an experienced and proven cannabis industry executive and capital markets leader. Over the course of a decade, he helped propel BMO Capital Markets global equities leadership in the UK and Europe. He was top ranked by Thomson Extel for his advisory services to global asset managers, hedge funds and family offices, for the technology, consumer, healthcare, and resources sectors. At the start of 2019, he left the investment banking world to join Canopy Growth Corp. as Managing Director of Europe, based in Frankfurt, then later joined Khiron Life Sciences as President of Europe, based in London, before helping found Akanda Corp. in the summer of 2021. Tej is presently CEO and Director of Akanda, an international medical cannabis platform company listed on the Nasdaq under the symbol AKAN.
Tej has earned a reputation for industry leading innovation and execution in the European cannabis space. This includes overseeing multiple European pharmaceutical and consumer product launches (medical flower, oils, topicals), bleeding edge regulatory work in over a dozen European countries, establishing telemedicine partnerships, accreditation of medical education platforms for health care providers, ecommerce rollouts, and setting up supply chains and/or distribution chains in every continent. His public facing activities have included government affairs meetings with the European Commission and members of parliament from multiple European countries, media interviews, industry conference presentations and panels, and investor relations.
Tej is based in London, where he has been a proud pioneer in UK medical cannabis and an executive driving force behind Project Twenty21, the UK’s the largest-ever medical cannabis study. The study produced the first published real-world data collected on medical cannabis in the UK. Findings showed that legally prescribed cannabis provides clinically significant improvements in the quality of life of patients living with medical conditions such as Chronic Pain, Multiple Sclerosis, Tourette’s Syndrome, Epilepsy, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Tej holds a Bachelor of Applied Sciences with Honours in Systems Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo in Canada, with an option in Management Sciences. He also completed an engineering exchange program at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore.