Christie Smythe

Founder and President

Christie has been a professional business and legal reporter and editor for 14 years in New York. She is currently editor-in-chief of The Business of Business. She has also worked as a legal reporter for Bloomberg, a writer and assistant managing editor for Law360.com, and U.S. news editor for the Insurance Insider.

She completed a Knight Bagehot Fellowship in Business and Economics Journalism in 2017. She has a bachlor’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.

Arina Merkulova

Vice President and Treasurer

Arina Merkulova is a consultant to the legalized cannabis and psychedelics industries, and travels across the U.S. helping companies create, optimize and expand their businesses. Previously, she was Executive Vice President of Operations for a vertically integrated cannabis company based in San Francisco.

Born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, she was raised in the U.S. after coming to the country as a refugee. For a time, she also lived in Israel, where she served as a combat sniper in the Israeli Defense Forces. She studied philosophy, with a pre-med concentration, at Columbia University in New York.

Michael Motala

Secretary and Board Member

Michael F. Motala is a lawyer and university instructor who currently teaches Global Governance and International Law at the University of Toronto's Trinity College, and will teach International Economic Law, Business and Policy at Stanford Law School commencing July 1, 2021.

Michael is also a Doctor of Philosophy Candidate in International Relations at the University of Toronto’s Department of Political Science where he is investigating global tax governance, and has studied law, economic journalism, and political science at Columbia University, Cornell University's Paris Institute at the Sorbonne, the London School of Economics and Political Science, Osgoode Hall Law School, and the University of Toronto.