Biography

Shea is an entrepreneur, writer, designer, and software developer who founded the first chapter of Students for Sensible Drug Policy (ssdp.org) at the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1997. Today he is the producer of the popular weekly podcast Marijuana Today and host of the daily news podcast Marijuana Today Daily. Prior to working in the legal cannabis industry, Shea worked as an environmental blogger, covering topics like renewable energy, climate change, and politics for the Mother Nature Network (mnn.com).

Shea has a deep background in entrepreneurialism, starting his first company, a dot-com-era startup best described as "YouTube too early", at the age of 21 after raising $16 million in venture capital out of his apartment in 1999. He followed that up by co-founding Renewable Choice Energy (renewablechoice.com), now one of the leading companies in clean energy. Shea has been involved with or consulted on many other startups since and lives in Portland, Maine with his wife and children.