Alison Ettel
Alison Ettel
Video of Alison Ettel calling the police on an 8-year-old girl for selling bottled water"without a permit"[14]
Alison Ettel is the Founder CEO of TreatWell Health, a cannabis company based in San Francisco, California.
In June 2018, she was nicknamed "Permit Patty" after being caught on video calling the police on an 8-year-old black girl who was selling bottled water.
On June 25, 2018 activist, Shaun King alleged that a former employee told him that Alison Ettel's company TreatWell Health had sold over $1 million of cannabis illegally without the proper permits.
By June 25, 2018, at least five cannabis dispensaries in the San Francisco Bay Area announced that they would stop carrying TreatWell's products.
Biography
Education
Alison Ettel speaking about her company, TreatWell Health, at the Cannabis Health Summit [18]
Alison Ettel graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Science in Finance and International Business.
She received an SF Scholarship while studying at the school.
In 2006, Ettel graduated with a Master of Business Administration from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.
She received a JPMorganChase Fellowship scholarship and a University of Michigan tuition scholarship.
While in the program, she was the Marketing Chair for M-trek Core Team; M-trek Leader, selected as member of Student Admission Committee (read and evaluated MBA applications, interviewed and evaluated prospective students), and selected as a Board Fellow for the Detroit Historical Society.
In 2007, Ettel graduated from the University of Michigan with a second master's degree in urban planning.
Career
Photo of Alison Ettel and her business partner Harry Rose [12]
Photo of Alison Ettel promoting her company, TreatWell Health
Alison Ettel is currently the Founder CEO of TreatWell Health, a company that sells cannabis for people and dog.
The company specializes in providing non-psychoactive options for medicating with cannabis including CBD ratios and the raw, acidic compounds.
She founded the company in 2015 with her business partner Harry Rose.
The company was previously known as Rosette Labs.
Alison Ettel first became interested in the cannabis industry after she used cannabis to recover from a coma caused by meningitis.
She says that she has never used cannabis to get high and has no interest in that.
Alison Ettel was previously the Program Manager/Acting Director of Education Services at Atlassian, a large enterprise software company.
In this role, Ettel established and improved operational procedures which improved customer experience and laid the groundwork for efficient course development.
She piloted and facilitated a training course which trained advanced JIRA enterprise customers with a CSAT of 98%, becoming the standard for course development.
Ettel also organized, developed and facilitated certification program for JIRA admins.
She successfully negotiated multiple contracts with partners and vendors.
She researched and developed curriculum to match customer demand and align with corporate initiatives at event-based training.
Ettel planned, organized and ran the training day event for 1,000 people at Atlassian’s User Conference for 2 years in addition to multiple other training events and road-trips.
Through these initiatives she helped improve (+60%) the customer satisfaction for live training.
From 2010-2011, Alison Ettel was the Founder CEO of Simmer and Spice.
In 2011, Alison Ettel worked as a Program Manager in the University program at Atlassian.
In this role, she helped define product direction, vision and strategy.
She managed projects, developed marketing strategies and campaigns, managed partner relationships and provided customer support.
She also established a new pricing model and processes which doubled profitability and improved user experience by reducing friction of signup process and improving product flow.
Ettel researched and implemented customer service software to integrate with existing corporate systems and procedures, which increased efficiency of providing customer support.
She also doubled the program's user base.
From 2008-2009, Alison Ettel worked as a Business Plan Consultant for Nanofibronics.
Ettel and her team researched and completed a business plan for nanofiber bandages.
They pitched the idea, securing first round funding and before being internalized by Dow Chemical.
From 2006-2007, Alison Ettel was a Research Associate & Author at The Brookings Institution.
In this role, she worked under Christopher B. Leinberger for Metropolitan Studies.
She researched, helped author and fact check the book "The Option for Urbanism."
Ettel researched and authored research papers on the real estate environment and urban choice.
In the summer of 2005, Alison Ettel was a Project Management Intern at Schnitzer NW Real Estate Development.
During the previous summer, she worked as a Capital Markets Sales & Trading Intern.
Alison Ettel began her career as an Equity Trader at Rorer Asset Management.
She worked at the company from 2000-2003.
In the Media
Calling the Police Incident
Alison Ettel calling the police [7]
The video begins with a woman saying “This woman don’t want a little girl to sell some water, she’s calling the police on an 8-year-old girl.”
The white woman attempted to hide behind a stoop.
However the mother followed her and said, “don’t hide, the whole world gonna see you boo.”
“Illegally selling water without a permit?” the white woman said.
“On my property,” the mother stated.
“It’s not your property,” the white woman replied.
Later in the day social media users helped activist Shaun King identify Alison Ettel as the white woman in the video.
Heavy.com also identified Ettel as the woman in the video.
The Root and social media users nicknamed Ettel, "Permit Patty" in reference to another viral video of Jennifer Schulte known as BBQ Becky, another white woman who called the police on a group of black people holding a cookout in Oakland, California.
Alison Ettel's Response
Woman Who Called Police On Black Girl Selling Water To Go To Disneyland Comes Under Fire | TODAY
On Saturday, June 23, 2018 the same day as the incident, Alison Ettel spoke to HuffPost.
Ettel told HuffPost that the incident had nothing to do with race, “this has no racial component to it” and claims she only “pretended” to call the police.
However, Alison Ettel contradicted herself in an interview with ABC News.
Ettel said she "did phone the police but not to report them" and that she "simply wanted to know if what they were doing was legal."
She also told ABC News that she never spoke to the little girl.
However, she said her building's security guard first tried to get the girl and her mom to keep the noise down or move.
On June 25, 2018 Alison Ettel spoke about the incident on TODAY.
In the segment she cried and said that she has received horrible images and death threats since the incident.
“They were screaming about what they were selling,” she said.
“It was literally nonstop.
It was every two seconds, ‘Come and buy my water.’ It was continuous and it wasn’t a soft voice, it was screaming.”
Alison Ettel said she had the windows of her office open.
When asked why she did not close the windows, she said because it was too hot and closing them would not have stopped the noise.
After confronting the girl and her mother, Alison Ettel said she was only bluffing when she said she was going to call the police.
“I had been putting up with this for hours, and I just snapped,” Ettel said.
She vehemently denied the issue had to do with race.
“I have no problem with enterprising young women.
I want to support that little girl.
It was all the mother and just about being quiet,” she said.
Boycott
By Monday, June 25, 2018 at least five San Francisco Bay Area cannabis dispensaries owners pledged to stop selling TreatWell's products.
Magnolia Wellness in Oakland, Harborside Health Center in Oakland and San José, Barbary Coast Dispensary and SPARC, both in San Francisco, and Berkeley Patients Group, have all said on their social channels they are dropping Treatwell because of the incident where Alison Ettel called the police on an 8-year-old girl for selling bottled water.
"We just cannot support someone who behaves in such a way," Magnolia manager Ruby Pearl told KTVU on Monday, despite the products doing very well at her shop.
Pearl confirmed that Magnolia’s partnership with TreatWell is over, and the company has placed all TreatWell products on clearance.
Any proceeds from the merchandise will be donated to a charity that supports young women of color.
Accusations of Selling Cannabis Illegally Without the Correct Permits
On Monday, June 25, 2018, activist Shaun King alleged in a series of tweets that TreatWell Health had been selling cannabis products designed for pets to humans without the correct permits.
He allegedly obtained this information after speaking to a former employee of TreatWell Health.
"Her products were designed for pets, but were knowingly used for human consumption.
Both operations required proper permitting in the State of California, and Alison Ettel made a fortune without the permits."
"The former employee said when she saw Alison Ettel calling the police on an 8 year old child selling water for not having her a permit - that is was so peculiar that she immediately thought Ettel was projecting her own problems on to someone else."
“A former employee of Alison Ettel (#PermitPatty) told me that Ettel sold over $1 million worth of cannabis products without the proper permit.
They often joked about being illegal drug dealers,” King tweeted.
“Her products were designed for pets, but were knowingly used for human consumption.
Both operations required proper permitting in the State of California, and Alison Ettel made a fortune without the permits anyway.”