Libsyn Directory

Meet NHA's New Director Sully Sullivan

Release Date: 05/29/2026

Hempcrete Hero: Little House on the Podcast

Industrial Hemp Podcast

We have an outbuilding at home — we call it the Little House. It's a small old barn that sits out in our back yard, maybe 25 feet from the back door. It was a barn for animals at one point, then a garage, then an apartment. There's a lot of interesting energy in the Little House. It's been many things over the years: an art studio, a bakery, a jewelry-making place. By 2018 the Little House had given birth to this very podcast. The Little House has been an epicenter of entrepreneurial spirit and love for a long time. When I got home from , I found out there was a water leak in the Little...

Encore Presentation of Michael Klepacz's First Interview on Hemp Show, March 2024

Industrial Hemp Podcast

This is a special encore edition of an interview we published on YouTube two years ago. This is my conversation with Michael Klepacz, an Ohio native and Air Force veteran who moved to Poland in 2012 and founded Natural Materials Unlimited, a company that makes textiles and products from hemp, linen and other bast fibers. In this bonus episode, he talks about how the business grew from hemp wick to guitar straps, pet accessories and custom fiber products for clients around the world. The conversation digs into long fiber versus short fiber hemp: why long fiber produces stronger, higher-quality...

Michael Klepacz: An American in Warsaw

Industrial Hemp Podcast

This week on the Hemp Show, we continue our , catching up with American expat Michael Klepacz, owner of Natural Materials Unlimited. Klepacz sits near the end of the hemp supply chain — he doesn't grow or process raw fiber himself. Instead, he sources hemp and other natural fibers from regional mills and turns them into finished goods, from hemp wick to dog leashes, as a contract manufacturer for brands worldwide. Klepacz gives us a walking tour of his factory — beeswax, waxing lines and a dynamometer that tests twine strength — and makes the case for hemp as Europe's best fiber. We're...

Julia Bialecka — Replacing Styrofoam with Hemp and Mycelium

Industrial Hemp Podcast

This is part six of a ten-part podcast series documenting the European Industrial Hemp Association's 23rd Annual Conference in Poznan, Poland, at the Institute of Fiber Plants and Medicinal Medicine, June 10-12. Julia Bialecka is CEO and co-founder of S-Lab, short for Sustainable Laboratory. The company uses hemp and mycelium to make packaging that replaces expanded polystyrene. Based in Spain, S-Lab has already piloted its material with L'Oréal, Nespresso and JTI. "Every polystyrene Styrofoam packaging unit that was ever produced still remains somewhere on the landfills because it's...

Beau Whitney — Making the Economic Case for Hemp, One Spoon at a Time

Industrial Hemp Podcast

This is part seven of a ten-part podcast series documenting the European Industrial Hemp Association's 23rd Annual Conference in Poznan, Poland, at the Institute of Fiber Plants and Medicinal Medicine, June 10-12. Beau Whitney is the founder of Whitney Economics, based in Portland, Oregon. He has tracked the economics of hemp and cannabis since 2014, and his data is a fixture at industry events around the world. But he found that the numbers alone didn't always land with audiences. "When I would start talking about hemp as an automobile part or as a substitute for lithium EV...

Caroline Matthews — Tatham's Compact Decortication Line for Small Hemp Farmers

Industrial Hemp Podcast

This is part eight of a ten-part podcast series documenting the European Industrial Hemp Association's 23rd Annual Conference in Poznan, Poland, at the Institute of Fiber Plants and Medicinal Medicine, June 10-12. Caroline Matthews represents Tatham, a fiber processing machinery company based in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. Tatham is a 200-year-old, fifth-generation family business that started in wool processing — carding and spinning — and has moved into hemp over the last decade or so as interest in the crop has grown. Today the company manufactures hemp decortication and...

Lorenza Romanese — Hemp as a Building Block of the Bioplastics Economy

Industrial Hemp Podcast

This is part nine of a ten-part podcast series documenting the European Industrial Hemp Association's 23rd Annual Conference in Poznan, Poland, at the Institute of Fiber Plants and Medicinal Medicine, June 10-12. View the whole series . Lorenza Romanese is Secretary General of European Bioplastics, the Brussels-based trade association representing bio-based and biodegradable plastics across Europe. She came up through the European hemp industry, and while her day job is now bioplastics, she says her heart stays with hemp — which she argues is a building block of the European bioeconomy,...

Bob Hoban — The "Hemp Cliff" and What Comes Next

Industrial Hemp Podcast

This is part ten of a ten-part podcast series documenting the European Industrial Hemp Association's 23rd Annual Conference in Poznan, Poland, at the Institute of Fiber Plants and Medicinal Medicine, June 10-12. Bob Hoban is an attorney and consultant in the international cannabis and hemp space, based in Denver, Colorado. He has advised governments, companies and trade organizations across multiple continents, and in this Hemp in Poland series finale, he turns his attention to a deadline looming over the U.S. industry. "So we've got what I've kind of come to refer to as the hemp cliff...

Ken Elliott & Rusty Peterson — What US Hemp Can Learn From Europe

Industrial Hemp Podcast

This is part one of a ten-part podcast series documenting the European Industrial Hemp Association's 23rd Annual Conference in Poznan, Poland, at the Institute of Fiber Plants and Medicinal Medicine, June 10-12. The series starts with a casual conversation with Ken Elliott and Rusty Peterson from IND HEMP in Montana about the conference itself and how it compares to hemp events back home. "The professionalism that they bring, the fact that they've been doing things instead of talking about things in Europe is a big difference,“ Elliott said. Both Elliott and Peterson spoke at the...

Witold Czesiak — Professionalizing Hemp Through Genetics and Licensing

Industrial Hemp Podcast

This is part two of a ten-part podcast series documenting the European Industrial Hemp Association's 23rd Annual Conference in Poznan, Poland, at the Institute of Fiber Plants and Medicinal Medicine, June 10-12. Witold Czeszak, co-founder and head of the Polish Hemp Program at the Institute of Natural Fibers and Medical Plants, talks about Polish hemp genetics, the importance of IP protection and why he fought hard to bring the European Industrial Hemp Conference to the Institute. “I brought to the table new blood. I brought here representatives of huge companies because in general my...

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This week on the Hemp Show we meet Sully Sullivan. He's the new executive director at the National Hemp Association — and what a time to be taking the helm of a hemp association.

So much is up in the air right now. What about the November federal deadline that will ban most hemp-derived THC products, from gummies and beverages to most full-spectrum CBD?

Yeah, it's just sort of hanging out there, flapping in the breeze.

What's going to happen? Will there be an extension? Will there be new legislation? How will all this play out?

No one knows just yet.

Sully Sullivan is aware he has his work cut out for him as the new director of the NHA.

"I feel like we're at a precipice right now, or a crossroads perhaps, where we are, as a country, getting the regulations right," he said.

He sees what he calls "fracturedness" in the industry and the cacophony of voices in the advocacy space.

"There's a lot of voices and some are saying the same thing. Some are saying different things. Some things don't match up at all," he said.

For over a decade, Sullivan has been active in hemp policy in his home state of Arizona as a leader of the Hemp Industry Trade Association of Arizona, so he's no stranger to conflict, hard conversations and compromise.

"I feel all of my work over the last 10 years is coalescing right now," he said. "Like this is what it was all for. This all has manifested for this moment. So I take it very seriously, and it's almost spiritual in a sense. I am in the right place at the right time. I'm the person to fill these shoes and help push this industry forward."

Listen to the whole show to hear what else Sully Sullivan has to say.