Law Week Colorado has named Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck’s Melissa Kuipers Blake as one of its 2020 Lawyers of the Year honorees.
Kuipers Blake is a leading lobbyist and seasoned political strategist with more than 20 years of national political experience at the local, state and federal levels of government. In addition to her national lobbying practice, Kuipers Blake serves as co-chair of Brownstein’s Cannabis & Industrial Hemp industry group, which helps shape legislative policies for these industries. Having worked on cannabis issues since day one of legalization in Colorado, Kuipers Blake has a foundational perspective on the growth of the industry and its players. She regularly shares that expertise from a statutory, regulatory, compliance and workplace perspective.
In honoring Kuipers Blake, Law Week Colorado noted her work “helping shape state and federal marijuana policy” with the STATES Act and SAFE Banking Act, which was “one of cannabis’ biggest milestones in Congress this year.” They also noted that she stands out in the field of cannabis because of “her experience working in marijuana policy dating back before Amendment 64 became effective in Colorado.”
In her personal time, Kuipers Blake serves as the founder and CEO of Baking for the Troops, a Colorado-based nonprofit that prepares and sends homemade care packages of baked goods to members of the U.S. military deployed throughout the world. Since she founded the organization in 2009, she and her team of volunteers have sent more than 2,000 boxes of cards and baked goods to military personnel in countless regions of the globe, including Afghanistan and Iraq.
To read the Law Week Colorado feature on Kuipers Blake, click here.