“THERE’S A BUILT-IN PASSION TO WHAT WE DO. ONCE YOU SEE PEOPLE, WHEN IT CLICKS IN . . . THEY LOOK DIFFERENT. THEY’RE DIFFERENT PEOPLE.”
– LILACH MAZOR POWER, THE GIVING TREE FOUNDER AND MANAGING DIRECTOR
For Founder and Managing Director Lilach Mazor Power, the best thing about Phoenix-area dispensary The Giving Tree is simple: the people. “[I] love the people and the team,” she reveals. “[They’re] passionate about the plants, about the patients, about changing history. This is something, as a business owner, you usually don’t get.” Those employees happily shared anecdotes about The Giving Tree’s satisfied patients. One patient reportedly came back crying tears of joy; her appetite and mood improved after only ten days of incorporating flower into her daily regimen. “Taking charge of their own medicine is so empowering,” Power adds. “[It’s] amazing to see people transform through this. . . There’s a built-in passion to what we do. Once you see people, when it clicks in . . . They look different. They’re different people. I love it.” 
It’s not easy to get on the shelf at The Giving Tree. Because of a lack of testing regulations in the Arizona cannabis market, Powers and her staff undertake more due diligence for potential products than a typical retail store. From checking out extraction methods, looking at third-party testing and sampling flower, The Giving Tree stands tall in their quest to provide clean medication. In five years of business, they’ve also developed a running list of products and ailments, which allows them to help new patients much more efficiently. 
Thanks to a lack of stigma and a plethora of official research in her home country of Israel, Power knew exactly what she was getting into when she started her dispensary. After an aborted attempt at establishing a wellness center that focused on non-Western medicine, Power used her bar and catering management experience to combine her ideas with a dispensary business model. It wasn’t easy; a lack of research meant most everything needed to be done from scratch, and banking regulations made anything to do with money difficult. Thanks to personal experience using cannabis as part of her exercise routine, however, Power knew sharing the healing power of cannabis was worth the struggle.
