About This Video: Feliza Castro’s Leadership

An early profile of Feliza Castro and The Healing Clinic, capturing a new industry taking shape. Feliza’s leadership role included state-wide educational seminars, patient-centered events and the founding of three medical cannabis clinics across Illinois.

The Healing Clinic opened in Chicago on October 1, 2014, the day after Illinois began accepting patient applications for its medical cannabis program. Feliza built the organization independently, without investors, at a time when patients were learning how a newly established system would work. Her role brought entrepreneurship and education together: creating a place where people could ask questions, understand the process and find practical support.

That work expanded to Highland Park and Flossmoor. Across three locations, The Healing Clinic served more than 10,000 patients and contracted with more than 12 physicians. Educational seminars and patient-centered events carried the work beyond the clinic walls, connecting communities across Illinois with information about medical cannabis access. Building those relationships helped establish an informed patient base during the market’s earliest years.

Preserved in The Healing Clinic Video Archive, this one-minute profile offers a glimpse of that formative period. It places Feliza’s leadership within the history of an industry that was still finding its footing, when establishing a business also meant building public understanding. The title, “Leading an Industry Into Existence,” reflects the scope of that work: opening clinics, creating educational opportunities and bringing patients into a program that was just beginning.

Explore the founder biography and Press & Media Archive below for more of the story. For current program information, visit the Illinois Department of Public Health’s Medical Cannabis Patient Program.