When you pick up a prescription at the pharmacy, you usually have no idea who made it. You know the company name, but you don’t know the people. You don’t know their names, their process, or whether they care about quality beyond regulatory compliance. You generally can’t call the lab to request a tour of the facility. You can’t meet the person who formulated your medication and ask them why they made specific decisions.
Cannabis is different.
In Massachusetts and across legal markets, you can know who grew your product. You can see their faces, understand their methods, read their lab results, and in some cases, walk through their facilities. It’s a level of transparency that doesn’t exist anywhere else in medicine, and it matters.
At Advanced Cultivators in Lowell, a group on a mission built a cultivation facility from the ground up during a pandemic. They’re not a corporation. They’re not backed by venture capital. They’re firefighters, family members, and a grower with 26 years of experience who all decided to build something real. They’re still the ones showing up every day, driving through snow filled streets and power outages, running the operation, and putting their names on every batch.
This is who they are.
The Beginning: Family and Fire
Richard Borges didn’t come from cannabis. He came from construction and firehouses. By 2019, he’d been running a construction business since 2004 and working as a Malden firefighter since 2000, where he’d become the city’s first Latino Lieutenant and Captain. His brother-in-law, Steven Ramirez, had a different path; Echo Tech, bat boy for the Dodgers, and eventually owning a dispensary in California.
They met for the first time in 2013 at Borges’s sister’s law school graduation in Boston. Over the years, Ramirez would mention cannabis investment opportunities during Borges’s California visits, but nothing stuck. When Ramirez moved to Massachusetts in 2019, the conversations changed.
After visiting two cultivation facilities in Maine that didn’t impress him, Borges flew to California with Ramirez to tour 420 Properties in Adelanto. “As soon as I walked in, I said I would build it like that,” Borges recalls. That was the moment. July 15, 2020, they signed a lease and host agreement with the city. COVID was raging. Supply chains were collapsing. The timeline to licensing would stretch to three years. They started anyway.
But they couldn’t do it alone.
Building the Crew
Jake Shankle got the call in 2019. He’d known Borges since 2000, they started as rookie firefighters together in Malden. By then, Shankle was 23 years into his fire department career, working part-time as a medic on movie and TV sets, and running a small painting business.
“Richard explained that he and his brother-in-law Steve Ramirez were looking to put together a small team to turn a dream into reality,” Shankle remembers. “They wanted to build and run a cannabis cultivation facility. Not just any facility. State of the art, data driven, with quality cannabis being the highest priority. It was a no brainer. I was in.”
Gerardo Ramirez, Steven’s brother, who goes by Jerry was next. He was living in Los Angeles, working demolition in San Diego, when he flew to Boston to meet Richard. “I immediately bought into the vision that Steven and Richard had for what’s to become Advanced Cultivators,” Jerry says. Family brought him to the conversation, but the vision kept him there.
The four of them: Richard, Steven, Jake, and Jerry, received their provisional license and started building. Not hiring contractors to build. Actually building. Framing walls, running electrical, installing HVAC, constructing grow rooms while materials arrived late and costs climbed and the pandemic made every step harder than it should have been.
John “JB” Brown joined one month before they were licensed to start cultivation. His interview included his son and a facility tour, which tells you how this team operates. Brown brought 26 years of cannabis cultivation experience from Northern California’s Mendocino County, where he’d owned and operated a cannabis farm with mixed-light greenhouses and a clone nursery.
“What ultimately drew me to Advanced Cultivators was the people behind the operation,” Brown explains. “When I first met the team, it was clear that they shared strong family values, a relentless work ethic, and a genuine ambition for where they wanted to take the company. There was an immediate connection and positive energy among the group.”
What impressed Brown was what six people had already accomplished. “The facility itself had been built from the ground up by just six individuals. They took on the challenge with determination and figured it out along the way. That kind of mindset resonated with me because my own path has always been about building things from the ground up.”
Randy Torres, Steven’s cousin, became the newest addition, bringing his marketing degree and industry experience to help tell the story of what they’d built.
How Decisions Get Made
This isn’t a democracy, and Borges doesn’t pretend otherwise. “Steven and I have the final say,” he states. “For the mundane decisions they have the ability, but anything major or cost must be approved.”
But authority doesn’t mean control. Each person owns their area. Brown manages cultivation from start to finish: plant health, growth cycles, harvesting, curing. “Cannabis cultivation is never a one-person job,” Brown says. “The best results come from a team that trusts each other, shares the same work ethic, and pushes the plant to its full potential.”
Torres handles marketing. Jerry works where he’s needed. And Shankle’s role resists easy definition. “I feel that my role on the team depends on what’s needed at any given time,” Shankle explains. “Everything is on the table from maintaining the facility, working the plants, order processing and fulfillment. You have to be adaptable. Our team excels at that. No ego tripping. If something needs accomplishing, we get it done.”
That flexibility matters because the Massachusetts market has been brutal. Dispensaries delay payments. Prices fall. Consumers demand transparency that many operators can’t provide. The market separated the serious from the opportunistic, and the serious ones are still standing.
“Day one we knew we had something special,” Borges reflects. “I would always say we are the founding fathers, and when you can get a group of like-minded motivated individuals, the sky’s the limit.”
What makes them work together? Borges keeps it simple: “We are good at communicating with each other and have the same goals and vision. Understanding each other’s perspective and in the end, we all want to be the best in all that we do.”
What Happens When You Know Your Grower
That’s what knowing your grower actually means. Real people making real decisions about how to grow cannabis, willing to show their work and stand behind the results.
In March 2023, they planted their first seeds. June 2023 brought their first harvest. By December 2023, their product hit dispensary shelves. The same six people who built the facility are still there, still adapting, still pushing quality when the market pushes back.
You can’t usually call Pfizer and meet the chemist who formulated your medication. You can’t tour Merck’s facilities or understand why they made specific manufacturing decisions. But at Advanced Cultivators, the people who built the rooms are the same ones answering questions, adjusting sensors, and ensuring every batch meets their standard.
Richard, the firefighter-turned-CEO who still responds to calls in Malden. Steven, the California transplant who saw opportunity in Massachusetts. Jake, the guy who can fix anything and fills whatever gap needs filling. Jerry, the brother who bought into the vision and helped build it. JB, the 26-year veteran cultivator who chose this team over countless other options. Randy, the cousin bringing marketing expertise to a craft operation.
Cannabis culture fought to preserve that connection, craft, accountability, and real people standing behind their work. In a market consolidating toward corporate anonymity, operations like Advanced Cultivators prove why that connection matters.
Six people built something from nothing during a pandemic. They’re still here. They’re still the ones growing your cannabis. And you can know exactly who they are.
Veronica “Vee” Castillo is the Traveling Cannabis Writer, an international traveling plant medicine journalist who has spent over seven years documenting cannabis culture across the United States and internationally, including Thailand, where she explores the intersection of ancient plant medicine traditions and modern cannabis culture. With over 25 publications and celebrity interviews to her credit, along with her role as former Communications Director for a leading minority cannabis trade association and author of Cannabis Legacy Chronicles, she has dedicated her career to amplifying BIPOC voices and authentic stories in plant medicine. Back on the road covering cannabis internationally, Vee helps wellness and cannabis businesses worldwide transform their unique stories into strategic content that drives measurable growth and global visibility.
