Shauna's Bio
Shauna Blanch’s entrepreneurial spirit and deep ethical drive were instilled in her from birth. Her parents built a family business together, modeling what it means to lead with integrity, to put in the hard work, and to honor community and loyalty above all else. Shauna carries forward their core lesson: do the hard work, stand by your people, and fight for what matters—it is always worth it. To this day, her deepest drive is to respect, honor, and do right by them.
Her ethical compass was set early; at the age of eleven, she was already fighting for her beliefs by boycotting the mass farming industry as a conscious herbivore. This early realization—that healing gets lost in systems built for profit—would define her career path.
Fresh out of college with a Bachelor of Science from The University of Rhode Island, Shauna entered the corporate world of national sales, eventually joining the pharmaceutical industry. She navigated the quintessential "boys' club" while focusing on Dermatology and Internal Medicine. However, during the height of the opioid crisis, she watched prescriptions rise, profits climb, and patient outcomes collapse. She saw firsthand how this system was destroying lives and realized she could not pretend it was okay. After losing herself in the effort to help acquaintances who became addicted, she walked away from the industry with no safety net, driven solely by the conviction that there had to be a better, more compassionate way to care for people.
In 2013, Shauna moved to Colorado, seeking a different kind of medicine on the front lines of the cannabis movement. She studied the plant with a scientist's curiosity and a caregiver's devotion, learning how CBD could soothe a nervous system and how clean formulation could calm inflamed skin.
Her own journey of healing from anxiety and depression inspired the brand’s enduring symbol. Out of that time, she created the logo that still represents Color Up today: a leaf shaped into a triangle for the breath of life, with seven spaces for the chakras. That logo—designed as part of her personal practice—has since become a mark of balance and hope for women around the world.
In 2015, Color Up Therapeutics was co-founded in Denver with a simple, ambitious mission: to elevate cannabinoid wellness with science-first formulas and relentless integrity. Shauna put in the grassroots work, walking products into treatment rooms and sitting with estheticians and spa owners one by one. Together with these practitioners, she built something bigger than sales—a living ecosystem of small, mostly women-owned businesses that needed products they could trust.
Shauna never saw herself as an underdog. But owning a cannabis company at the intersection of social stagnation and industry revolution brings a unique reality. She has spent years fighting to be heard, doing work she was over-qualified for, and walking the controversial line to bring Color Up’s trusted formulations to the world.
When partnerships changed and the company’s survival was threatened in 2023, Shauna chose to buy the company. She absorbed the roles of three people plus all business contractors in accounting, financing, website design, and SEO. She went two full years without taking a dollar, letting her own utilities lapse to keep payroll covered. This was not a sacrifice—it was a responsibility rooted in the loyalty she learned as a child.
For over eleven years, Shauna has poured her life into this company. Through rebrands and rebuilds, she has held to one simple truth: the work matters because the people matter. Today, she remains a Licensed Massage Therapist, Certified Reiki Master, and yoga teacher, dedicating her life to service, education, and delivering clean, efficacious, oncology-aware, practitioner-trusted skincare made by a licensed lab that answers to its community, not to shareholders.