Highland is led by Dan Hodges and Dr. John Holliday — combining commercial cultivation operations with more than 90 years of combined leadership in mycological research, extract design, quality assurance, and pharmaceutical-grade production. The Marion, NC facility launched in 2026, supplying standardized nutraceutical extracts to nutraceutical formulators, contract manufacturers, and supplement brands across North America.
Functional mushrooms have a credibility problem. Too much of the category is sold on story rather than substance. Highland was built on a different premise: that the compounds responsible for biological activity can be cultivated, extracted, quantified, and standardized — and that anyone selling these products to formulators should be able to prove it on every lot. So we do all of it under one roof, in Marion, North Carolina — from substrate inoculation through final standardized powder. That's what we do. That's all we do.
Highland is led by Dr. John Holliday and Dan Hodges — two careers in commercial mycology and cGMP-grade production, combined into a single facility purpose-built for the work.
Dr. Holliday holds a Ph.D. in mycology and has spent the last forty years researching the cultivation, extraction, and standardization of medicinal mushrooms. He is the author of more than fifty peer-reviewed papers on the subject, including foundational work on Cordyceps cultivation and Lion's Mane compound chemistry.
At Highland, he sets cultivation protocols, oversees the analytical lab, and signs off on every product specification. He has been doing this kind of work since long before the functional ingredient category existed as a market.
Dan is a founder and operator with a career spanning radar systems, communications technology, intelligence applications, and scientific R&D. He founded Medusa Scientific, a research and engineering firm, and TM Technologies, which he spun out of Medusa to commercialize a proprietary modulation technology. He holds multiple U.S. patents in radar, communications, and intelligence systems, and authored Future Span, a book on U.S. energy paradigms.
Dan is a retired senior officer of the U.S. Air National Guard. He served twenty-six years in the U.S. military, eighteen of which were spent as a senior flight instructor with the Guard, retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel in 2014. His military service ran parallel to his civilian engineering work; the technical expertise behind his radar, communications, and intelligence patents was developed across both. At Highland, he runs the business: operations, customer relationships, the Marion facility build-out, and the cGMP certification program. He has built enterprises from inception across aerospace, marine, communications, and scientific R&D; Highland is the latest.
The operators, scientists, and quality leadership accountable for what leaves the building.
Operations Director and the third founder of Highland. Responsible for production planning, supply chain, and the day-to-day rhythm of the facility — making sure the right material is in the right place at the right time.
Heads Highland's analytical chemistry and extraction process development. Owns UHPLC method development, compound standardization, and the technical work behind every Certificate of Analysis.
Leads quality assurance and quality control at Highland — cGMP compliance, lot record keeping, third-party audit coordination, and the internal standards that determine whether material ships or gets rejected.
Responsible for the physical plant — cleanroom integrity, equipment calibration, HVAC and water systems, and the facility infrastructure that makes pharmaceutical-grade production possible.
Runs administration at Highland — finance, contracts, customer relationships, and the operational coordination that holds a small, busy company together.
Highland hires carefully for a small, on-site team in Marion, North Carolina. Current openings and the full hiring overview are on the Careers page.
View Careers →Sample requests and tech sheets are no-cost for qualifying formulators and manufacturers.