Rob McMillan is one of the top wine-business analysts in the United States and the author of Silicon Valley Bank’s highly regarded annual State of the Wine Industry Report. With decades of experience researching the wine business, his views are sought after and trusted by winery owners, journalists, entrepreneurs and investors. He is a prominent speaker, both domestically and internationally, and he is extensively quoted in national, regional and trade press. He has also been named several times as one of the Top 50 Most Influential People in the US wine industry.

 
Rob’s banking career has spanned 35-plus years — more than 25 with Silicon Valley Bank. In that time, he has held positions of increasing responsibility, including division manager of the Wine Group, executive manager of the bank’s Commercial Division and several years as a member of Silicon Valley Bank’s Managing Committee. He is currently responsible for establishing new winery relationships and offers private management presentations and strategic consulting to the bank’s clients across the portfolio.

Rob received a bachelor’s degree in finance/economics from Sacramento State University and an MBA from Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business. He has served on boards in diverse industries and continues to be an advisor to wineries and industry associations across the wine business.

Rob is a father of two. He enjoys the outdoors, travel and golf and takes any opportunity to play percussion and drums in live settings.

With extensive global experience in the fine wine sector, Jen joined Crimson Wine Group as its Chief Executive Officer in December 2019. She brings to the company inspirational
leadership skills and an industrywide reputation for delivering results and leading high-performing teams in a collaborative and innovative style.  Prior to joining Crimson, Jen was Senior Vice President of U.S.  Luxury and Direct-to-Consumer Sales, Americas, at Treasury Wine Estates (TWE), a publicly traded global wine company, based in Melbourne, Australia. A Northwest native, Jen previously was Director of National Wholesale, Export and Direct-to-Consumer Sales at Willakenzie Estate and was Pacific Senior Regional Sales Manager at Chalone Wine Group. She began her hospitality industry career more than 20 years ago as a wine buyer and training manager at several fine-dining restaurants in Seattle.

Paul Mabray has been a powerful change agent in the wine industry for over twenty years. He has been at the forefront of all major digital trends for the wine industry, working with WineShopper.com and Wine.com when they entered the wine-digital space. He founded two companies that significantly changed the digital US wine landscape, first by introducing winery e-commerce with Inertia Beverage Group, which transformed into WineDirect.com pioneering winery e-commerce, and then again by introducing social media and social customer relationship management with VinTank.com. 

He recently attempted an ambitious industry moonshot to create Pix (pix.wine), the world's first wine discovery platform. In a remarkably short period, Pix launched and became the world's largest free online wine selection. Its goal was to enhance accessibility in the wine world, aiding consumers in the wines they were searching for, ways to buy those wines, and other wines to buy. He firmly believed (and still believes) that to help the industry overcome the challenges ahead, wineries needed new and better digital methods to help the wineries and consumers connect at the point of purchase however and wherever they buy wine.

As one of the wine industry’s foremost futurists and thought leaders, Paul is regrouping to understand how to unlock the industry’s ability to harness the power and potential of digital tools and methodologies and move the industry into the future.

Ed Thralls, SVP Professional Services at Enolytics, oversees business development, marketing and consulting services.

He is a seasoned executive with close to 30 years of leadership experience in the wine and financial technology software industries, harnessing an in-depth understanding of utilizing data to inform actionable business decisions.

Ed came to Enolytics from Mira Winery in Napa Valley, where he served as President, driving a rapid-growth, consumer-focused business model utilizing Enolytics' products and services, resulting in 30 percent year over year DTC channel growth. Previously, he served as General Manager for Benovia Winery in the Russian River Valley, directing all sales, marketing, hospitality, and business operations. Before that role, he served as the Director of Consumer Sales & Marketing at Flowers Vineyards & Winery and Huneeus Vintners as well as Digital Marketing Manager at Vintage Wine Estates.

Ed holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Information Science from the University of Florida and an MBA in Finance from Georgia State University. He studied winemaking at UC Davis and is a Certified Specialist of Wine (CSW).