Jan 13

Jan 13 Megan Bravo, Folded Hills Winery

Title: Business Development Manager, Folded Hills Winery

Location: Santa Ynez, California.

Years in Industry:
Hard to imagine it has been 18 years! I started off scanning bottles at the register of a large wine retailer in Orange County. I worked in retail wine through college and gained a deep knowledge of the world of wine through that experience. Eventually, I moved to the Santa Barbara wine region where I work in the hospitality and sales side of wine. I started with Folded Hills almost five years ago and it has been such a great journey.

My Top Three Challenges to Wellness:
If I’m not sleeping enough, I am not at my best mentally and things spiral from there. I joke that my 2.5-year-old son hates sleep, but sleep is my love language. He has always been a tough sleeper so I’ve had to learn how to cope and get sleep in where I can. It’s the one challenge that makes everything else more challenging. You don’t exactly feel like getting up in the morning to exercise (my second biggest challenge) or focus on meditating (my third biggest challenge) when you’ve had a full four hours of interrupted sleep.

How I Keep It Together to Stay Well:
I make sure I have a good amount of solitude when I start to feel overwhelmed by events and people. There’s a bigger bonus if I get to be alone in nature. Nature always grounds me and inspires me. I feel very fortunate to work on a beautiful property where I get to experience the seasonal changes, wildlife and of course the growth cycle of the vines, which is always romantic to me.

What Inspires Me:
A lot of things! Art usually gets my brain going in different creative directions. Nature gives me a deep curiosity. Wine books can inspire me to keep digging deeper and deeper into the world of wine. I also have a guilty pleasure of reading self-help career books and I always find myself re-motivated when I do! Currently reading Badass Habits by Jen Sincero.

A Quote I Love:
“A rising tide lifts all boats." I’m very community & team conscious. I started a group of like-minded hospitality leaders in our area with this very thought in mind. How can we make our entire region better by sharing information and ideas? It’s something I try to embody in my life. I’ll gladly help another with their career, advice, etc. if given the opportunity.

Social Media handles:
You can connect with Megan on Instagram here and here, and on LinkedIn.

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Cathy Huyghe

Cathy Huyghe is a dynamic media professional with a special interest in wine and the spirit of hospitality. She is also an effective, engaging public speaker on subjects ranging from wine and gastronomy to digital media and entrepreneurship.

Cathy is the co-founder and CEO of Enolytics, a big data startup providing business intelligence for the wine industry. She also currently writes for Forbes.com about the business and politics of the wine industry, and for Inc.com about entrepreneurs with a special focus on women. She is the author of the award-winning book Hungry for Wine: Seeing the World through the Lens of a Wine Glass; she was a finalist for the 2016 IWSC Wine Communicator of the Year award; and she won the 2016 Innovator of the Year award from Diaz Communications.

Cathy's writing has appeared in print and online for both general-interest and wine industry publications including the Harvard Business Review network, The Atlantic, Decanter, Food52.com (where she was the "Wine, Unfussed" columnist), DailyBeast, The Boston Globe, the Washington Post, Wine Enthusiast, GlobalPost, Grist.org, and Daily Candy. She has also been featured on the BBC, WNYC, WGBH, and Nevada Public Radio.

Cathy is the founder of 365daysofwine.com and Red White Boston, a digital media company for the wine industry. Red White Boston produced daily content, monthly tasting events, and a location-based iPhone app of video wine recommendations from their network of 30+ local partner stores. While in Boston, she also managed the wine cellar at WGBH public broadcasting station and managed wine events for donors and the public.

Cathy’s restaurant experience started when she knocked on the kitchen door at Chez Panisse in Berkeley. She also has worked for Jean-Pierre Vigato in Paris (at Natachef bistro and at his two-star restaurant, Apicius) and for Thomas Keller at Bouchon in Las Vegas. She studied at La Varenne École de Cuisine in Burgundy, France; she completed the Wine Studies program at Boston University; and she received Advanced Certification from WSET (Wine and Spirits Education Trust).

Cathy received a master’s degree from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard in 2004 and a second master’s degree in Journalism in 2010, also from Harvard. Before that, she received a master’s degree in comparative literature from the City University of New York in 1998 and a bachelor’s degree from Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania in 1995. She is also a trained mediator, and worked for two years at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School on a project in the Middle East.

In April 2008 she founded the Harvard Alumni in Wine and Food special interest group, which provides educational and networking services to the Harvard alumni and current students. She has also served as the President of the Harvard Club of Georgia, and she has begun a term of service on the Board of Directors for the Harvard Alumni Association.

Her other non-profit involvement includes the Women's Solidarity Society at the new National Center for Civil & Human Rights (Atlanta), grant reviewer for the Food Well Alliance (an Atlanta-based organization that supports the local network of 350 urban farms and community gardens), Coach at GOTR (Girls on the Run) in Atlanta, Board Member at the Greening Youth Foundation (Atlanta), Board Member at The Food Project (Boston), and Mediator at the Neighborhood Justice Center (Las Vegas).

She lives in Atlanta with her husband, their twin boys, and their Bernese Mountain dog, Coco.

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