Jessica Koga is a winemaker specializing in small lot winemaking from the North Coast of California. She is experienced with crafting sparkling wine as well as luxury Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon with a focus on site-specific wines. After graduating from UC Davis, she interned at Schramsberg Vineyards and ended up staying for nearly three years before traveling to gain experience in New Zealand and New York. Upon returning to California, she worked for Gundlach Bundschu in Sonoma and at Vineyard 29 in St. Helena before returning to Schramsberg to run their sister winery, Davies Vineyards.

Follow her on Instagram at @winechik.

Devyani Isabel Gupta is the Head Winemaker & Viticulturist for Valdemar Estates, in Walla Walla, WA. She brings a diverse background of skills and experience through her work in research, sales, vineyard management, and enology. As a part of the international Valdemar Family wine brand, Devyani values their commitment to accessibility, innovation, and pioneering spirit. Her wine program focuses on Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, and Chardonnay from premier vineyards across the Columbia Valley. As a mentor, she aims to support, challenge, and empower her mentees.

Follow her on Instagram @devyaniisabel.

Julie Lumgair is an award-winning consulting and hands-on winemaker. Her wines span eighteen vintages and 25 varietals from Napa Valley, Sonoma County and Italy. She has served in many combined estate winemaking and winegrowing roles with a keen eye on agricultural and cellar practices increasing both sustainability and top quality.

Her calling cards are consistently producing acclaimed wines that reflect their place, excellence in winery operations, substantial innovation and trial programs feasible for artisan wineries’ scale, a passionate attention to customer delight and long lasting relationships.

Julie is a 5th generation Tennessee family farmer, who honed her sensory science, new product development, team building and executive leadership in her first career at Procter & Gamble and other noted Fortune 100 firms for 15 years. That experience, along with her "roll up the sleeves" work ethic, plus technical and analytical skills learned on the job from many mentors in the vineyards and cellars have been supplemented by years of rigorous independent study.

She has made exceptional wines including a new artisan Napa winery launching in 2023, J. Moss, Ideology Cellars, Valley of the Moon / Lake Sonoma, Castello di Montegiove, Windsor Oaks Vineyards and other private clients. Julie's ongoing wine trials and experiments have been featured in industry press and conferences. Over 70 of her wines have consistently achieved 90+ scores and been noted by several leading critics including a Wine Spectator "Producer to Watch," Wine & Spirits varietal "Top Ten" and "Year's Best" lists.
Julie deeply enjoys volunteering, mentoring and building community. She is one of thirty industry leaders on the Unified Wine & Grape Symposium Program Committee (North America's largest industry conference) and serves as long-time Chair of the Napa / Sonoma Winemaking & Viticultural Roundtable of Women for Winesense. She is a contributing technical writer and wine judge for wine industry trade and consumer publications, frequent winemaker panelist for Napa Valley Vintner’s top trade and media conferences and VIP immersions and masterclass developer / instructor at Napa Valley Wine Academy. She is a past board member for Napa Valley Wine Technical Group and IQ (Innovation + Quality) Conference for luxury winemaking advances. She also serves as the Sonoma County Small Business Development Center’s wine industry consultant and general business advisor to small business owners in multiple agricultural and service sectors.

Stephanie Cohen is the winemaker for Col Solare Winery on Red Mountain. At a young age, she was exposed to some of the premier wine growing regions of the world through family trips to California, Italy, and France. These travels fed her curiosity about how grapes are transformed as they go from vine to bottle and thus sparked her interest in the science of wine production. After graduating from the University of Michigan with a degree in Chemical Engineering, she moved to Napa for her first harvest as a lab technician. Her passion for the process of winemaking only grew in the two years she spent there before she decided to broaden her experience further. She believed that a successful career in winemaking would require a diverse skillset and a global perspective. This philosophy led her to pursue work at wineries in New Zealand, California, Australia, Oregon, and, finally, Washington State. Working with premium grapes from Red Mountain was a major draw for her at Col Solare. “I love the intimate relationship with the vineyard that the estate property provides. The intense focus on quality, from the vineyard to the bottle, that comes with small production is unparalleled.” Stephanie’s favorite part of the wine industry is the community that accompanies it. “Working around the globe, I have been able to collaborate with incredibly passionate people from diverse backgrounds. What brings us all together is the shared love of creating a product from the land for everyone to enjoy. It’s hard to think of another industry as inclusive as ours”.

A former musician, Shalini turned from her Master’s Degree in Flute and Piccolo Performance to a career in wine. After completing her studies at Fresno State University in Enology and Viticulture, she began her journey into winemaking marrying the same combination of art and science that fueled her passion in music. She has worked with many boutique pinot noir producers including Williams Selyem, ROAR, and Furthermore. She is currently the winemaker for Waits-Mast Family Cellars, Neely Wine, and her own small label Ottavino. Shalini was included in the San Francisco Chronicle’s 2019 Winemakers to Watch and is also a WSET Diploma Candidate. When she is not at a winery or in the vineyards, she’s busy chasing after her two small children.

Born and raised in Victoria, Australia, Molly Sheppard has been surrounded by wine for most of her life. She attended Curtin University in Western Australia, completing a degree in Agribusiness, Viticulture and Enology. After working in wineries in Victoria, Margaret River and the Yarra Valley, Molly made her first trip to Napa Valley as an intern for the 2017 vintage and fell in love with the beauty and dynamic nature of Napa Valley and its wines. Today, Molly helps to oversee the farming of the historic Spottswoode Estate Vineyard and the making of the winery’s acclaimed wines.

Molly combines her passion for winemaking with a passion for the environment. She holds a Certificate in Sustainable Business Strategy through Harvard Business School Online and, in addition to helping craft the wines in both the vineyard and the cellar, she manages Spottswoode’s B Corp certification and environmental initiatives, which includes measuring our GHG emissions as part of our IWCA membership.

Winemaker Kelly Koch grew up in the town of St. Helena, in the heart of Napa Valley, California. She received a Bachelor of Science degree in 2003 from the University of California, Davis in Viticulture & Enology with a minor in French. After stints working in Napa and a harvest in Burgundy, France, Kelly arrived on the North Fork of Long Island, New York in 2006. She worked as Head Winemaker for Bedell Cellars and Macari Vineyards and currently makes wine for Terra Vite North Fork. She also is the owner/winemaker of Poppy & Rose Wine Company, founded in 2021. Poppy & Rose is the culmination of her life, her experiences, and her desire to create. Poppy, the state flower of California, represents her life growing up in St. Helena, in the Napa Valley. Rose, the state flower of New York, represents her adult life living and making wine on Long Island. She lives in Peconic with her husband Rob and two daughters, Haley and Zoey. Her daughters can often be found at the winery helping their mom!

Elizabeth Vianna is a wine industry veteran, winemaker and General manager with 25 years of experience in the production of super premium wines in Napa Valley. A native of Brazil, who grew up between two countries, Elizabeth knows first- hand what some of the challenges are to being both a woman and part of a minority group entering this competitive field. Elizabeth has over two decades of experience crafting wines in the Stags Leap District and has ample knowledge and experience on the viticultural side of the business ranging from the technical aspects to financial aspects of budget planning, capital investment, long term business development on both the distribution and the direct to consumer side. She has been active as a board member and President of the Stags Leap District Winegrower’s Association and currently also serves on the Board of Directors for Napa Valley Vintners. Elizabeth has also been a strong advocate and believer in the sustainability of the wine industry – working closely with the Napa Green organization.

Heidi von der Mehden grew up in Sonoma County’s Wine Country. She earned a degree in chemistry from Santa Clara University in 1997 and taught high school chemistry in Tanzania, Africa, while in the Peace Corps. She returned to Sonoma County in 2000 and joined the wine industry, working her way up the ranks at Kenwood Vineyards, Mauritson Winery and Arrowood Winery, where she was named Winemaker when Richard Arrowood stepped down. Merry Edwards hired Heidi as her Associate Winemaker in 2015. Heidi was named winemaker and Merry Edwards’ successor in 2018, becoming the only person other than Merry to hold that position at the winery.

Heidi Bridenhagen has been working in the wine industry for 15 years. Her primary role -as Head Winemaker for MacRostie Winery- is on Chardonnay and Pinot Noir winemaking in the Sonoma Coast Region. Heidi’s experience extends beyond winemaking with her focus on viticulture to support her winemaking style with the development of a new vineyard in 2018 in the Petaluma Gap AVA. Heidi also has experience in operations and project management with the build of a Pinot Noir facility in 2015. Heidi’s, most recent passion project is her involvement with launching a new brand – dough wines- which is a collaboration with the James Beard Foundation, working closely with them on impact programs to promote advocacy and sustainability facing the food industry.

After Graduating from UC Davis with a Chemistry degree in 2009, Jennie Murphy found herself in the wine industry by accident. She decided to take a harvest internship Korbel Champagne Cellars after her dreams of becoming a Forensic Scientist were quickly diminished due to a delicate economy. It was love at first sight, and after Korbel, she found an Enologist role at Paul Hobbs Wines. Here she would stay for the next twelve years, eventually growing in to the role of Director of Winemaking, and learning how to craft wines full of character and nuance. Jennie is a firm believer that each wine should be unique and allowed to tell its own story. In 2022, she formed her own label called Oxlee Graham Wines, which is named for her two grandmothers. With her new label, Jennie hopes to continue to explore varietals and winemaking areas that exemplify that creative and individualistic spirit.

You can follow her on Instagram at @jenbugg3.