About the Moderator:

Cathy is an award-winning journalist and entrepreneur, and an engaging public speaker. A two-time graduate of Harvard University, first from the Graduate School of Design and then from the Journalism program, she transitioned to a career in wine after working successfully on negotiation projects in the Middle East.

As a journalist, Cathy was shortlisted in 2019 as the Louis Roederer Columnist of the Year for her Forbes column on the business and politics of the wine industry, and she won the Born Digital Wine Award in 2020 for Best Interview for her article on misogyny in the wine industry. She is a featured commentator for the “Reign of Terroir” episode in the Netflix series Rotten, which has been nominated for an Emmy award, and her writing has also been seen and heard on the BBC, the Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, NPR and WNYC. She is a columnist (“Life, Entrepreneurially”) for Inc.com and her first book, Hungry for Wine: Seeing the World through the Lens of a Wine Glass, won the World Gourmand Award for Women in Wine in 2016.

As an entrepreneur, Cathy co-founded Enolytics, which was a finalist for the Born Digital Wine Award in Innovation in 2019. Enolytics provides data-driven business intelligence to beverage alcohol companies around the world; its client list includes Bollinger Champagne, Marchesi Frescobaldi, Wines of California, Wines of Chile, Gonzàlez-Byass and Freixenet-Mionetto. Cathy is also the co-creator of content for A Balanced Glass, a community dedicated to wellness in the wine industry, which was a 2019 Drinks Innovator for SevenFifty Daily.

Cathy’s community involvement includes serving on the Atlanta Commission on Women, grant reviewer for the Food Well Alliance, past president of the Harvard Club of Georgia, member of the Board of Directors for the Harvard Alumni Association, and founder of the Harvard Alumni in Wine and Food shared interest group. 

Cathy’s experience in the hospitality industry includes working in the kitchens of some of the world’s most renown chefs, such as Thomas Keller (at Bouchon at The Venetian in Las Vegas), Jean-Pierre Vigato (at Apicius in Paris) and Alice Waters (at Chez Panisse in Berkeley).

She is a certified yoga teacher (via the Kashi urban ashram in Atlanta) and a certified teacher of mindfulness meditation (via Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield). She lives in Atlanta with her husband, their twin boys and their Bernese Mountain Dog named Karma.