FOUNDER & CEO

University of Louisville, Louisville, KY 

Università per Stranieri di Perugia, Perugia, Italy

Mike is a highly experienced and successful product, UX, UI, visual, and branding designer with many years of experience creating large and small scale designs.

Mike has worked for global clients in many industries including Caterpillar, Pampered Chef, Deloitte, Nike, and many others. He has also provided his design leadership and experience to startups in healthcare, higher education, and SaaS companies. 

He began his career with extensive experience in the barrel aging of bourbon for brands under Brown-Forman Corporation in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky.

STRATEGIC BUSINESS / ADVISOR

University of Connecticut: BA in Economics

Steve began his career at JP Morgan in the executive management training program and held senior positions in investment banking and asset management at Bank of America and Trust Company of the West. In 2005, Steve founded Silvermine Capital, a fixed income asset management firm with $4 billion in assets under management. The Man Group, a publicly traded hedge fund based in the UK, purchased Silvermine in 2016. After the acquisition, Steve became the Co-Head of Credit at Man until 2021. He is a vintner in Calistoga.

DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS

University of Nevada, Reno: Bachelor of Applied Science - BASc, Information Technology

Andrea began her career in the United States Air Force as a Knowledge Operations Manager. She served in all capacities from active duty to Air National Guard and finally retired after 20 years in a Reserve status. Andrea has led cross-functional teams in various industries from military, logistics, and healthcare. She has a strong background in project management, process improvement, and quality assurance.

During her military service she earned a bachelor’s degree and became a Senior Administrator for hospital Radiology Information Systems. She spent the next 13 years as a Senior Consultant managing and implementing Epic software into 9 different hospitals nationwide. She joins the Simple lab team with extensive experience in implementing innovative strategies to optimize business processes, reduce cost, and improve customer satisfaction.

PRODUCT DIRECTOR

Auburn University - BA in Graphic Design and Marketing

Matthew is a forward thinking tech-savvy professional who thrives in solving critical business challenges by designing, building and delivering innovative technology solutions to meet objectives in revenue growth and market expansion, along with value, capability and customer satisfaction. With over 10 years of experience creating and leading extensive enterprise IIoT initiatives, Matthew has built and led projects from asset tracking to connected workers to micro-grids, involving a multitude of connectivity solutions such as Wi-Fi, LoRaWAN, 5G, NB-IoT, BLE and NFC. Before jumping into the corporate world, Matthew owned and operated a software development company for over 18 years, during which he helped develop hundreds of enterprise applications for customers across the globe while building and fostering several startups in the retail, hospitality and healthcare markets.

SENIOR ADVISOR
WINEMAKING & CHEMISTRY

University of California, Davis: B.S. Biochemistry

Winery Management based upon 30+ years in the wine business. Experience starting from dragging hoses in the cellar to laboratory to Winemaker. General Manager for a large vineyard operation and General Manager for Wineries.

Specialties: A to Z - vineyard contracts to planning and planting, winery cellar proficiency to production planning to overall winery management.

ADVISOR, WINEMAKING

University of California, Davis: Food Science (Enology)

Cornell University: Doctoral Program, Molecular Plant Pathology

Sonoma State University: Bachelor of Science, Cell Biology

Dedicated to producing terroir driven wines, he uses traditional winemaking techniques and a minimalist approach to reveal the distinction of each unique block. Though a very modest and jovial individual, he takes his craft extremely seriously, and with over 18 years of winemaking experience, Tim has received fabulous scores from every media outlet, including 100-points for some of his hillside mountain Cabernets.

ADVISOR, WINEMAKING

Stellenbosch University: Bachelor of Science (BSc), Agriculture: Viticulture & Oenology

Originally from Cape Town, South Africa, Bertus knew he wanted to be a winemaker at the age of 15. His career has taken him through the cellars of Deetlefs Estate, Rupert & Rothschild Vignerons, Glen Carlou, Hess Collection, Chappellet, and Regusci. On top of his winemaking roles at James Cole, Tank Garage, and T-Vine, Bertus also operates Belong Wine Co. with his wife.

SENIOR STRATEGY ADVISOR, BOURBON

University of Puget Sound: Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry
Oregon State University: Master’s degree in Organic Chemistry

Edgar (Eddie) Lee is an Organic Chemist by training and worked in the drug development industry for 15+ years.  He has successfully developed two small molecule drug candidates to Phase 2 clinical trials, and one to Phase 3 trials.  He has since pivoted his focus to the spirits industry and has worked on developing methods to detect, analyze, characterize and map out the chemical components of spirits.  In addition, he has also worked on methods to understand and accelerate the process of aging spirits.