David’s wines, the first release, scored above 90 points; they were named “rising star vintners” and recognized as the first Korean-American winemakers in Oregon. A community and a brand began forming around them. Lois founded AAPI Food and Wine, a national nonprofit platform celebrating Asian American voices in food, wine and hospitality. Five years later, the startup is a nationally recognized brand, and Lois Cho has a moment to reflect on the challenges: “I wish that there was a huge resource like this for us, when we were pursuing this,” Lois said. “I love studying; I could be a student my whole life. But we are scrappy. Even now, there’s still learning how to manage a business and manage employees and train leadership and all these things we’re learning as we go.” And yet, small Oregon wineries with incredible origin stories must also compete with global leaders. Gallo, today the world’s largest wine producer by volume, also started with a winemaker and business partnership (of brothers), and it remains a family business that values training and education. Jim Coleman, Gallo’s co-chairman of the board, served in an advisory role to the College of Business during the development of the college’s specialized master’s degrees, championing the case that businesses across all industries needed people with analytics, supply chain analytics and marketing analytics skills. OSU College of Agricultural Sciences alumnus Chad Clausen, senior value stream manager in operation strategy at Gallo, has been upgrading these skills since joining the wine and spirits company as a research winemaker in 2010. With his degree in food science and technology, Clausen worked to evaluate how viticultural and winemaking tools could enhance wine quality. As his career at Gallo transitioned into production winemaking, Clausen became involved in the complete process of bringing grapes from the vineyard, partnering with operations, supply chain, warehouse, logistics, sales and marketing along the way. He trained Lean Six Sigma in-house with Gallo and then completed a graduate certificate in supply chain and logistics management with the College of Business in June. “This is a very complex business that is capitally intense and doesn’t allow much margin for error,” Clausen said. “When we compound that with the different curve balls being thrown its way – be it climate, water availability, shifting consumer preferences, wildfires, labor, etcetera, each winemaker and winery has their choice of the proverbial litter. There is no shortage of challenges or opportunities for Oregon winemakers and the wine industry in general.” Clausen points to a lot of hard — and not so glamorous work — that’s needed to transform grapes into elegant wine. And similarly, he says, while the public may celebrate — with wine — without knowledge or exposure to the difficulties and strenuousness of working a harvest, winemakers via their undergraduate education are typically not exposed to the sales, marketing or supply chain needs of the wine business. “A key part of the graduate program that has been beneficial has been the diversity of industries represented by my graduate student peers and faculty,” Clausen said. “Collaborating with supply chain professionals from Nike, Intel, Amazon, LAM Research, government, academia and various companies globally provided valuable real-world examples of best practices beyond the wine and spirits sector, enabling me to apply new scenarios effectively in my job.” 8 | College of Business
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTcxMjMwNg==