Jon founded Sonoma Brands in January 2016 to invest in high-growth, emerging consumer brands and selectively incubate new concepts. Through Sonoma Brands, Jon intends to build a leading growth equity fund exclusively focused on the CPG space. As a successful entrepreneur with experience in building multiple brands, Jon understands a founder’s need to look beyond capital and select a partner with value-add capabilities around sales, marketing, supply chain operations, and R&D. Jon oversees current and prospective portfolio investments and leads the firm’s investment and operation teams. Jon began his career steering the sales & marketing for Viansa, his family’s winery, and eventually leading the business as President, becoming one of the most successful destination wineries in the Napa and Sonoma valleys. After helping drive the M&A process leading up to Viansa’s sale, Jon served as Managing Director of wine.com, assisting in the turnaround toward its first profitable quarter. As an avid runner training for the New York City Marathon in 2009, Jon realized the opportunity to turn jerky, a commonly used training food, into something truly special. Influenced by his wine background, Jon founded KRAVE Pure Foods (“KRAVE”) to create a differentiated jerky brand with culinary-inspired flavor profiles and all-natural ingredients. As the Founder and CEO of KRAVE, Jon led one of the most disruptive, fastest growing CPG brands in the industry, culminating in the company’s acquisition by The Hershey Company in 2015.

Natasha Case founded Coolhaus in 2009 with Freya Estreller after she was working in architecture at Walt Disney Imagineering. They launched their architecturally-inspired, unique ice cream sandwich company from their barely driveable postal van at the Coachella Music Festival to an audience of 100,000. They built a loyal following over the festival weekend and returned to LA to an abundance of viral press, a rapidly building social media following, and an eager foodie audience. Since then, Natasha has been named a Forbes 30 under 30 Food & Beverage, Zagat 30 Under 30, Linked in 10 under 35 for Food & Leisure, as well as being featured in many national publications and radio like Cosmo, Dwell, and NPR, and TV shows including Food Network’s Chopped, Barefoot Contessa, Unique Sweets, Good Morning America, King of Cones, Andy Cohen Live and many more. The company has become one of the leading innovative small dessert businesses, growing significantly to include 4 trucks and 2 storefronts in LA, 2 trucks and one cart in NYC, and 4 trucks in Dallas, Texas. Moreover, consumers can now find Coolhaus’ pre-packaged ice cream sandwiches, hand-dipped bars, and hand-packed pints in 6,000+ gourmet grocery stores nationally, including Whole Foods and Gelson's, and larger retailers like Meijer and Safeway, and now internationally in Asia and the Middle East.

Pete Speranza, A native New Yorker, joined General Mills 21 years ago. He spent his first 15 years honing his skills in supply chain/engineering across all the General Mills platforms and temp states while receiving an MBA from the University of Minnesota. From there, He took on a business development role and helped to create and shape the General Mills venture arm called 301INC. He currently leads a lot of the scouting activities and manages the supply chain efforts across the portfolio. Pete also has a lot of passion about helping the local food innovation ecosystem and has founded the food division for the largest state-wide innovation competition in the country called the MN cup. He is also a food innovation thought lead and has spearheaded a vision of creating a national recognized food innovation hub for the state of Minnesota. This effort has cultivated into a local organization called Grow North. A fun fact about Pete is his first career was as a professional ice hockey player which took him around the world.

Growing up in the Pacific Northwest and with family roots in the Deep South, gardening, gathering, hunting and preserving real food shaped her basic food philosophy: know where your food comes from, prepare it with care and enjoy time around the table. With nearly 20 years serving the natural and organic food industry, Tracy has focused on building transformative food brands for consumers and building enterprise value for companies. As Vice President of Innovation and Brand Development, Tracy Miedema heads up innovation at Presence Marketing the nation’s leading natural products broker, where she oversees the company’s two investment portfolios. From start-ups to Fortune 50 food & beverage, she works closely with companies to optimize their growth, profitability, and positive impact on people and the planet. She has served for 5 years on the US Federal regulatory advisory committee for organic, the USDA National Organic Standards Board, including Chair of the Board. Past roles include Director of Product Innovation for Earthbound Farm/ WhiteWave Foods, creating consumer brands for Stahlbush Island Farm, and Marketing with General Mills' Small Planet Foods Division. Since 2012, Tracy has led graduate student teams in product innovation at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. Tracy holds a BA from the University of Washington and an MBA from Western Washington University. She is lives with her family in rural Oregon.