I’m Heidi! I'm passionate about building leaders and teams leveraging human potential behind category‑defining brands. With more than 25 years of experience across health, wellness, and consumer sectors including Clif/Luna, Starbucks & Diageo, I have worked at the forefront of industry transformation—helping founders build iconic brands by pairing deep consumer insight with exceptional leadership, culture, and execution. I'm known for my ability to scale both businesses and the people who lead them. Formerly the CEO of Distill Ventures (Diageo CVC), I led the search for the next gen of iconic drinks, wellness, and consumer brands. With more than 25 years of transformative experience disrupting health- and wellness-minded CPG categories, I’ve built my career around identifying exceptional founders and helping them scale with clarity, discipline, and bold innovation. I’m passionate about shaping categories before they mature, reading shifts in consumer behavior early, and backing entrepreneurs who are redefining what modern consumers expect. When joining Distill Ventures North America in 2018, I championed industry-first initiatives, including establishing the world’s first non-alcoholic drinks practice and driving the rapid growth of leading global brands, most notably Ritual Zero Proof, recently acquired by Diageo in 2024. I also launched Distill Ventures’ Pre-Accelerator to support founders from underrepresented backgrounds. I oversaw the evolution of our global portfolio, advancing diversity, category expansion, and sustainability while guiding founders from pre-launch through scale, market leadership, and acquisition. Expertise ✅ Category creation and disruptive innovation across drinks, wellness, and consumer packaged goods ✅ Scaling and guiding beverage & CPG brands through full lifecycle—from pre-launch to acquisition, especially leadership in non-alcoholic and low-alcohol category development ✅ For founders & CEO's (especially launch through $50M in rev) > Building best strategic plan and the team capability to maximize execution > Creating long-term strategy and matching short term priorities / actions & plan to meet trajectory. > Facilitating and, short circuiting process, “Leap frog” knowledge access to support acceleration ambition > Maximizing CEO resources: transformative leadership and best practices for self, team, boards and investors ✅ For investors: maximizing portfolio strategy, talent assessment and ecosystem building