Wine Business Faculty
Armand Gilinsky, Jr. is Professor of Business at Sonoma State University, where has taught Strategy and Entrepreneurship since 1998. In recent years he has served as Director of SSU’s Entrepreneurship Center, Wine Business Program, and Small Business Institute. He previously held teaching appointments at the Harvard Business School, CSU East Bay, and Northeastern University. He has recently lectured on wine business strategy and entrepreneurship to doctoral students and faculty at the University of Florence and the University of Macerata in Italy.
Dr. Gilinsky has had extensive consulting experience in his areas of specialty, which include strategic planning, competitive strategy, and venture planning. He has authored over 30 business case studies and several articles on entrepreneurial strategy and socially responsible entrepreneurship.
He holds the Ph.D. in Business Policy from Henley Management College/Brunel University (London).
Linda Nowak has been a faculty member at Sonoma State University since 1996. She is currently serving as Director of the Wine Business Program. Her research relating to wine consumer behavior, tasting room management, and wine brand management has appeared in several wine research journals, including the International Journal of Wine Marketing, the Journal of Wine Research, the International Journal of Wine Business Research, the Journal of Product & Brand Management, and the Journal of Food Product Marketing. She has presented her research findings at numerous conferences around the world, including in Montpelier, France and Verona, Italy. Her contact information is: linda.nowak@sonoma.edu
Janeen Olsen holds the position of Professor of Marketing and teaches courses in wine marketing and the global marketplace for wine. She is a coauthor of - Marketing and Sales, Strategy for Success in a Saturated Market and has published extensively about wine in academic and trade publications. She has spoken on a variety of wine related topics at symposiums and conferences in Europe, Asia and Latin America, as well as throughout the U.S.
Liz Thach (pronounced “tosh”) is a management and wine business professor at Sonoma State University in the Wine Business Center where she teaches in both the undergraduate and new Wine MBA programs. In addition, she has 15 years of executive and management level experience at Fortune 500 companies and has done consulting and research projects for more than 20 different wineries. Liz has published over 80 articles and two books: Wine – A Global Business and Wine Marketing & Sales. A fifth generation Californian, Liz finished her Ph.D. at Texas A&M and now lives on Sonoma Mountain where she tends a small hobby vineyard and makes homemade wine. She is also a 2nd year candidate in the Masters of Wine program headquartered in London.
Thomas Atkin is an Associate Professor of Supply Chain Management at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, California. He also teaches in the Wine Business Program and the MBA program there. He was the general manager of a company providing consumer products to major retailers for 13 years and has also been a manager in the hospitality industry. He received both his MBA (Hospitality Management - 1980) and PhD (Supply Chain Management - 2001) from Michigan State University. His academic articles have appeared in The Journal of Business Logistics, Australasian Marketing Journal, Negotiation Journal and The International Journal of Wine Business Research. His research interests are consumer choice behavior for wine and the wine supply chain. He co-wrote a chapter on the wine supply chain for the book “Wine: A Global Business”.
Sandra Newton is an Assistant Professor in the Business Department of the School of Business and Economics at Sonoma State University. She received her Ph.D. in Management Information Systems from the University of South Florida in 2006. Dr. Newton’s major research interests include organizational impacts and behaviors of information technology (IT) professionals; and information technology, e-commerce, and customer service related issues in the wine industry. She has published research articles in Information Resource Management Journal, Journal of Electronic Commerce Research, International Journal of Wine Marketing, Journal of Computer Information Systems, and Journal of Internet Commerce, and has presented referred papers at several national and international academic conferences. Dr. Newton teaches Introduction to Management Information Systems, Organizational Behavior, Business Statistics, as well as the graduate Management Information Systems course.
David Horowitz received his Ph.D. in Business Administration from Florida State University. David teaches marketing courses in the Business Department, is the Faculty Advisor to the Sonoma State Wine Club, and will be leading students to Chile to study the global wine industry in 2009. He is currently conducting research on cult wine, and looks forward to conducting more wine business research in the future.
Jim Robison has over 30 years of business experience. His resume includes director of supply chain, director of production control, materials manager, inventory manager, purchasing manager, and accounts payable manager. Jim is an APICS Certified Fellow in Production and Inventory Management, CFPIM, and is certified in Integrated Resource Management, CIRM. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in business and industrial management from San Jose State University, a Master of Business Administration degree from Sonoma State University and a Doctor of Business Administration degree from Golden Gate University.
Jim was recognized as the “outstanding graduate student” in the Doctor of Business Administration program at Golden Gate University in 2007. He is a co-winner of the 2004 Plossl Doctoral Dissertation Competition for “best doctoral dissertation in operations management,” awarded by the APICS Educational & Research Foundation. He received the Romey Everdell Award for “the most outstanding article of the year” published in the Production and Inventory Management Journal in 2002.
Dr. Robison is an innovative instructor. He has created hands-on exercises that demonstrate important manufacturing principles for his production operations management class and a computer simulation game for his wine strategy class.
His doctoral dissertation investigated the effect of process flexibility on work in process and finished goods inventories in the US wine industry. He has a small vineyard and is an amateur winemaker. One year his Sauvignon Blanc won a silver medal at the Sonoma Harvest Fair, but another year his Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot blend was described as tasting like wet cardboard.
Jim Bielenberg is a California licensed CPA and wine industry veteran of over 20 years teaching BUS 475W, Winery Finance and Accounting. Applying foundational knowledge, the course challenges the student to think beyond just numbers and manage the business, financial, operational and supply-chain risks in this capital intensive industry. The skill-set learned is transferable to any industry. Having held a number of senior executive positions within Kendall-Jackson, Mr. Bielenberg is currently VP Finance & Administration for their entrepreneurial start-up White Rocket Wine Co.