My driving purpose for over 35 years has been evolution of our food system to drive improved outcomes in human and planetary health. From leading one of the world’s most iconic brands as President Coca-Cola Americas with responsibility for half of The Coca-Cola Company’s global P&L to growing a whole new beverage business at Bolthouse Farms while we continued our legacy of one of America’s premier produce companies taught me one thing…innovative leaders and nimble execution maximize value creation. The culmination of these chapters of my career was the sale of Bolthouse Farms in 2013 to The Campbell Soup Company in one of the most successful PE deals of that era, but as fate would have it, I was not done with Bolthouse Farms.
In 2019, I led as a founding operating partner at Butterfly Equity, the purchase of Bolthouse Farms back from Campbell’s Soup with a crystal clear vision to transform Bolthouse Farms into two stand alone companies each with it’s own identity and strategic focus. A two year transformation project alongside Butterfly Equity’s operations team led to the successful spin out of our produce business as Bolthouse Fresh Foods in 2023 and the founding of our leading beverage platform, Generous Brands. Since the split, I have led as Founder and Executive Chairman of Generous Brands the strategic expansion of the business thru targeted acquisitions of Evolution Fresh, a leading cold pressed juice business and Health-Ade, the #2 Kombucha in the U.S. alongside our incredible management team.
As an operating partner and technical advisor to Butterfly Equity, my activities range across a spectrum of value creation opportunities including fund raising, deal flow, market and target diligence and advising portfolio companies on strategic transformation. The Butterfly Effect is now felt across all 13 of our portfolio companies and we have continued to build a compelling investment narrative around food as a strategic asset class and we are just getting started proving my thesis…purpose driven businesses can change the world.
