Brian Sudano
CEO
S&D Insights, LLC
Brian Sudano is Managing Partner of Beverage Marketing Corporation. Mr. Sudano’s experience covers nearly the entire beverage industry, from energy drinks to wine, with special expertise in key strategic issues by virtue of varied industry experience and broad range of projects. Mr. Sudano manages several major clients, providing on-going strategic and market advise, while leading projects in strategic planning, market entry analysis and planning, sales/distribution, business modeling, brand repositioning and international opportunity assessment. Mr. Sudano is regularly quoted in leading global business publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, Forbes and The Economist. He has spoken at many beverage industry events, and is a contributing editor at Beverage Industry magazine.
Chris von der Linden
Executive Vice President, IRI
Julia Herz
Craft Beer Program Director
Brewers Association
Julia Herz is the Craft Beer Program Director for the Boulder, Colorado based Brewers Association (BA) and Publisher of CraftBeer.com and BrewersAssociation.org. She has been featured by the Food Network ‘Unwrapped' Series, interviewed on National Public Radio, Featured on American Public Media’s Splendid Table, Sirius/XM, CNBC Squawk Box and Closing Bell, Fox News, GMA Live and thousands of other media outlets.
She is a BJCP Certified beer judge, an award-winning homebrewer, a Certified Cicerone®, co-author of the free CraftBeer.com Beer & Food Course, co-author of Beer Pairing and writes for the Craft Beer Muses Blog, Huff Post Taste, BrewersAssociation.org and The New Brewer Magazine.
Her areas of expertise include: The state of beer in the US, craft beer and small and independent craft brewers, beer styles and trends plus craft beer and food pairing. In her role at the Brewers Association she serves as an educator and a spokesperson for the Association.