Alumni Profile: Gerry Brinton of Charles Creek Vineyard
Today: Proprietor of Charles Creek Vineyard. Gerry founded Charles Creek Vineyard in 2002 with her husband, Bill, with the goal of creating outstanding wines from high-quality vineyards in the Sonoma and Napa Valleys. Their new venture had its inception when Bill and Gerry relocated from San Francisco to their home in the Sonoma Valley. Cofounders of a successful juice business, the two entrepreneurs decided to investigate the wine industry and purchased some inventory from an established winemaker who was phasing out his operation. Gerry and Bill finished the wine, bottled it, and entered it in the Sonoma Country Harvest Fair where it won both a Gold Medal and Best of Class Award.
Today, Charles Creek specializes in Chardonnay, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon. Its wines are distributed in California and 14 other states, including New York, New Jersey, Florida, Colorado, and Iowa. Charles Creek recently opened a small tasting room and art gallery in Sonoma — and Gerry helps run the business from her home office overlooking her garden and family vineyard. The small, but fast-growing company has garnered praise and publicity, not only for its award-winning wines, but also for its innovative approach to wine-making.
At Booz Allen & Before: Gerry majored in accounting at Duke University and then worked as a CPA in a small accounting firm for six years before going to Harvard Business School. During the summer between her two years at Harvard, she did a stint in Booz Allen's Chicago Office. After receiving her MBA, Gerry joined the firm's San Francisco office, where she worked as an associate from 1976 through 1980. Her assignments generally focused on strategy and financial operations.
After leaving Booz Allen, Gerry managed property for her husband's real estate business and also began serving on the Board of Directors for the California Pacific Medical Center, a position she held for 16 years, serving as Chairman of the Board for her last two years. In 1993, Gerry and Bill started a fresh juice company called Wimans; after building it into a successful local business in the San Francisco Bay area, they sold it in 2000.
Did your experience at Booz Allen give you a strong foundation for your current venture? There are elements of my work at Booz Allen that I've brought into all the things I've done. One aspect of the consulting world that I really enjoyed was continually learning about something new and analyzing it and trying to figure out what the various parts and the drivers behind it were. Whether it was property management or the juice business or even my role on the board of a hospital for 16 years, Booz Allen's approach was to continually ask questions, listen to what you hear, and than utilize that information appropriately. This has been an instrumental part of my life.
Today, in our wine business, I'm dealing with new issues all the time, looking at each of the players in the industry and analyzing what they're after, where they're going, how that impacts what I'm doing, and where the real linkages are, so that there can be a win on both sides when we're negotiating. There's a lot that goes into building Charles Creek. There are decisions about who's the best person to work with on a particular wine and choosing the best options for storing and shipping. The easiest part of the wine business seems to be making great wine; the hard part is getting it into the hands of people who want to drink it!
At Booz Allen I also had the chance to work with many different companies and gain an understanding of how they operated. One of the things we've done at Charles Creek, for instance, is to create a business model that's very different from many wineries. We do not have a large chateau winery facility or a huge grape vineyard. We just have a one-acre plot here at our home where we grow grapes for our Merlot. To create our other wines, we've contracted with some of the major growers in Sonoma and Napa that produce wonderful grapes. We process them at a great facility, then barrel the wine down and age it at the Sonoma Wine Company, and then bottle it and ship it off. So our investment goes into the fruit we put in the bottle, rather than into bricks and mortar.
What skills did you acquire working at Booz Allen? I had a lot of analytical training in the world of accounting and at business school, but at Booz Allen, I learned how to applying that training. One of the key skills I learned during my time with Booz Allen was the importance of the interview process. When you're talking with someone about their business relationships or how to utilize their services, listening is the most important part of the interview, rather than asking the right questions. In all the industries and companies that I worked with, most of the solutions ultimately came from the people who worked on the inside — you just had to figure out the questions to ask and then carefully listen to be able to use the answers you received.
I think another useful approach I acquired from consulting was being open-minded — not having a preconceived idea about what the answer might be or walking in and assuming that I already had half the solution figured out. Allowing you to think creatively and respond creatively to ideas that others might provide is very valuable. Being realistic is also important; in consulting, our goal was always to come up with a realistic plan that could actually be implemented.
Writing was another key skill that I gained at Booz Allen. Figuring out what it was you wanted to say and how to say it clearly in order to get the message across to both your team and the client efficiently was something we worked hard to accomplish. Learning to review your own work with a fresh eye — and eliminating things that don't make sense is really helpful.
Would you recommend working at Booz Allen? I definitely would, for several reasons. Whether you want to pursue a consulting career or be a consultant for a limited time, it provides exposure to a lot of different opportunities for analyzing different business models and industries. You gain a lot of information that you can use throughout your life. Another reason I enjoyed working with the firm is the people I encountered. The caliber of individuals within Booz Allen was fantastic: very smart, creative, hardworking and interesting.
I think that working at Booz Allen can easily be a springboard for running a business because you are exposed to a lot of different decision points without having to make the investment of starting from the bottom up. If you decide to start a venture of your own, this background gives you some idea of the things you're going to have to deal with and what the implications are if you make Decision A vs. Decision B.
Any favorite experiences at Booz Allen you'd like to share? I'm tall, about 5'9", and when I first joined the firm right out of business school, my hair was long and straight and almost down to my waist. I did manage to cut it somewhat, but I was not really the picture of the classic consultant. I remember having a discussion with some senior partners at the time; they looked at my skill package and said, "She would be great on this assignment." But they also told me, "We're a little worried. We don't know how the managers down there are going to handle having a female consultant telling them how to get information up to the president's office." My response was, "Why don't we just try it?" Sure enough, it was fine. As long as I could walk in, act professional, and give them answers that made sense, there was no problem. I went on to do several assignments for this same client. To me, it was a little humorous that we were going through the process of wondering if I would be accepted.
Any advice for new Booz Allen recruits? It's important that you jump into it wholeheartedly and participate to the fullest extent. Some of the other things in your life may be on hold for a while, but in the long run, it's probably worth it. After you've spent nine months of hard work, you can begin to try and create some balance in your life.
Be sure to make time for the rest of your life. For example, half way through my work with Booz Allen, I met my husband, Bill. He was working in New York and I was in San Francisco, so we spent a lot of time on the telephone. Occasionally, I had an assignment in Chicago, so we'd meet there for the weekend. There are ways to use your travel or work with Booz Allen to your own benefit, if you think creatively.
profile posted June 13, 2005
