With midwestern roots, Kruse’s marketing experience to be put to good use
The first thing one notices about the new Sonoma County Winegrape Commission President is that she is not Nick Frey.
“Similar to Nick, I grew up in the Midwest. I was born in South Dakota; we lived there until I was 10. Both my parents grew up on farms in Iowa and Nebraska. I spent summers on my grandparents’ farm,” said Karissa Kruse.
The similarities between retiring president Nick Frey and incoming president Karissa Kruse end there. Frey’s background — when he began working for Sonoma County’s winegrape growers nearly a decade and a half ago — was first and foremost agricultural. With a bachelor of science in agronomy and a PhD in plant physiology, Frey has always been comfortable talking to growers about the minutiae of soil science and plant disease.
Kruse is no stranger to agriculture. In fact, she moved to Sonoma County primarily to start a winery, and she grows five acres of winegrapes in Bennett Valley. Kruse’s passion lies in promoting agricultural products to better the lives of growers, ranchers, and farmers.
But the theme of her career, from the time she graduated high school and headed to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, has been marketing.
“My first job out of college was marketing Honey Nut Cheerios,” Kruse said.
“Every time I took a step in my career I ended up trying to do more with less money. At age 21, I had an 80 million dollar marketing budget. There was money to do great advertising plans and couponing and new marketing plans.”
But Kruse realized that, while she had long idealized corporate America, it did not offer the future she was looking for. She did not enjoy Minneapolis winters either, so she headed to Los Angeles for a stint in the marketing side of Hollywood: working as a brand manager promoting home videos.
Her marketing budget shrank to $10 million, and she found herself in the business of convincing consumers to spend a few hours cuddled up on their couches watching Erin Brockovich.
Los Angeles is also where Kruse’s love of wine began.
“As a transplant there it took me a while, but I finally clicked in with a good group of girlfriends. Our Fridays, Saturdays, would always include ordering a couple bottles of wine to the table… sharing those special moments with friends, celebrating a birthday, celebrating a promotion. Wine was something you consume but also very experience driven,” Kruse said.
“I am a huge toaster. You don’t have your first sip of wine until there’s been a toast to recognize the moment. And I toast often throughout the evening. It gives a pause, allows some reflection. That’s the part of the wine experience that I think is really fun. And then to be able to talk about it, or not talk about it. You can spend as much time diving to the details or you can just sit back, relax, and enjoy.”
Kruse’s relationship with wine continued after she left Los Angeles to pursue an MBA at Wharton. She began vacationing in wine country. She started in Napa, but once she went “over the hill,” she never looked back.
“Back in 2003 or 2004, I made the first trip over the hill. I went to Ravenous in Healdsburg, and that was it. I never went back to Napa. I was at Ravenous, sitting outside, and it was so down to earth. We had an amazing chat with the woman waiting on our table that night. I walked around the square, and there’s just something very intangible about the connection I had to it,” Kruse said.
After receiving her MBA, Kruse threw herself into a job at Dairy Management working on behalf of dairy farmers. She oversaw a $5 million budget. After she moved to Sonoma County, she continued to consult for Dairy Management.
She began working as the Marketing Director for the Sonoma County Winegrape Commission back in the fall, and will take on the role of president as of May 1.
“Now I’m working on behalf on an entire county and our average assessment is about 1.2 million — not all of that is marketing. Each year I get more ambitious with less funding. That really pushes creativity and innovation,” Kruse said.
Kruse noted that, while it was difficult to say goodbye to the dairy community that she worked with for seven years, she is looking forward to immersing herself in the Sonoma County grapegrowing community – and excited that she will continue to represent agricultural interests.
“I’m very honored, humbled, excited, overwhelmed – all those things – to fill Nick’s shoes and continue to work on a higher level on behalf of the growers… I’m in awe of the growers, in awe of how hard they work and how much they care, about what they do. I’m proud of them,” Kruse said.
“I don’t think I could do something I faked. It’s that attitude, that perseverance and tenacity that the growing community has, that the agricultural community has, that I loved in my dairy community and now in the growers that I work for.”
