BIO
Selena Cuffe is the Founder of Vintner, Heritage Link Brands. In this position, she empowers critical, strategic initiatives that accelerate business outcomes and empower diversity and equity within the global wine industry. Her authority includes business transformation, digitization (AI & IoT), strategy, agile operations, change management, marketing, and corporate social responsibility. Ms. Cuffe is also President of SodexoMAGIC, a joint venture between U.S.-based Magic Johnson Enterprises and French food and facilities management company, Sodexo, Inc.
Ms. Cuffe leads the executive team of SodexoMAGIC, an industry leader in community-centric, Quality-of-Life services, serving 1.3 million consumers each day through facilities management, food, benefits, and rewards services. With $600M in annual revenues in the U.S. and Canada, SodexoMAGIC’s 5,000 employees in North America provide more than 100 unique services that improve performance at 1,400 client sites.
Prior to her current position, Ms. Cuffe was a Y-Combinator Top 100 leader, CEO of Heritage Link Brands, from 2007 to 2018, and instrumental in the commercialization of the South African Black Vintners Alliance, the House of Mandela, founded by Makaziwe and Tukwini Mandela, Nelson Mandela’s daughter, and granddaughter, and the acquisition of the Seven Sisters Vineyards, the only black, women-owned wine estate in South Africa. Ms. Cuffe led venture conceptualization, launch, and production of 70M liters of wine annually.
Prior to founding Heritage Link Brands, she was Director for the Council on International Educational Exchange, Assistant Brand Manager for the Procter & Gamble Company, where she managed the North America P&L and was responsible for $1B brand ringles’ U.S. multicultural and Latin America markets, Analyst for Merrill Lynch Asset Management, SEO Intern for Goldman Sachs, and INROADS Intern for Union Bank of California.
Ms. Cuffe is a passionate activist for local and global community. She is a Los Angeles County certified mediator, appointed by the Culver City Council to resolve landlord-tenant disputes. Selena sits on the Overseas Studies Advisory Council at Stanford University and is Vice President Emerita of the Global Alumni Board of Harvard Business School. Selena is a Director and serves on the audit committee for the Harvard Business School African American Alumni Association, Chair of the Nominating and Governance Committee for the Harvard Business School Women Student Alumnae Board, and an incoming member of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank’s 12th District Economic Advisory Council (01/22).
Ms. Cuffe was recognized as Black Enterprise Magazine’s 2010 “Entrepreneur of the Year” and has been recognized by the Restaurant Association, Beverage Media, CNN, Crain’s New York, ELLE, Essence, Forbes, Los Angeles Times, PBS, Time Magazine, and Wine Spectator.
Ms. Cuffe holds an AB in International Relations from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard Business School, with honors. She is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, fluent in Spanish, and conversant in Portuguese.