Jolene Yee is a wine industry executive, board advisor, educator, and operational leader who has spent almost twenty-five years advising family owned and operated complex, regulated, and consumer-facing alcohol beverage businesses. Known for bringing people together around practical solutions, she combines enterprise leadership, commercial judgment, governance expertise, and hands-on operating experience across strategy, risk, compliance, M&A, government affairs, ESG and sustainability, environmental compliance, health and safety, food safety, and trade practices.

Previously, Jolene served as Senior Vice President, General Counsel & Government Affairs at Delicato Family Wines, where she built and led a 24-person legal team from scratch for one of the largest wineries in the United States. Working closely with the CEO, COO, and executive team, she helped shape strategy, supported acquisitions and post-acquisition integration, navigated distributor transitions, advanced regulatory advocacy, managed operating risk, strengthened organizational design, oversaw budgeting, and helped drive efficiency and drive out costs.

Her earlier experience includes advising E. & J. Gallo Winery on M&A, global sourcing, procurement, commercial transactions, litigation, and international business matters; practicing corporate law at Cooley LLP; and serving as a foreign legal consultant with Kim & Chang in Seoul. Jolene has also contributed to the broader wine, legal, education, and nonprofit communities working with Wine Institute, serving on the Hamel Family Wines advisory board, helping design Sonoma State University’s Global Executive Wine MBA, and co-founding a charter middle school in Napa.

Jolene is currently navigating her next adventure “Beyond the GC”. When she’s not exploring this new world, she plans on taking many flights to Montreal to visit her college-bound daughter, learning more about NASCAR from her son, and enjoying a glass of rose with her lawyer-husband and pooch Moonshine.