Raised in the premium wine region of McLaren Vale, South Australia, Rebecca Hopkins took her first role in the wine business with Wirra Wirra vineyards in McLaren Vale in 1992 while completing her Bachelor of Wine Marketing at Adelaide University. Upon graduation, Rebecca joined national importer Negociants Australia as Marketing Assistant, and in 1996 was the inaugural Student Winner of the “Vin de Champagne Award” – given by the Champagne region’s governing body. In 1999 Rebecca relocated to Coonawarra, joining boutique producer Rymill Winery as Marketing, Sales & Export Manager before joining Australia’s largest producer, BRL Hardy (now Accolade Wines) in 2001. She held the role of Public Relations Manager from 2001 managing all brand, environmental, operational and corporate publicity activities before the acquisition of the Company by Constellation Brands in 2005. Following this, Hopkins was promoted to Group Public Relations Manager to manage the Company’s global public relations, media operations, hospitality and events including leading the company’s communications and PR and events requirements across corporate, brand, and business media in Australia, and key strategy development with the US and UK markets. In 2007, Rebecca was relocated to San Francisco with Constellation Brands to develop and lead the largest in-house brand communications and event marketing team in the US wine business, creating strategic PR programming for trade and consumer media, and consumer and trade marketing events. Overseeing the US wine portfolio, she led brand publicity programming and event marketing for the portfolio, leveraging strategic relationships across wine, culinary, luxury and lifestyle media. In 2012 she returned to family winemaking, joining national importer Folio Fine Wine Partners – a full-service sales, marketing and communications agency owned by the Michael Mondavi Family. A panelist at Vinitaly’s 2015 Business Series in Verona, Rebecca is a freelance contributor to Wine Business Magazine (Australia), avid photographer, and lives in San Francisco, California. She is now Communications Strategist at Folio Fine Wine Partners & Founder of “A Balanced Glass”.