The Work at GuildSomm Continues

Our team has been working hard with new changes at GuildSomm. Here are some of the initiatives we have implemented:

• New leadership: Jenny Hemmer was appointed as our new executive director in January, bringing industry experience and a passion for connecting people to wine and beverage education. Learn more about Jenny in our press release.
• Variety of voices: We aim to highlight a broad range of voices in our feature articles, podcasts, and other content, highlighting diverse contributors and also encouraging our writers to include a variety of interviewees and examples in their work. Our new How To Pitch page, found under the About tab, spells out the nuances of how to pitch an article to GuildSomm in an effort to lower barriers to publication opportunities.
• Global accessibility: We are partnering with wine schools and groups internationally to make GuildSomm more accessible to the industry professionals they serve. We have also continued our efforts to translate staff training guides into Spanish and provide video subtitles in Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
• Covid industry support: We have provided free membership to those facing financial challenges due to the pandemic.
• Diversity and Inclusion Statement: We developed a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Statement that you can find in our policies section under the About tab.
• HR partner and incident reporting: Empowered Hospitality serves as our human resource partner and helped us launch an incident reporting system, available on our website under the About tab. Any GuildSomm member, employee, contractor, board member, event attendee, or vendor can submit a report of wrongful conduct experienced at a GuildSomm event or through an online interaction. Empowered Hospitality will conduct a full investigation of any reported incident, and these can be submitted anonymously.

We know our work will continue, and we are committed to pursuing new ways to make GuildSomm an accessible, inclusive, and dynamic community.

We are always glad to connect with our members and hear directly from you. Reach out to our executive director, Jenny Hemmer, at jenny@guildsomm.com or contact anyone on our team.