Alumni Video Spotlight: Caleb Cavazos MBA 15

What's it like to work in the California wine industry where UC Davis has deep roots?

A 10-year veteran of the wine business, Full-Time MBA alumnus Caleb Cavazos MBA 15, is digital marketing manager at Foley Family Wines & Spirits in wine country in Santa Rosa, which owns more than 25 wineries and distilleries.

At the UC Davis Graduate School of Management’s Alumni Weekend, Cavazos reflected on his career in the industry, where the close-knit Napa and Sonoma communities have allowed him to connect with some of the biggest names in wine.

He shared how the industry’s small scale makes collaboration essential—not just among executives, but across sales, marketing, tasting rooms and wine clubs. As cultural shifts reshape drinking habits and consumer preferences, Cavazos emphasized that adaptability and cross-functional teamwork are more important than ever—less about hierarchy, and more about working together to move the industry forward.

Looking back on his time at UC Davis, Cavazos credited his professors with preparing him for collaborative leadership. “I had really good professors across the board,” he said. “I learned a lot here and I still, to this day, apply something to my career.”

Video Transcript

I work in the alcohol industry, and one of the biggest things that I've gotten to do is I have gotten to be in the room with some of the biggest names in the industry, people who run these huge companies and big names in wine. And I get to interact with them either professionally or socially. The industry is fairly small in that way, especially in Napa or in Sonoma, so you're kind of rubbing elbows with some people who have some big names. It's a lot smaller than many other places.

In my mind, the idea that you're working alongside the pyramid structure of this is CEO, this is the C-suite, these are your directors, these are managers. It doesn't work when someone dictates. And the information, the boots on the ground, is the most informed. And so collaborative is that we have to work more cross-functionally, and organizations have to be a lot flatter. And we rely on what sales knows, what marketing knows. Those lines are being blurred every day at a much higher level.

So, one of my jobs is to build a website. I need input from our sales team, from our brand managers, to fill the content. I need the tasting room managers to weigh in on those pages. I need the wine club managers and directors to weigh in on that, and that can't happen unless there is communication and that collaboration. So, none of us live in a bubble, and I think no job is singular powered at this point. So, you have to work cross-functionally.

The biggest challenge in my industry is that people stop drinking as much, and that's not necessarily a problem in the world. I think that overall, it's probably not a huge deal. But there's a huge cultural shift happening, with the rise of other things, where it's sobriety, which is, again, a pretty good thing.

But it is a big cultural shift from the dominant generation of boomers to now; Millennials are not drinking as much. The rise of and legalization of marijuana is coming in, and we're seeing a huge effect of that. And also, the rise of craft brewing, which the people who drink craft brew would have probably been more naturally a wine customer or wine connoisseur, and really were introduced to beer at a different level. So, to say it's a challenge, it's just that the industry is changing a lot.

I had really good professors across the board. It's hard to say one had a bigger impact than the other. I learned a lot here, and I still, to this day, apply something to my career.