Directors
Charlotte Horton,
President
Co-owner at Castello di Potentino. Charlotte has been making award-winning wines in Tuscany for over 20 years. She has restored two castles in Tuscany. At the second, Castello di Potentino, she has revitalized an abandoned estate, planting new vineyards, bringing olive trees back into production and creating a cultural centre, aka ‘The 21st Century Castle’, where people can stay in a rural family atmosphere. She has been running cultural, food and wine events and symposia since 2010. Charlotte recently published a book with photographer Michaell Woolley commissioned by Rizzoli entitled A Tuscan Adventure: Castello di Potentino. The Restoration of a Castle. Before moving to Italy, she worked for Vogue Magazine, Secker and Warburg Publishing House and then as a freelance journalist. In 2013, she was recognized as one of the Barclays Women of Achievement.
Dr Gregory Warden,
Vice President
Born in Florence, Tuscany, Dr Gregory Warden received a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, a MA and a Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr College. Warden is a University Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Southern Methodist University. He taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Bowdoin College, and the University of Texas at Arlington. He has taught with the honors, Meadows Foundation Distinguished Teaching Professor, University Distinguished Professor, and also Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor at Southern Methodist University. Warden’s academic work is in Etruscan and Roman archaeology. He founded and co-directs Mugello Valley Archaeological Project (MVAP), which primarily works on the north Etruscan site of Poggio Colla, where twenty-one years of excavation have uncovered a sanctuary and settlement. Warden is an elected foreign member to the Istituto Nazionale di Studi Etruschi ed Italici, Vice President of the Board of Trustees of the Etruscan Foundation, a member of the governing board of the Archaeological Institute of America.
Alexander Greene,
Secretary and Treasurer
Co-owner at Castello di Potentino. Alexander was a founding member of the team that set up the Frontline Club, a members’ club and restaurant in London that specializes in independent journalism, and hosts the likes of Wikileaks and Litvinenko. He went on to work at the publisher Little, Brown Book Group whose authors include J.K. Rowling, Stephanie Meyer and Patricia Cornwell. Alexander now looks after sales and administration for Castello di Potentino and is Director of Raymond Chandler Ltd.
Roger Lloyd
Roger Hall Lloyd is a retired lawyer born in Oklahoma but who has spent much of his life in England. After school in England he was educated at Princeton University and the Harvard Law School, and also obtained an MA in Philosophy from the University of London. He now divides his time between England and his ranch in Osage County, Oklahoma. His previous publications include a book, Osage County; A Tribe and American Culture, published by iUniverse in 2006.
Eleanor Shannon
Eleanor Shannon is a wine sommelier (Associazione Italian Sommelier-2009), who writes about organic, biodynamic and natural wine on her blog www.uncorkedinitaly.com. With degrees from Dartmouth (BA) and Harvard (MBA), she worked at Bain and Co. and the World Bank, then, was cited for excellence in teaching at the Commerce School at the University of Virginia. She came from the US to Italy to teach university students in Milan (2004-2008).
John Hooper
John Hooper has been a foreign correspondent for more than 30 years and is currently The Economist’s correspondent for Italy and the Vatican. He also writes about art and archaeology for the Wall Street Journal. His latest book, The Italians, has appeared in best-seller lists on both sides of the Atlantic. A previous work, The Spaniards, won the Allen Lane Award for a best first work of non-fiction. It has since twice been updated as The New Spaniards, most recently in 2006. John lectures at Stanford University and in 2021 became an honorary fellow of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge. His latest book, in collaboration with Anna Kraczyna, is an annotated translation for Penguin Classics of The Adventures of Pinocchio.
Eric Archambeau
A global food enthusiast and not-for-profit activist, Astanor’s co-founder Eric has been supporting healthy food education and regenerative agriculture training for over a decade. The former Silicon Valley technology entrepreneur turned venture capitalist (App Annie, Betfair, Freenow, Onfido, Spotify, Xing) was Global Chairman of the Jamie Oliver Food Foundation and co-founded Quadia – a Geneva-based impact investing firm that offers private investors and family offices tailored strategies and portfolios that deliver social and environmental impact. Previously, he lectured at graduate business school INSEAD, where he founded the Social Entrepreneurship Department and was one of the co-founders of Social Impact International, a social entrepreneur accelerator program in India and Hawaii with a focus on sustainable agri-food programs.
Kevin McNeely
Executive Director at Sonoma International Film Festival. Born in Minnesota, McNeely and his wife Rosemary, also an active Sonoma arts patron who teaches art through the Sonoma Valley Museum of Arts’ children’s program, moved from New York to Sonoma in 1992. In addition to his visionary direction of the Sonoma International Film Festival, McNeely is a Trustee for the Manitou Fund.
Alexandra De Zwart Haggard
Sarah Pearson
Head of Product and Investment Services at Capital Group, Alexandra De Zwart Haggard was previously Managing Director at BlackRock where she was responsible for product strategy for the firm’s Equity platform globally, as well as Head of Pricing Strategy for EMEA. Prior to this, she was the CEO of Stamford Associates, investment consultant to FTSE 100 wealth manager St. James’s Place and pension schemes of UK blue chip firms, and Managing Director, Product and Marketing of Russell Investments, EMEA.
Alexandra is a founding member of The Diversity Project, now leading the Disability workstream. She is also a member of CFA UK’s Advisory Council, former member of CFA UK Board. She is a regular speaker on both investment and diversity and one of Financial News’s 100 Influential Women in Finance in EMEA, 2015 and 2016. She is also recognised as an international sportswoman in Three Day Eventing.
Treasurer
Currently working as the Program Manager of Personal Tax in Salem and is passionate about helping people and organizations grow through strategic planning and advising. Sarah holds her Bachelor’s degree from Western Oregon University, and her MBA from Willamette University, and is an Enrolled Agent, admitted to practice before the IRS.
Sarah was first introduced to Potentino when she worked as an Operations Manager for a floral education company that hosted multiple workshops there. She has since returned to breathe in the Tuscan air and enjoy the wine and olive oil with her family and has worked with various NGO’s in the past.
She has a husband, 2 young children and lives in Oregon.