By the time you read this, Valentine’s Day will be over and we’ll all be moving onto the next thing.

But first I wanted to pause that momentum for a minute, and pull back the curtain a little bit on the people of Enolytics who comprise our data leadership team. As I thought this week about why I love them, and why I love what they bring to Enolytics, it seemed to say something significant about the innovation and effectiveness of an entrepreneurial team in the wine world.

The “surface” way to read the descriptions below is as a pretty simple love fest around this team’s qualities. Which, okay, it is. But look just a little closer, and you’ll also see the impact of these qualities that enable Enolytics to do the projects we do and to gain the traction we have.

I am grateful for that, and especially for them. Here’s why.

CHRIS is the co-founder of Enolytics and my mentor in business, especially as it relates to operations, financial decisions, and contracts. There would be no infrastructure without him, nor would we be fiscally viable without his direction. He is a very tough negotiator, which I have come to recognize is driven by a desire to value and protect the output of this team. The fierceness of his loyalty manifests in our business decisions, and it buoys this ship.

CLAUDIA, through her quiet and determined leadership, has just been formally recognized as a luminary in the field of data science and visualization. It’s something that I personally want to shout from the rooftops on her behalf, since she would never do so herself. She plans to use that recognition to support the development of other women in technology. This isn’t some pie-in-the-sky ideal; she has a plan and, believe me, when Claudia has a plan, things happen and they happen smartly. She relentlessly seeks to improve and to learn and to keep doing better, which repeatedly lights the fire of inspiration for me.

It’s completely inappropriate, no doubt, to say that I have a crush on RON. But I have a crush on Ron. What can I say? I have always liked smart people and Ron is so smart that even Google has been compelled to take over his screen and challenge his abilities. (Did you know that that actually happens? I didn’t. Until it happened to Ron.) His brain is vast. I have not once seen Ron unable to find a solution to a technical problem that comes his way. But he doesn’t only find a solution, it’s the right solution and it is solid.

These are the people who comprise the data leadership team at the heart of Enolytics. If I’m the public face of the business, they are its muscle and bone and blood.

I wanted to take the occasion of Valentine’s Day to recognize them here, and to give you a look “under the hood” of what it’s taken us to build this enterprise of Enolytics.

Thank you, as always, for reading –

Cathy