Alyssa Rapp
Alyssa Rapp currently serves as the Managing Partner of AJR Ventures, a firm providing strategic advisory services to companies ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500’s in the technology, beverage and/or luxury goods categories. In 2014, Rapp joined the ranks as a lecturer in management at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, annually teaching a course on the Global Dynamics of the Wine Industry.
Previously, Rapp served as the founder & CEO of Bottlenotes, Inc., the leading interactive media company in the U.S. wine industry. She is the author of Bottlenotes Guide to Wine: Around the World in 80 Sips®. As such, Rapp was named in Inc. Magazine’s “30 Under 30” coolest entrepreneurs in America” and is consistently named one of the wine industry’s top 100 most influential people by Intowine.com. Bottlenotes received the “People’s Choice Award” at the Empact Showcase at the United Nations, honoring the top 100 companies with founders under 35. Rapp frequently serves as contributor to national print publications and television networks (Forbes, The Today Show, etc.) as an expert on wine and entrepreneurship.
Rapp earned a B.A. in Political Science and the History of Art from Yale University in 2000 and an M.B.A. from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business in 2005. Rapp serves on the Board of Trustees for Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, the country’s preeminent contemporary dance company, on the national Board of Directors of Spark Program, a nonprofit that provides life-changing apprenticeships for middle school students, and is a gubernatorial-appointee to the Illinois Housing Development Authority board, dedicated to providing affordable housing throughout the state of Illinois.
