The Cypress Group

Meet Our Leadership

Our managing partners have worked together for 25+ years, and our team puts its combined 75 years of executive search experience to work to deliver impactful leaders to further your company’s success.

The Company

The Cypress Group

Founded in 1990, The Cypress Group is a retained wine business executive search firm focused exclusively on key wine industry placements. With 75+ years of cumulative recruiting experience, our mission is to help optimize your company’s competitive position and drive your business forward with world-class talent.

For its first 16 years, The Cypress Group worked with multi-billion dollar Silicon Valley venture capital firms, building executive teams for early-, mid- and late-stage startups. After purchasing a second home in St. Helena, co-founders Jim Anderson and Courtney Andrain fell in love with wine country and moved to St. Helena full time. Recognizing that the wine industry was becoming more complex and competitive, they saw the need within the rapidly growing wine industry for the type of high-level executive search expertise. The Cypress Group had been providing high-technology clients.

So in 2004, they launched The Cypress Group’s wine practice, and since then have successfully put their networking and recruitment skills to work focusing solely on executive-level searches for the Napa, Sonoma and North Coast wine industry, working on behalf of scores of the regions’ top wine brands, providing search services across all functional areas including CEO/President/General Management, Sales and Marketing, Direct to Consumer, Winemaking and Production, Finance and HR.

We are privileged to have served the best of the best wineries of all sizes, including: Joseph Phelps, Silver Oak, Duckhorn, Jackson Family Wines, Realm Cellars, J Lohr, Paul Hobbs Wines, Donum Estate among many others.

The Cypress Group brings relevant insight into the profound implications hiring decisions can have on your company’s success. We know how time-consuming and difficult it can be to find and retain the best.  We understand the high monetary and cultural cost of one bad hire, and we know the organizational success and profitability a great hire can bring.

To quote Steve Jobs:  ‘A’s hire ‘A’s; ‘B’s hire ‘C’s….  Our experience brings unparalleled perspective and creative solutions to your complex challenges. By employing the full scope of our expertise, integrity, network, and industry best practices, we guarantee our clients nothing but ‘A’s.