Jenny Pan: Time is a precious commodity
The transition from life at Goldman Sachs in the private wealth management division to heading up Sloan Estate winery in California's Napa Valley was easier than Jenny Pan expected.
"I thought going from the corporate world to a family operation would be much more challenging than it was, but in reality the people who have been working on the estate since the beginning are phenomenal," says the daughter of Goldin Group chairman and chief executive Pan Sutong, who bought the estate two years ago.
"The people there are so dedicated. Nobody says, 'that's not my job' or, 'that's beneath me'. With a very supportive culture like that, it's very much a family atmosphere, and it's very easy to transition."
Pan is not averse to learning the winemaking process from the ground up.
"I believe we have to see everything, even if you are not the winemaker and you are not the vineyard manager ... you still must be able to speak about and experience every step of the process, so you should be down there in the trenches with everybody," she says.
Pan, who grew up in Los Angeles, is also involved with harvesting, but in other seasons her days are varied.
"I could host visitors all day, running around, going to meetings. I could be in the vineyards tasting the grapes, seeing what the pH level is like, what the sugar level is like. I could spend the day with our vineyard manager, and we could drive all around the valley and see where other people are in the process," she explains.
"I'm also in charge of looking for new properties for purchase, so I could be driving around for three days, just looking at properties and looking at the soil."
Goldin Group, whose other business lines include consumer electronics, property development and financial services, recently added to its wine portfolio with the purchase of Château Le Bon Pasteur in Bordeaux.
"We finished the transaction just a couple of months ago, so I will be involved more and more in the business," Pan says. "For the day-to-day [operations], we will have a general manager, but on the overall strategic level I will be very involved."
Pan will be based in Napa, travelling to France once or twice a month. Fortunately, the former financial markets trader is used to juggling several time zones at once. A self-confessed workaholic, Pan says she learned from her father that time is not to be wasted.
"Time is a precious commodity, and if you squander it away, you can never get it back. You just get to do it once in life, so do it well," she says.
"Give it your best shot. [My father] always said you never want to look back in life and have regrets, so I guess my philosophy on time is to just live in the moment."
