About Elizabeth
Building value that endures.
My work has taken me through seemingly different worlds — entrepreneurship, wine, archaeology, cultural heritage, technology and insurance.
The thread connecting them is a fascination with value: how we create it, how we understand it, and how we protect what matters over time.
For more than two decades, I have led my family's vineyard and winery on Spring Mountain in Napa Valley. Working in a family business rooted in land, agriculture and generations of stewardship taught me early that the most meaningful value is rarely built in a quarter. It is cultivated over years — often with the intention that someone else will carry it forward.
That perspective eventually took me to the University of Cambridge, where I studied Classical Archaeology and Egyptology. Archaeology asks us to consider value across a radically different timescale: why certain objects, ideas and stories survive; what societies choose to preserve; and what those choices reveal about what people value.
Then that question became deeply personal.
After my family lost our homes and winery in the California wildfires, I experienced firsthand what happens when we don't fully understand the value of what is at risk — or the risks that threaten it. A four-year insurance claim showed me that the system needed to work better for both the insured and the insurer, and I set out to help change it.
That experience led me to found Sotera, a Cambridge-born insurtech company building Contents risk modelling infrastructure to help insurers better understand value, quantify risk and ultimately protect the things people value most.
Today, much of my work sits at the intersection of value, risk and longevity.
I am particularly interested in how we build businesses designed to endure: how founders create new categories, established industries adapt to change, families steward businesses across generations, and leaders make consequential decisions in an uncertain world.
Building what comes next
My own career has taught me that reinvention rarely means starting again.
I began building Sotera at 40, after nearly two decades running a family business and an entirely different academic and professional chapter. The experience, judgment and perspective I had accumulated became part of what I needed to build something new.
That idea now informs my advisory work.
I have a particular interest in accomplished women who are ready to build something of their own — turning years of experience, relationships and perspective into a new business.
They are not starting from zero. They are starting from experience.
Whether building something new or shaping the next chapter of an existing business, my aim is the same: to help people build with greater clarity, conviction and a long-term view of value.
Beyond Business
Elizabeth lives in London with her husband and their Labrador, Ella, dividing her time between London and her family's vineyard and winery in the Napa Valley.
My Background
My work spans business, technology, insurance, wine, and cultural heritage, but the underlying questions are remarkably consistent: What do we value? What puts it at risk? And how do we build and protect what matters so that it can endure?
Reimagining Insurance
Sotera is pioneering object-level Contents risk modelling for insurance, bringing a new level of intelligence and transparency to how collections, homes, and valuable assets are understood and protected.
Built at the University of Cambridge and developed through Lloyd's Lab, the platform helps insurers move beyond broad assumptions and toward a deeper understanding of risk.
Stewarding a Family Legacy
For more than two decades, I have led the stewardship of my family's vineyard and winery on Spring Mountain in Napa Valley.
Wine is a lesson in patience, resilience, and long-term thinking. Every vintage reflects the unique character of the land, the season, and the people who care for it.
The vineyard represents a commitment to preserving something meaningful while continually evolving for the next generation.
Seeing the Bigger Opportunity
STRATEGIC ADVISORY:
I work with founders and family business leaders at pivotal moments of growth, transition, and change — helping them step back from the day-to-day to see the bigger opportunity and make clear decisions about what comes next.
My work draws on more than two decades of experience building and operating businesses across very different chapters of my own career. I bring an independent, commercially grounded perspective to questions of strategy, growth, product-market fit, leadership and transition.
At the heart of my advisory work is a simple belief: you don't have to start again to build what comes next. The experience, judgment, and perspective you've already accumulated may be the very thing that gives you an advantage in the next chapter.