Napa Valley/Sonoma Weekend
Michael Berghoff was appointed to the Board of Trustees on July 1, 2009, and is currently chairman of the board. He is founder and president of the Lenex Steel Corporation, the largest steel fabricator in the region, which is headquartered in Indianapolis. He is a 1985 graduate of Purdue with a bachelor's degree in industrial management.
Before starting Lenex, Berghoff worked in management positions at Haden Construction in Detroit; Broad, Vogt & Conant, a steel fabrication company in Detroit; and Ferguson Steel in Indianapolis. As a student, Berghoff served as chairman of the Purdue Student Publishing Foundation and president of Theta Chi fraternity.
Berghoff has held many leadership positions in community and professional organizations, having served as president of the Purdue Theta Chi alumni corporation, president of the St. Simon the Apostle Parish, a member of the Cathedral High School Board of Directors, and chairman of the board of directors for Young President's Organization. He is currently a member of the board of directors for the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, a member of the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) Board of Advisors, and chair of the Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW) Community Advisory Council.
Kristin Berghoff is a 1985 graduate of Purdue University with a bachelor’s degree in retail management. Upon graduation, she worked as a buyer for Neiman-Marcus. After three years in the retail field she became a sales representative in the pharmaceutical industry and worked for companies including Allergan, Pfizer, and Ortho Biotech. The mother of three children, including two Purdue graduates, she currently serves as the Family Officer on the World President Organization’s board.
The Purdue Wine Grape Team’s Professor of Enology, Butzke is a past president of the American Society for Enology and Viticulture, and current chairman of the Indy International, one of the largest wine competitions in the Western Hemisphere. His Purdue Extension responsibilities include the planning and teaching of a wide variety of professional engagement activities, from local winery consultations to global winemaking projects. He is co-founder and Chief Enologist of the Purdue-based startup VinSense LLC, the editor of the technical book “Winemaking Problems Solved” for commercial winemakers, and author of the textbook “Wine Appreciation,” written for the more than 300 undergraduate students he teaches every year. Prior to teaching at Purdue, Butzke was Director of Winemaking for Sakonnet Vineyards in coastal New England. An award-winning commercial winemaker, and one of the foremost enologists in the U.S., he has been featured in The Economist, The New York Times, Financial Times, PBS Wired Science, Wine Spectator, Rolling Stone Magazine, and Food & Wine, among others.
Prior to making wine professionally, he was a tenured faculty member in the world-renowned Department of Viticulture and Enology at the University of California, Davis, where he conducted his well-known research on wine-shipping conditions, cork taint, and wine yeast nutrition. He is co-founder of the Joint Burgundy-California-Oregon Winemaking Symposia, and served on the managing committee for the Unified Wine & Grape Symposium, the largest annual conference for the American wine industry.