Uplifting, Innovating, Advocating: Lift Collective

PROFILE

Feb 5

Making space for marginalized wine industry professionals with Sommelier Rania Zayyat

“We started Lift in 2019, but under a different name: Wonder Women of Wine,” says Rania Zayyat, founder of Lift Collective. “I was finding that we needed to start addressing some of the inequities that [women in wine] were facing: wage gaps, being stuck in middle management, little access to growth opportunities, discrimination, harassment—all of it.” Zayyat was tired of no longer being heard, and found this sentiment to be true across her peers in the industry.

“I felt like the best way to draw attention was to host a conference,” she says. Zayyat took a leap of faith and began calling women in wine across Texas, and eventually, from all over the country. “I asked, ‘hey, we’re going to do this conference, would you like to be a part of it?’” Zayyat recalls. “It was an overwhelming number of yeses. Then, we had to tackle the challenge of putting the event together, and getting funding as a brand new event with no history. But somehow, we made it happen.”

Coming Together

Taking place for two days in March 2019, Zayyat’s first conference pulled together over 250 women, with 25 speakers and panelists discussing the #MeToo Movement and its effect on the wine industry, a panel on motherhood for women working in distribution, discussions on navigating being the only woman in an all-male tasting group, and opportunities to put names to problems in an effort to hold people accountable and to uplift the attendees. “When that first conference came to life, I was so invigorated and energized, and felt real connection and support from the industry for the first time in a way that I had never experienced,” says Zayyat. “That was what myself and so many others that attended needed. We felt like we had been living these experiences in the shadows, behind closed doors, because no one dared to talk about them.”

While most of the first day of programming was speakers, day two featured a tasting with over 80 wineries represented, all of them at the bare minimum 51% owned by women. “That part of the event was open to the public,” Zayyat says. “While our conversations were trade-focused, my favorite part about involving and educating consumers was getting these winemakers on lists in Austin and around the country. We partnered with distributors in Texas, and asked them to send us lists of their female producers. We compiled them and sent them out to our network of buyers in Austin.” At the end of the day, dollars do the talking, so educating consumers on the product was a huge focus of the first conference. Zayyat and her team convinced 35 restaurants, retailers, and bottle shops throughout the city to participate and highlight these producers.

In 2020, as the world changed around Zayyat and large public gatherings, so did her mission. The organization rebranded in early 2021 from Wonder Women of Wine to Lift Collective, as the leadership recognized the need to advocate for all groups that were experiencing exclusion within the wine industry, not just women. “We realized that we were excluding folks who were feeling similarly to us. People of color, the LGBTQ+ community, and other groups that overlapped in experiences with us,” she says. “It became clear that if we were going to do this work, then we have to advocate for everyone who feels these systemic issues.”

Changing Shape

Over the past few years, Lift Collective has changed; first, offering a job fair at the 2020 and 2021 conferences. Then, realizing that some of the companies included were not maintaining the internal standards that they claimed, Zayyat and the leadership at Lift pivoted, and focused more on the individual. “We decided that instead of trying to advocate for change in small companies, it would be more prudent to support entrepreneurs who need funding,” she says. “We launched a program, and supported five women of color with a $5,000 investment into their businesses, as well as a six-month course to focus on operating a business in wine, with different speakers and experts who discussed business foundation, sales and marketing, growth, and practical experience.”

Looking Forward

With all this change and progress, the 2023 conference was fittingly themed around social sustainability. And for Zayyat, who is a partner at Bufalina, in the midst of opening a new space with the group and taking on more responsibility, this was a cause for introspection. “This year felt different; we could’ve removed wine from the conversation, and the conference would have had the same impact,” she says. “It really made me think, how do we bring out the truest and best versions of ourselves, and the best advocates for our communities?” And so, Lift is pivoting again. “We’re hoping to find some new, fresh energy to take the organization and continue with some of the programs that we’ve built,” says Zayyat. “There are so many wonderful people doing so many wonderful things, and this feels like a good time to move on to the next chapter of the Lift Collective—I’m so optimistic about what the future holds for this organization and the community that we’ve built.”

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