Sandy Brown of Brown's Super Stores explains how opening ShopRites in Philadelphia food deserts led her family to hire returning citizens and build Uplift Solutions, a reentry nonprofit. Over a Saddlehill Proprietor's blend, a Napa red and a 1982 Château Margaux, she and host Bill Green talk business, marriage and second chances.

Sandy Brown is Executive Vice President and Chairwoman of Brown's Super Stores, which operates ShopRite, The Fresh Grocer and Di Bruno Bros. markets, and Co-Founder and Chairwoman of Uplift Solutions. Before her 30 years at Brown's, she spent more than a decade running regional and national operations for Unilever and Revlon; at Unilever she was one of three women managers in the entire country. She sits on the board of Wakefern Food Corporation, where she chairs the Customer Experience Committee, and on the board of the American Cancer Society.

She explains why most returning citizens Brown's hires use the job as a stepping stone, and why Uplift now offers expungement through Philadelphia Lawyers for Social Equity: even with a job, a record can keep someone from buying a house. She also describes taking over the business when Jeff Brown ran for mayor of Philadelphia, reopening the looted Parkside ShopRite in West Philadelphia within a week, and why Brown's stepped in to save Di Bruno Bros., a Philadelphia name since 1939.

Resources:
- Uplift Solutions
- Philadelphia Lawyers for Social Equity (expungement help)
- Di Bruno Bros.
- Saddlehill Winery

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At 22, Stephanie Link took a seat on a Dean Witter trading desk with 500 people. She was one of three women, she sat directly across from the head trader, and she didn't say a word for three months. Thirty-five years later, she is Chief Investment Officer at Hightower Advisors, a regular voice on CNBC, and one of the most respected investors on Wall Street. On this episode of Uncorked, Bill Green sits down with Stephanie at his New Jersey vineyard to talk about how she got there.

Stephanie shares the habits that built her career. She arrived before the head trader every morning, became the top institutional salesperson at Prudential nine years out of ten, and then ran its research department. She also tells the story of calling Jim Cramer the night before her first day to turn down the job so she could stay home with her newborn daughter. His answer was to offer her three days a week at home, years before anyone worked remotely. That led to seven years together and some competitive 3 a.m. treadmill races. For anyone starting out, her advice is simple: find a mentor, show up in person, and surprise people by doing more than they asked.

Bill and Stephanie also talk markets. She explains why the economy has been stronger than she expected and why the AI boom is lifting much more than tech, including data centers, cooling systems, the power grid, and energy. She also covers why she won't bet against the American consumer and why she thinks we're only in the third inning of AI. In the lightning round, she reveals her first stock pick (it dropped 20% in a week), her favorite investing book, and the Andy Grove line that keeps her on her toes. And they do it all over a glass of Saddlehill's barrel-aged Chardonnay and Proprietor's Blend.

At 22 he was the youngest state commissioner in Georgia history, working under Governor Jimmy Carter. At 31 he was helping run Arizona's prison system, overseeing 17 institutions and nearly 20,000 inmates. Since then, Thomas Quinn Spitzer Jr. has led the consulting firm Kepner-Tregoe, advised the board of BMW since 2008, and counseled executives in close to 20 countries. He's also one of Bill Green's closest friends and one of the very few people Bill will open any bottle in his cellar for. On this episode of Uncorked, Bill does exactly that.

The conversation starts at Quinn's first wine auction in 1981, run by Christie's legend Michael Broadbent, where he bought a case of 1961 Latour for $100 a bottle and drank every drop. He tells the story of a mail-in bid that nearly bankrupted him, the Munich restaurant that had to destroy an empty bottle of Romanée-Conti by contract, and the blind tasting where a Finger Lakes Cabernet beat a celebrated Bordeaux and cost him a friendship. Along the way, Bill and Q taste Saddlehill's The Scribe and Proprietor's Blend, then open a 2011 Harlan Estate and a 1982 Lafite Rothschild, revisiting the Napa trip 26 years ago that first brought them to Harlan's barrel room.

Between pours, Quinn gets candid about what separates great leaders from the rest. He explains why German automakers ignored years of warnings about China, why the best executives are the ones willing to admit what they don't know, how rubber-stamp boards fail the companies they serve, and why most businesses never do the "autopsies" that would keep them from repeating mistakes. He also shares what running a prison taught him about the gap between consulting and actually running something, including a fight with a city manager over the prison's sewage. The episode closes with his work in youth golf and Snider Hockey, and a lightning round answer that says a lot about the man.