#167: Hands Down the Best with Jenna Sereni

This week, Jon sits down with Jenna Sereni, a pioneer in influencer marketing as the VP of Marketing and Creative Services at WHOSAY, the first ever influencer marketing agency. Today, Jenna is the visionary co-founder and CEO of HandsDown, the social commerce platform that allows users to share what they “hands down” can’t live without and discover what they’ve been missing, from the people they trust most — their inner circle.

After WHOSAY was acquired in 2018, Jenna continued to work for her new parent company ViacomCBS as the VP of Branded Programming and Influence at CBS Interactive, When the pandemic hit, Jenna, her husband and young son left their stomping grounds in New York City to move up to the Green Mountains, knowing Burlington from her college years visiting her brother at UVM.

Now Jenna is taking her 15 years’ experience in marketing and social campaigns to bring some old-school Vermont trust and humanity to the digital marketing world. HandsDown promotes peer-to-peer discovery, and the platform boasts a “no sponsored content” model that is sure to lend much needed transparency to the commerce space.

Visit itshandsdown.com to learn more.

#166: Mighty AquaViTea with Jeff Weaber

This week, Jon sits down with Jeff Weaber, founder and CEO of the famed Kombucha brewery Aqua ViTea, based in Middlebury Vermont.

Jeff started as a brewer at Lucky Labrador in Portland Oregon, before discovering the health benefits of Kombucha. He moved to Salisbury VT in 2005 with the goal of helping people sustain a healthy lifestyle.

AquaViTea began in a farmhouse in 2007 and is one of the first kombucha brewers in the nation, and the largest on the east coast. The AquaViTea team was the first to introduce of the kombucha-on-tap model to encourage sustainable practices.

Listen to hear the story of an entrepreneur who moved to Vermont and built one of the most well-known sustainable farm-based businesses on the east coast.

Visit www.aquavitea.com to learn more.