Kia is a technologist turned vintner – Kia and his wife Tracy have owned and operated KIATRA vineyard since 2011. From the beginning the idea was to combine organic and biodynamic methods with the use of precision farming technologies to continuously improve quality of the fruit while reducing the impact on the environment and reduce the use of critical natural resources.
In 2022, Kia and Tracy launched their new wine brand NEOTEMPO wines which is produced from the best of the KIATRA vineyards estate grown cabernet sauvignon. Neotempo has a commitment to bringing to market many innovations from ‘dirt to glass’ for lowering carbon emissions and building a playbook on climate resilience. With their 2021 inaugural vintage, they introduced a patent-pending design for an industry first “hex bottle” designed to reduce wine carbon footprint by 30-40%. The revolutionary design of the bottle allows for high density packing for during transport and storage. The hexagonal design provides structural strength, bottle is made from 100% recycled glass and weighs only 540g. The design was the finalist and leader in the wine category in the prestigious Formes de luxe wine and spirits packaging award.
KIATRA vineyard is now under the stewardship of Phil Coturri and his highly skilled team at Enterprise Vineyards to combine their organic and regenerative growing experience with Kia on precision farming practices such as smart irrigation and AI based computer vision for crop evaluation and deployment of all electric Monarch tractors for an emission free farming. In 2023 Kiatra vineyards became the first vineyard in napa valley to be farmed entirely on electric tractors.
In 2023 Kia co-founded Scout, the first AI enabled farm mgmt. data platform for vineyards called Scout to help growers maximize quality, yields and financial outcomes leveraging the power of artificial intelligence and computer vision. Scout is being used by some of best brands in napa and Sonoma to harvest actionable insights from the vineyards.
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Prior to his time in Napa, Kia held senior executive roles at public and private large scale high growth enterprise technology companies – Splunk, BMC Software, IBM/Tivoli, and Marimba. Mr. Behnia is a frequent industry speaker at industry events and active in participating and leading industry wide initiatives for the adoption of new technologies. Mr. Behnia has 28+ years of industry experience in IT Operations, cloud platforms, enterprise mobility and digital transformation. Mr. Behnia holds a B.A. degree in Computer Science from University of California at Davis.
From 2018 – 2021, as the VP of IT Markets at Splunk, Mr. is responsible for strategy and product direction for Splunk’s market leading portfolio in the IT markets. Mr. Behnia led the Splunk’s strategy around observability which led to the organic and inorganic investments in that area.
From 2015 – 2018, as the CEO of PowWow Mobile, he brought to market a disruptive enterprise mobility solution that enables organizations to modernize and mobilize their business applications and workflows faster, simpler and more cost-effectively than any other solution.
From 2004 – 2014, as Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Mr. Behnia was responsible for leading BMC’s technology and solution strategy for all products including emerging areas such as social enterprise and mobility management and cloud computing management. Previously, as BMC’s Chief Corporate Architect, Mr. Behnia was responsible for leading the design of BMC’s industry-leading Business Service Management architecture and the critical enabling Atrium technologies. Mr. Behnia was previously Chief Technology Officer for the Change and Configuration products at BMC Software; Mr. Behnia is responsible for the direction of product development and product strategy for the Change and Configuration products at BMC including the BMC Atrium CMDB.
In 2011 Mr. Behnia served as one of the commissioners for Tech-America’s cloud2 commission on the Leadership Opportunity in U.S. Deployment of the Cloud (CLOUD2). The commission’s three-month mandate is to provide the Obama Administration with recommendations for how government should deploy cloud technologies and for public policies that will help drive U.S. innovation in the cloud. He is also a contributing member of WEF (World Economic Forum) technical advisory.
From 1997 – 2004, Mr. Behnia was previously Chief Technology Officer for Marimba Inc. In that role, he led Marimba’s product strategy and technology partnerships. During his tenure at Marimba, Mr. Behnia was instrumental in the design and delivery of Marimba’s innovative configuration automation solutions across servers, client systems and mobile devices.
From 1995 – 1997 Mr. Behnia served as a senior member of the technical team for Tivoli Systems Inc., which was acquired by IBM.
Scout
