A Dream Realized
Vineyard {511} is a small, family-owned producer of estate wine. It is the dream child of Irene and Ed Ojdana, who looked forward to the day when they could produce wine in the rolling, green hills of Napa Valley. This vision became a reality in 2008, when they bought a lovely wine estate on Diamond Mountain, above Calistoga, where they made their home.
Ed retired as chief executive officer of Experian Interactive, a business unit of Experian Group, LLC, the leading global information services company. He founded Consumerinfo.com (aka FreeCreditReport.com) in 1995. The company was acquired by Experian in 2002. Under his leadership, Experian Consumer Direct became the market leader of direct-to-consumer credit reports, scores and monitoring products.
He is the recipient of several Echo Awards for FreeCreditReport.com's innovative direct response TV commercials. He was an executive producer on the feature film Rock Slyde, starring Patrick Warburton and Andy Dick, and on the award-winning documentary film Jiro Dreams of Sushi.
Ed currently sits on the Boards of Dynasty Footwear, SavvyMoney.com, Scorenomics.com, the UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology, and the University of Notre Dame IDEA Center. He is an advisor to Montage Ventures and Strandview Capital.
He received a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the University of Notre Dame, a master’s degree in engineering from The Ohio State University, and a master’s in business administration from the University of Dayton. He also holds a doctorate in marketing and business economics from the University of Southern California.
Irene grew up in Brooklyn, New York (but no undulating, green hills with wineries there), received a bachelor’s degree in English from Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, and a master’s degree in English/American Studies from the University of Iowa. She taught English at Northern Michigan University, the University of Wyoming, North Seattle Community College, and Santa Monica College, and communication skills at the University of Phoenix. Subsequently, she was the head of the Human Resources Department at CCH Computax, Inc., the leading provider of tax software for income tax professionals, headquartered in Southern California.
When Ed and Irene are not involved in winemaking, they love visiting wineries in other countries, most recently in Bordeaux, France, and in the Duoro Valley, in Portugal. They also recently visited Kenya, Tanzania and Marrakech but not for their grapes :-). They are founding patrons of the Napa Valley Film Festival and enjoy their large families, who visit Vineyard {511} regularly.