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Twelve years ago, when Matt Wolf was an investment banker at Morgan Stanley, he likely would have been alarmed to learn that his future finance career would be largely impacted by drinking and driving.

Such was his destiny, though, as after a 5-year stint with the investment bank in London and New York he began to fill in his itinerary with positions in both the automotive and alcohol industries\u2014most recently, as the CFO at DRINKS, a company at the forefront of e-commerce solutions in the beverage alcohol space.

According to Wolf, his career began on a foundation of data analytics at Economists Incorporated in Washington, D.C., where he navigated the complexities of antitrust matters. This early experience instilled in him a nuanced understanding of the financial world and fueled a trajectory that would seamlessly blend traditional finance with industry regulation.

In the alcohol industry, this regulatory backdrop traces back to Prohibition, which resulted in varied state-by-state regulations. What\u2019s more, Wolf points out, both the automotive and alcohol sectors feature tiered markets with distinct roles for retailers, distributors, and manufacturers, alongside legal frameworks deeply rooted in historical context.

According to Wolf, these similarities have contributed to a slower adoption of digital retail solutions in both fields, as compared to others.

When asked about his \u201cdrinking and driving,\u201d Wolf smiles: \u201cThe humor is not lost on me, but I think that in fact there are a lot of parallels between the two sectors that enable me to leverage experience from one to the other.\u201d \u2013Jack Sweeney