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T R I U M P H E
SUMMER 2005
At home . . . abroad From his adopted home in Logroño, Spain, Tom Perry, ’69, has built worldwide business connections. By Sarah Briggs
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district, who themselves may not agree on the issues. “It’s very hard, in general, to get Spaniards to agree about anything,” Perry says with a smile. That’s when he steps in to help the wineries find common ground and identify strategies that are beneficial to the group as a whole. Americans learn from an early age to work together in groups, he says. “Spaniards are a lot more individualistic. To get them to work as a team . . . is sometimes more of a challenge than it would be in the United States. There’s just not this tradition of team-playing.” Being an American, and seen as an outsider who doesn’t have a vested interest in one group or viewpoint, also confers an advantage that a Spaniard wouldn’t have, he says. “The people I work with tend to be willing to listen to me because of my international experience.” Perry says that having a broad liberal arts education has also been an asset. “The good thing about Albion is that you have to take college-level courses in a lot of different subjects. I was particularly pleased with the way I was taught to write and speak effectively. That has certainly helped me in my career.” Not surprisingly, Tom and his wife, Marian, a native of Zaragoza, Spain, were determined from the beginning that their children, John and Martha, would be bilingual and would possess a decidedly global outlook on life. During the children’s preschool years, Tom typically spoke English at home, while Marian spoke Spanish to ensure that the children became proficient in both languages. That proficiency has proven advantageous, as John has since gone on to a career in international journalism in
basically sold everything I had— my ice skates, my oboe, my car— and bought a one-way ticket to Europe,” says Tom Perry,
recalling the leap of faith he made after finishing graduate school in the summer of 1971. Determined to pursue a career in international business, he never looked back. Today, Perry’s business travel regularly takes him from his home office in Logroño, Spain, across Europe and around the world, and, on any given day, you might find him conversing on the telephone not only in Spanish but in French, German or Swedish. After a short stint on the staff of the U.S. Cultural Center in Madrid following his arrival in Spain, Perry entered the wine-producing industry, and for the past 11 years has served as managing director of the Rioja Wine Exporters Association, which represents Spain’s best-known wine district. Some 500 wineries operate in the district, with about 100 of those exporting their distinctive red wines outside of Spain. Perry is the association’s chief spokesperson and advocate, working to gain increased recognition for Rioja wines among journalists and connoisseurs and to open up new markets throughout the world. While Europe accounts for most of their sales volume, Perry is also intent on expanding the reach of Rioja wines into the U.S. and elsewhere. When he started out in the wine business 30 years ago, he notes, very little Spanish wine was marketed outside of Europe, and competition came chiefly from French and Italian vintners. Today, the Spaniards are just as likely to compete with winemakers from South Africa, Chile, Australia and the U.S. “It’s a challenging job,” he notes. “No two days are ever the same. It’s really a lot of fun dealing with a wine district that is well known and seeing how your efforts are making the district more visible to the trade and to consumers.” Dealing with the regional, national and European Union lawmakers who develop legislation regulating the wine industry is one of the more demanding parts of his job. And Perry often must serve as mediator between the legislators and the wine producers within the
Madrid, and Martha frequently travels abroad for her job with the International Union of Health Promotion and Education in Paris. Tom, John and Martha have dual citizenship. Over the past 30 years, political tensions have In the past year, Tom Perry’s role as left their mark managing director of the Rioja Wine on Spain, and Exporters Association, representing on occasion Spain’s best-known wine district, has those tensions taken him throughout Europe as well have led to as to the U.S., Singapore and violent acts Australia. the Perrys have experienced firsthand. While Tom was working there in the 1970s, the U.S. Cultural Center was bombed by GRAPO, an anti-American extremist group. In 1997 Basque separatists firebombed the Perrys’ car as it sat parked on a street in San Sebastian, and in 2002 they bombed an apartment/ office building across the street from Tom’s office in Logroño. The 2004 train bombings by Islamic terrorists in Madrid left the Perrys shaken as well. “We’ve had to learn to deal with terrorism,” Tom admits. At the same time, he says, D. ACEVEDO PHOTO Spaniards believe the government security forces have effectively diminished the violence over the past year. The prevalent attitude, he says, is that “we have to get on with our lives.” From their home in Logroño, located near the southwestern Pyrenees, Tom and his family escape for weekends spent on the beach in San Sebastian or hiking in the mountains. “It’s a beautiful country,” Tom says of his adopted home. “I’ve lived there for 34 years and have no intentions of leaving.” The Rioja wine district in northern Spain now attracts some 626,000 visitors annually, more than twice the number who visited 20 years ago.