Susan Reigler has served as a judge for the James Beard Foundation, belongs to the Council of Whiskey Masters, sits on the Bourbon Women Association Board of Directors, and was the Louisville Courier-Journal beverage columnist and travel writer for 15 years. An executive Bourbon steward of the Stave & Thief Society, she received the Kentucky Distillers' Association Order of the Writ. A graduate of Indiana and Oxford Universities, she is an adjunct professor at Eastern Kentucky University and the author or coauthor of nine books on Bourbon and Kentucky.