About
Claire Warner
With over two decades of experience building award-winning drinks brands across luxury, wellness, and advocacy, Claire Warner brings a rare combination of strategic rigour, cultural instinct, and deep trade credibility.
From leading liquid innovation at LVMH’s Belvedere Vodka, to co-founding Æcorn, the sister brand to Seedlip—helping to establish a globally recognised platform for positive drinking—to overseeing the evolution of Diageo’s World Class and Diageo Bar Academy into experience-led, culture-shaping programmes, Warner’s work consistently bridges purpose, profitability, and emotional resonance.
Across every chapter of her career, Warner has turned big ideas into enduring movements—from launching the world’s first range of non-alcoholic aperitifs, to redefining advocacy as experience-first—helping global brands navigate the future of drinking, socialising, and human connection.
Background
Bridging Two Worlds
Behavioural Science
Trained in the psychology and neuroscience of human behaviour. Understanding what drives connection, why we gather, and how environments shape our social experiences at a biological level.
Hospitality
Years of hands-on experience in bars, restaurants, and hospitality venues. Understanding the craft from behind the bar and in the boardroom. The practical realities of creating atmosphere night after night.
Philosophy
What I Believe
"Connection is not a luxury. It is a vital resource."
We are living through an epidemic of loneliness, yet we have never had more places to go. The problem isn't access—it's design. We have optimised for throughput, for Instagram moments, for the appearance of experience.
In doing so, we have designed away the very conditions that make genuine connection possible. My work is about reversing that trend. About applying rigour to the art of bringing people together.
Émile Durkheim called it "Collective Effervescence"—the electric current that runs through a room when individual selves merge into shared experience. It is measurable. It is designable. And it is my mission.
Credibility
Speaking & Consulting
Industry Keynotes
Regular speaker at hospitality conferences and brand events worldwide.
Consulting
Working with leading venues and brands to transform their approach to connection.
Research
Ipsos Laureate. Ongoing research into the measurement of social connection.
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Insights on Connection
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