Yerba Madre, the dominant ready-to-drink yerba mate brand in North America, has appointed Steve Lesnard as Chief Executive Officer, effective July 20, 2026. Lesnard, who joined the company's Board of Directors in March 2024, succeeds Ben Mand in the role. The appointment marks a strategic pivot toward expansion and brand acceleration at the California-based beverage maker, which rebranded from Guayakí to Yerba Madre in May 2025 and currently generates roughly $200 million in annual sales across more than 45,000 retail locations in the U.S. and Canada.
Lesnard transitions from his role as President of Godiva Chocolatier, where he has served since May 2024 under parent company Pladis. His appointment represents a shift in leadership philosophy at Yerba Madre, moving from Mand's operationally focused tenure toward brand-building and category expansion. Board Chair Emily White emphasized that Lesnard understands the business having served on the board and possesses a track record of scaling brands while preserving authenticity. Mand, who led the company since March 2024 through a transformative period including the rebrand and supply chain restructuring, will remain as an adviser to the Board to ensure continuity. The announcement included the addition of Scott Miller, co-founder and CEO of YESLY Water, to the Board, bringing beverage distribution expertise from companies including Essentia and Keurig Dr Pepper.
Lesnard brings more than two decades of brand and business-building experience across some of the world's most iconic companies. At Nike, where he spent 21 years across multiple leadership roles, he was instrumental in building the Women's and Running divisions and led Olympic campaigns, helping develop defining innovations including Nike+, the LunarGlide, Nike React, and the Vaporfly. He subsequently served as Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Product Creation at The North Face, repositioning the outdoor brand and spearheading its expansion into China. Most recently, Lesnard served as Global Chief Brand Officer and President of Private Label at Sephora, where he helped the beauty retailer return to double-digit growth globally following the pandemic. He earned an MBA in Business and Entrepreneurship from Babson College.
Yerba Madre, formerly Guayakí, pioneered the commercial yerba mate category in North America when founded in 1996 by Alex Pryor and David Karr. The company operates as a regenerative-focused beverage maker, sourcing organic, shade-grown yerba mate in direct partnership with 257 Indigenous and family farmers across Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. In 2025, Yerba Madre achieved Regenerative Organic Certified Gold status, the first yerba mate brand globally to do so. The company is headquartered in Oakland and Los Angeles, California, and operates as a Certified B Corporation, embedding sustainability commitments across ten key pillars including climate action, living wages, and circularity. Mand's 2024 to 2026 tenure focused on operational restructuring, supply chain optimization, and navigating a high-stakes rebrand designed to reflect all 250+ farming partners rather than the single Aché community from which the original Guayakí name derived.
Lesnard's appointment signals an intent to accelerate Yerba Madre's expansion beyond its West Coast heritage and address an asymmetry in the American beverage market: despite nearly $200 million in sales, fewer than 4 percent of Americans recognize yerba mate as a beverage category. His experience at Nike building women's and Olympics divisions and at Sephora orchestrating post-pandemic recovery suggests a focus on category education and consumer awareness building. The transition from Mand, whose mandate emphasized supply chain and operational efficiency, to Lesnard, a brand strategist with Olympic campaign and global expansion credentials, implies that Yerba Madre's board views the operational foundation as sufficiently stabilized to pursue aggressive growth. Whether Lesnard can replicate his track record of scaling mission-driven brands while maintaining the authenticity that has become central to Yerba Madre's identity following the 2025 rebrand will likely determine whether the appointment energizes or strains the company's regenerative positioning in a category dominated by larger beverage incumbents.
