Lynda Resnick

Lynda Rae Resnick (born 1943 ) is an American billionaire businesswoman.

Resnick is married to Stewart Resnick, who is her business partner, and through their holding company The Wonderful Company, they own the POM Wonderful and Fiji Water brands, Wonderful Pistachios and Almonds, Wonderful Halos, Wonderful Seedless Lemons, JUSTIN Wines, Landmark Wines, JNSQ Wines and the Teleflora floral wire service company.

Resnick was born Lynda Rae Harris to a Jewish family in Baltimore, Maryland, and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Her father, Jack H. Harris, worked as a film distributor during the 1950s; he is known for producing The Blob, which later became a cult favorite.

Her mother, Muriel (née Goodman), was an interior designer.

Because of her father's occupation, Resnick, at the age of four, had a recurring role on The Horn & Hardart Children's Hour broadcast from WCAU-TV in Philadelphia.

Resnick graduated from Harriton High School, and the family moved to southern California.

After a brief stint at a local college, Resnick took a job at the in-house ad agency for Sunset House catalog.

Resnick founded an advertising agency, Lynda Limited, at the age of 19.

Resnick, then Lynda Sinay, began doing occasional work for the antiwar movement during the Vietnam War era.

By the fall of 1969, Resnick (then Lynda Sinay) was divorced and dating Anthony J. Russo, an engineer at RAND Corporation, a think tank in Santa Monica, Calif. He prevailed on her to allow him and a colleague, Daniel Ellsberg, to duplicate a large document using the Xerox 812 machine in her ad agency.

Starting the night of Oct. 1, Russo, Ellsberg and various helpers copied 7,000 pages of the government-ordered secret history of America's involvement in Vietnam: the Pentagon Papers.

Ellsberg asked to use her copy machine on nights and weekends to distribute top-secret military documents.

Ellsberg gave these documents to The New York Times, which then published them.

Dubbed the Pentagon Papers, they detailed aspects of the war hidden from the public and damaged the credibility of the presidents involved.

Resnick was designated an un-indicted co-conspirator for her role and pursued by prosecutors for two years.

Legal actions were eventually dropped.

Lynda Resnick has been involved in many companies.

The Wonderful Company, formerly Roll Global, is a holding company which the Resnicks use to facilitate their various business ventures.

Notable brands controlled by the Resnicks include POM Wonderful, Fiji Water, Wonderful Halos and Wonderful Pistachios.

They also operate large industrial citrus and nut farms in California.

The Resnicks met while he was president of American Protection Industries, Los Angeles, California, and she was pitching her ad agency to get his business.

The Resnicks purchased Teleflora in 1979, at which time Lynda left her advertising job to become the company's executive vice president of marketing and eventually president.

As Vice-Chair and co-owner of Teleflora's holding company, Resnick has been involved with securing flagship TV sponsorship roles.

She won a Gold Effie Award for her idea to pair fresh flowers with a collectible keepsake container, while her Mother's Day special on NBC resulted in another Effie win.

The Resnicks purchased the Franklin Mint in 1984; Lynda began directing the company's international marketing efforts, a position she held until 2000.

She influenced a new business plan of providing products that delivered "emotional satisfaction", such as the high-end collectible doll business.

According to the Encyclopedia of American Women in Business, the first run of a Scarlett O'Hara (Gone with the Wind)-inspired doll generated $35 million in sales.

Also during her tenure, licensing was arranged for products related to the Louvre art museum in Paris, the Vatican, board games like Monopoly and Scrabble classic cars and famous people like John Wayne, Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe.

In 1996, intrigued by folklore, she began to sponsor medical research regarding the pomegranate's health effects.

In 1997 Tiger Woods successfully stopped the Franklin Mint from selling a commemorative medal of his win in the 1997 Masters Tournament.

By 2000 there was research published with findings regarding effects of regular pomegranate consumption.

Resnick designed the POM Wonderful logo, and her design team developed an hourglass-shape bottle, the company later expanding into other liquid products and pills.

The Resnicks acquired the Fiji Water business in 2004, after which Lynda supervised marketing that focused on promoting the uniqueness and exotic nature of the water.

The Resnicks sold the Franklin Mint in 2006.

According to her memoir, she acquired a pistachio orchard that also contained some Wonderful variety pomegranate trees in California's San Joaquin Valley.

According to Resnick's book, sales of Fiji Water soon increased by 300% by 2008, becoming the largest imported bottled water brand in the United States.

In response to bad publicity regarding the Fiji brand and bottled water in general Resnick introduced a promotional campaign touting an environmental policy and plans for a reduced carbon footprint through a series of press releases.

January 2009 saw her company's first Super Bowl advertisement, which was voted one of the best Super Bowl ads by several newspapers, blogs, and online fan sites.

In 2013 the Resnicks launched Wonderful Halos mandarins, with a $220 million facility in the San Joaquin Valley capable of processing 19 million mandarins a day.