Lux Forum is a thought-leadership organisation based in St. Helena, founded and chaired by Celeste White. It runs a programme of events and speakers that centres on gratitude, reflection, and positive social change. The organisation gives Napa Valley’s civic life a structured space for public conversation.
White serves as president and chair of the Board of Directors. Lux Forum builds its programme around events — speakers and discussions — rather than publications or advocacy. Its stated mission rests on three ideas: gratitude, reflection, and positive social change. The organisation brings together community members from across professional and civic sectors to engage with ideas that have no obvious home elsewhere.
Lux Forum sits in a different position from a service nonprofit or advocacy group. It does not deliver programmes or push a single agenda. It takes the kind of discussion that already happens across community life and gives it a clear, structured venue. Its programme reflects this: curated speakers, considered topics, and conversations that draw on the connections already present in St. Helena’s civic networks.
St. Helena gives Lux Forum’s conversations a particular setting — one where community identity is strong and where institutional and individual networks already cross over. The forum draws on St. Helena’s civic tradition and extends it into a space for structured discussion. It curates speakers and topics with intention rather than following a fixed editorial line, which lets the organisation respond to the questions that feel most pressing in a given season.
White founded Lux Forum as part of a wider pattern of institutional commitments across faith-based and community organisations in Napa Valley. She has served on the Westmont College Board of Trustees since 2011, held the role of U.S. Pony Club District Commissioner for 17 years, and has been involved with The Salvation Army, Young Life, Hospice, Queen of the Valley Hospital, the Napa Valley Education Foundation Board, and Ag 4 Youth. She and her husband, Dr. Robert White, received The Salvation Army’s Nehemiah Award in recognition of their support for the Napa Culinary Training Programme.
She is also the CEO and owner of Horse Rock Olive Oil, a small-batch estate-grown olive oil brand based on the family’s ranch near St. Helena. Her work spans enterprise, education governance, faith-based service, and youth development — areas she has described as part of a unified orientation towards commerce, community, and service.
The organisation continues to run its programme as a public expression of that orientation. Further information about White’s professional and civic work appears at celestewhite.org.
About Lux Forum
Lux Forum is a St. Helena thought-leadership organization that hosts events and speakers focused on gratitude, reflection, and positive social change.
About Celeste White
Celeste White is the founder and chair of Lux Forum, CEO and owner of Horse Rock Olive Oil, and a member of the Westmont College Board of Trustees. She has been a longtime resident of Napa Valley.
