Sue Conley is the co-founder of Cowgirl Creamery along with Peggy Smith.^[1]

Both women are credited with their roles as catalysts of Northern California's artisan cheese industry.^[2] In 2006, along with Smith, she won a James Beard award for "significant and lasting achievements and contributions to the food and beverage industry for ten or more years."^[3]

Conley was born in Washington, D.C., where her grandfather managed the cafeteria Sholl's Colonial.^[4] She attended the University of Tennessee, where she met Smith.^[5]

After moving to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1976, Conley worked in restaurants before co-founding Bette's Oceanview Diner.^[6] After selling her shares in Bette's Oceanview Diner, she co-founded Tomales Bay Foods, a distributor and marketer of West Marin-produced foods, and Cowgirl Creamery, a manufacturer and distributor of artisan cheese, along with Smith.^[7] Conley has credited her travels to Europe as well as Peggy Smith's work at Chez Panisse as amplifying their interest in regional, artisan food production.^[8]

According to Conley, they founded the cheese-making company as a way of creating a product which showcased the organic milk produced by Albert Straus at Straus Family Creamery: "We saw the need to showcase great quality organic milk. The farm economy could not survive the state it was in, so we saw a need to preserve land in agriculture."^[9]

Conley is a member of the California Artisan Cheese Guild. With Smith, she wrote Cowgirl Creamery Cooks.^[10]

In 2016, Conley and Smith sold Cowgirl Creamery to Emmi, a Swiss dairy firm.^[11]

• Smith, P.; Conley, S.; Hamilton, H. (2013). Cowgirl Creamery Cooks. Chronicle Books LLC. ISBN 978-1-4521-2632-6. Retrieved September 18, 2018.