Dana has a borderline obsession with food that inspired her to become Founder & CEO of Pilot R&D, a Berkeley-based product development company. For the past 10 years, under Dana’s leadership, Pilot R&D has developed food and beverage products for companies like Once Upon a Farm, Recess, and Ghetto Gastro, as well as legacy CPG companies. C-suite leader who manages Business Development, Ops, Legal, Accounting and HR. Expertise in innovation, product development, brand building, and client collaboration. Dana’s diverse background in business, law, food and retail has helps her drive Pilot R&D forward. Now in business 10 years, Pilot R&D collaborates with restaurants and food companies around the world, from small startups to global corporations, either as advisor or external research and development team.Pilot R&D provides the creative force behind prototyping and scaling new food and beverage ideas through formulation to production. Prior to Pilot R&D, Dana was in BigLaw at Morrison & Foerster and focused on M&A, VC, joint ventures and general corporate governance. She worked with a variety of food, wine, and technology companies advising on legal and strategy matters from the startup phase through financing rounds and later stage mergers and acquisitions. Prior to BigLaw, Dana worked at Williams-Sonoma Inc. as a buyer focused on launching and building the Williams-Sonoma Home brand. Dana's obsession with food began with her first cooking class at Tavern on the Green in New York at age 5. She spent her summers in high school in the pastry kitchen of One Michelin Star Gramercy Tavern under Claudia Fleming. Since then Dana has staged for Larry Hayden at Union Square Café, Elizabeth Falkner at Citizen Cake and Orson, and Alex Stupak at One Michelin Star WD-50. BA, Yale UniversityJD, University of Michigan Law School