Ilana is an experienced business leader and successful entrepreneur. A former Bain consultant, she left consulting in 2014 to pursue her passion for food and joined Schuman Cheese to build an innovation and strategy team. While at Schuman, Ilana oversaw strategic planning and decision making for the company, setting growth goals, evaluating M&A opportunities, and improving internal operations to increase profit for the $500MM company. She also developed, launched and managed a new snack product, Whisps. Under her leadership, Whisps grew into a $40MM brand in less than 3 years, at which point Ilana quarterbacked the sale of the business to Kainos Capital in 2019. As CEO of the new company, Ilana oversaw the carve-out of the business from Schuman in less than 6 months, built a completely new team, and more than doubled the size of the business, securing new distribution in grocery, club, convenience and mass channels. She also won Comparably’s “Best CEO” award, and Whisps was recognized for “Best Company Culture,” both based on anonymous employee feedback.Prior to joining Schuman, Ilana was a Case Team Leader at Bain & Company’s New York office, where she led projects for Private Equity, Financial Services, Media and Energy clients. Before business school, she did new product development for a Boston-based education start-up.Ilana received a BA magna cum laude in from Barnard College at Columbia University, and an MA and MBA from NYU, where she was a Dean’s Scholar and MacCracken Fellow. She lives in New York City with her husband and two children.