Aubrey Stearn
Aubrey is currently CTO of the Nationwide Digital Accelerator Platform, she deeply believes that the DevOps movement redefines what we need to nurture and grow in our current and future engineers, actives seeks to build super awesome teams of excellent people.
Emmanuel Rey
French-born and one of nine siblings, Emmanuel Rey obtained a degree in engineering in agronomics, and in 2017 founded YUNI Beauty, and at the end of 2018, in a competitive group with Ouai hair care and Youth the people, YUNI received the Rising Brand of the Year Award from the Los Angeles Business Journal.
Bee Shapiro
Bee Shapiro is a New York Times beauty contributor, a position she has held since 2009, the author of the newly published collection Skin Deep, and the founder of Ellis Brooklyn, a luxurious, sustainable, chemical-free line of skincare and perfume.
Rich Gersten
Rich has spent the last 30 years investing and building great consumer brands at top private equity firms including Tengram Capital Partners, L Catterton, and North Castle Partners. Rich spent the last 9 years dedicated specifically to investing in the beauty industry, where he developed an extensive network of relationships that sourced many emerging growth brands with very limited access to institutional capital. Realizing the significant opportunity to address this underserved area of the market in beauty, Rich founded True Beauty Ventures.
Rich received a BS in Economics from Union College (N.Y.) and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Jodi Katz
Jodi’s career has spanned the quickly evolving communications marketplace. She started her career agency-side at BBDO, followed by jobs with magazine publishers, digital start ups and beauty brands. Prior to launching Base Beauty, Jodi was the Creative Director of the global prestige French brand L’Occitane en Provence. She graduated from
Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania with a degree in Government in Law and lives with her family in New Jersey. Her hobbies include fitness, Rent the Runway and watching reality TV on Bravo (her current favorite show is Below Deck).
Shelby Wild
Founder Shelby Wild is aiming to revolutionize the beauty industry with her naturally-derived haircare company Playa. Shelby founded Playa in 2017, hoping to simplify her own haircare routine with easy-to-use, toxin-free products. With millennial-chic packaging and transparent ingredients, Playa was quickly in demand from retail and beauty giants Sephora, Net-A-Porter, and Revolve.
Sarah Foley
Sarah is a senior finance professional with 20 years of private equity and financial advisory experience. Most recently, Ms. Foley served as CFO of a New York City-based food company for over two years. Ms. Foley has served as a member of multiple private company boards of directors. She is also an active angel investor and member of New York Angels.
John Bailey
Carla Ruiz
Alex Fogelson
Alex completed his B.S.M at Tulane University in 2011, going on to complete an MFin. Alex went on to work in varied positions at Coach, The Estee Lauder Companies, Li & Fung Beauty, CHAPFIX+, and the Fung Group, and in 2015 he co—founded Taste Beauty along with two others, with over 30 years of experience in the beauty industry.
Taste was founded with a hungry spirit and a passion to drive innovation through the most unique products, highest quality, unprecedented customer service and rapid speed to market.