Matt Salzberg - Founder and CEO
Before founding Blue Apron, Matt was a venture capital investor at Bessemer Venture Partners where he focused on the internet, software and mobile sectors. He started his career as an analyst in the Blackstone Group’s private equity division, where he stayed until shortly after its IPO. Matt holds a B.A. in economics, summa cum laude, and an MBA, both from Harvard University.
Ilia Papas - Founder and CTO
Prior to founding Blue Apron, Ilia was a director and technical architect at Optaros in Boston, where he lead Walmart.com to launch a new platform for their Health category. He also helped architect, build, and launch RueLaLa.com, a popular private-event retail site, and has built solutions for CNN, PUMA, Turner Broadcasting, and Macy's. He holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from Tufts University.
Matthew Wadiak - Founder and Chief Product Officer
Matthew Wadiak has been pursuing his passion for food for over 20 years. He began his career by cooking for chefs Charlie Trotter and Paul Bertolli and later spent several years sourcing and importing rare ingredients, such as white truffles, for chefs and food companies around the world. In 2004, Matthew founded Cooks’ Venture, a catering and events company. As Executive Chef, he and his team hosted and cooked for culinary events for a wide array of clientele including Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Matthew’s ideals of cooking have always been based on sustainability, local ingredients, and simple yet expertly prepared cuisine. Matthew is a graduate of The Culinary institute of America in Hyde Park, NY and believes that the best food is made at home.
Kelli Kerkman - Community Manager
Before joining Blue Apron, Kelli was the community and office manager at Greatist. She has been interested in food and cooking since childhood and has been collecting cookbooks and trying new ingredients ever since. Kelli holds a B.S. In Dietetics and Nutritional Science from the University of Wisconsin — Madison. In her spare time, she enjoys homebrewing and sampling beers from around the world.
Jessica Fox - Recipe Editor
Jessica majored in Journalism and Spanish at New York University so that she could one day become a food writer. After working in publicity at book publishing house, Simon & Schuster after college, she kickstarted her food career by enrolling in the professional program at the Institute of Culinary Education in New York. Then, an editorial externship at Food & Wine magazine led her to a full-time position in the test kitchen at Good Housekeeping magazine. At GH, she spent over 3 years writing, editing, developing, and testing recipes. She loves writing about food almost as much as she loves eating it and hopes to inspire Blue Apron chefs to explore new cuisines and ingredients with each new box that shows up at their doors.
Shaan Batra - Software Engineer
Before joining Blue Apron, Shaan was a software engineer at LocalBonus. Prior to that, he founded www.socialroots.com. Shaan discovered his passion for coding and startups after a brief stint in the world of finance, working as an investment banker at UBS. He graduated from NYU Stern in 2008 with a degree in Finance and Statistics. In his spare time, he loves to cook and read science fiction.
Cara Eisenpress - Content Manager
Cara has been writing about food on the web since 2008, when she founded the award-winning home-cooking site for young professionals, Big Girls, Small Kitchen. She's also the author of In the Small Kitchen: 100 Recipes from Our Year of Cooking in the Real World, a cookbook-meets-memoir for recent college grads, with a foreword by Ina Garten. A native New Yorker, Cara graduated from Harvard and has a master of arts in journalism from the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.
