Prior to starting Willa's, Christina spent over 16 years in marketing strategy, most recently as Strategy Director at Anomaly, leading the Panera account. At this time, Panera was removing all artificial and preservatives from its menu, and Christina was shocked to see that the plant based milks in her fridge had ingredients that fast food restaurants were removing from their menu items. 

While Christina worked at Anomaly, Anomaly won Ad Age's Agency of the Year and Panera garnered a Marketer of the Year Award for its Clean Food Campaign. 

While preparing to launch Willa's in 2020, Christina was diagnosed with early stage breast cancer at the age of 36 with no family history or risk factors. Thankfully, she was able to continue to work full time and fundraise through chemo therapy, immunotherapies, radiation and lumpectomy surgery.

Christina was fortunate in that she had the best possible response to cancer treatment and is now cancer free and it is very unlikely to return. She ate a clean, primarily plant based diet throughout treatment (including Willa's of course) and exercised daily because it made her feel the best and helped her combat the effects of chemo. She's filled with gratitude that she had such a positive response to treatment and aims to support other cancer warriors and be an advocate for young women getting mammograms. 

Prior to starting Willa's, Russell was a Master Trainer in Sales and Leadership at Dale Carnegie and was one of ten trainers to help support Indeed.com in its growth from 500 employees to over 10,000 globally.

Russell became especially interested in sustainable food when he spent extensive time traveling throughout Asia and became aware of deforestation and animal poaching practices. 

Elena spent 11 years in operations management as a chemical engineer in food and beverages. She's spent her career identifying new ways of making food and beverages healthier and most sustainably in the most efficient way possible. She has a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and an Executive MBA from the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Business.