2024 ReFED Food Waste Solutions Summit

Rachelle's business experience spans various roles in several industries such as consumer product goods, patient advocacy in biomedical technologies, television, and media. 

Today, Rachelle is the CEO, Co-Founder, and Co-Inventor of Wisely Inc., a woman majority-owned company that creates Smart Food Storage Container Systems to help reduce food waste from farm to table. She is also the Principal Investigator of a current Phase I SBIR grant that is funded through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

 Wisely, Inc. is currently focused on its consumer household food waste reduction solution and is a current cohort participant in the Rev: Ithaca Startup Work Manufacturing Hardware Accelerator funded by the U.S. Department of Commerce's Economic Development Administration and offered in partnership with the College of Engineering at Cornell University. Additionally, the company is a recent participant in the 2022 NYSERDA-funded ClimateTech Prototyping Hardware Accelerator hosted at Rev, during which applications of the Wisely technology to the reduction of food waste in the farming sector were explored. The result of this effort was a working prototype for agriculture applications that have been benchtop validated with user testing anticipated in late 2023. 

 In 2021, Rachelle completed the Cornell University online certification program for Women in Entrepreneurship, and this past fall completed her NSF I-Corps certification for Entrepreneurial Team Leadership for customer discovery practices. 

 Prior to Founding Wisely, Rachelle worked as a nationally recognized television host for several networks, including the world's largest home shopping network, QVC, where she was selected as 1 of 6 new hosts out of 17,000 applicants. The time spent in this role brought her considerable experience in understanding product and consumer insights that help to drive sales for company profitability. 

 As a passion project, Rachelle volunteers time with her husband as the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the MinMinBear Foundation (www.minminbearfoundation.org), a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that delivers comfort teddy bear kits to hospitals around the country for pediatric patients and their families that are battling kidney disease.