Founder & CEO

Laura Simonson

Best Pal: Seva

Laura is Virchew's heartbeat. She leads this venture with pure passion and a dog-loving soul. The relentless entrepreneur-within guided Laura through decades of success in real estate, fitness studio ownership, business development, sales, venture capital, events, website development, branding, and communications. Laura began research into plant-based diets for dogs in 1989. Deeply inspired by her first border collie, Shanti and due to her remarkable health, Laura knew she was on to something. Thirty years later and after a decade of research and development along with a team of experienced business leaders, specialists, veterinary professionals and Board Certified Veterinary Nutritionists, Laura began meticulously creating the formation of Virchew's foods and direct distribution business model. The strategy has been set in place to position Virchew as a company that will redefine the canine nutrition industry, one dog and one veterinarian at a time.

Chief Operating Officer

Todd Maki

Todd Maki’s purpose-driven career has spanned collaborating with contemporary leaders and building dynamic cohesive teams, to systematically positioning organizations for development and sustainable success. His background includes over 20 years of corporate experience at The Walt Disney Company, The Universal Music Group, and various additional leading-edge companies, and has a track record for streamlining processes and creating scalable operations to enhance profitability. He's known for creating high-functioning teams that achieve measurable success, developing business plans that capture capital investment, building quality relationships with customers and partners, and creating sales and marketing campaigns to ignite exponential growth. Todd is thrilled to join Virchew’s visionary crew, to ‘do the right thing’ for dogs, their people, and our planet and, together to bring to the masses an idea whose time has simply come, and the innovative products to consciously fuel it.

Chief Marketeing Officer (Fractional)

Steve Simitzis

Best Pal: Artemis and Boo Bear

Steve Simitzis is a long-time vegan of over 25 years with a 20+ year career in startups as a founder, operator, and advisor, with deep experience in pet food marketing and digital healthcare for pets. Previously, he was CMO at Wild Earth, a leading US-based vegan pet food brand, and led corporate incubation of direct-to-consumer startups at Mars Petcare. Steve joined Mars after a successful acquisition of his startup Treat, a pioneer in modern tech-enabled veterinary care and telemedicine. Steve also spends his time as a Partner at Solvable Syndicate, a community for food tech and climate tech angel investors who are changing the world for the better.