The Virchew Team

Founder & President

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 canines in 1989. Deeply inspired by her first border collie, Shanti due to 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 formulation of Virchew. The strategy has been set in place to position Virchew as a new canine nutrition and lifestyle movement. One where not only our companion dogs live and thrive on a plant-based diet but so do those who love and care for them. Laura's whole heart in a bowl of good things for all dogs. Shanti would be so proud.

Chief Operating Officer & Lead, Business Development

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.

Lead, Veterinary Partnerships & Research

Tatiana Victorino, B.Sc.

Tatiana immigrated to Canada from Sao Paulo, Brazil after falling in love with the West Coast. From an early age, Tatiana was always keen on health and wellness, pestering her elders with questions about why all her favorite foods growing up were considered unhealthy. Alongside her interest in food and an innate understanding of analysis and math, she decided to pursue a degree in Food Engineering at a leading Latin American university. With over 10 years of professional experience working in the food and beverage manufacturing industries, Tatiana has attained expertise in process design and improvement, lean manufacturing, business operations, quality assurance, and research and development. She is Virchew's liaison for their industry-first, Veterinary Partnerships and her Food Engineering experience is invaluable for product development. An avid dog lover she also loves to live a plant-based, sustainable lifestyle.

Lead, Customer Care & Happy Wags

Shannon Rose

Best Pal: Bella and Boston

Shannon is a passionate vegan with a background in sales, marketing and nutrition consulting who loves nothing more than to help others pursue healthy lifestyles. She's facilitated numerous community health improvement programs and, after a chance encounter with Laura at a local event, is now pairing her nutrition expertise with her loves of animals to keep both our two-legged and four-legged customers happy. A chance encounter with Laura Simonson at a local event led Shannon to Virchew. Her personal experience with vegan/vegetarian diets, nutrition, her love for animals, and a genuine understanding of Virchew's vision, made her a perfect first team member of the Virchew Crew!

Lead Consultant, Veterinary Partnerships & Sales

Kerry Craig

Best Pal: Too many to name!

With over 20 years of working in the food and beverage manufacturing industries and 10+ years in Veterinary healthcare, Kerry knows what dogs need and what their people want: more ethical, sustainable, and hypoallergenic food options for the fur babies we all love so much. With 13+ years experience in highly successful clinic management, Kerry teaches us how to build relationships with our veterinary partners and has played a key role in our test clinic programs. She is one of Virchew's favourite, energetic ideas person. She's always got her eye on what's possible next.

Lead, Distribution & Production

Geoff Ward

Best Pal: Rocky

Geoff and his best pal Rocky stumbled upon Virchew and the stars (and paw prints) all aligned. His work with Purolator in the past set him up as a shipping, receiving, and team leadership expert-just the guy we need managing Love Bowl deliveries across the Lower mainland and shipping across Canada. Geoff is also the head of Virchew's LOVE Bowl production and ensures that we have our shelves stocked in house to meet the ever-growing demand from doggos all over our glorious country.

ADVISORY TEAM & COMMUNITY

The Virchew shareholder community (75+ people) consists of 12 veterinarians and other extraordinary individuals who represent several diverse professions from nutrition to law to accounting to medicine to architecture to activism.

We’ve exercised our provincial securities exemptions (combined with attracting several accredited investors) with the goal to create a large community of shareholders committed to the social and financial success of Virchew.