A McKinsey consultant turned into a cheesemaker, Ilay is out to make labneh a thing as the co-founder and CEO of BEZI. She began her career as a financial services consultant at McKinsey and was sponsored by the firm to pursue her MBA at Columbia Business School in New York. During her time at Columbia, Ilay fell in love with the city, built her community through dinner parties at her home, known as Cafe Ilay, and completed her "business school summer internship" at a Mediterranean farm, milking cows and sheep, and learning to make cheese from scratch.
Despite her passion, Ilay unfortunately lacked the courage to launch her own cheese company at the time and returned to McKinsey’s New York office to become an Engagement Manager.
After her promotion, Ilay left McKinsey to help launch Getir’s (the parent company of FreshDirect) US operations, where she spent 2.5 years overseeing merchandising, commercial, and marketing departments. It was during this period that she met her co-founder, Hasan, the heir to one of Turkey’s largest cheesemaking families.
After working together for a year and hitting it off, Ilay and Hasan decided to make labneh a thing by creating BEZI and launching it first in their beloved New York after 1 year of working behind the scenes.
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