2019 Midwest Foodservice Expo

Einav Gefen
Executive Corporate Chef
Unilever Food Solutions, North America


Einav Gefen’s career began 20 years ago when she worked as a pastry chef at Orna & Ella (Tel-Aviv, Israel). Gefen also worked as a sous-chef at Mul-Yam in Tel Aviv, proclaimed the No. 1 Restaurant by the French Restaurant Guide, Gault-Millau, and one of the world's 114th best restaurants by “Les Grandes Tables du Monde”. A graduate of the Institute of Culinary Education, Gefen interned at New York's restaurant, Daniel, and was the executive chef at Danal in Manhattan’s East Village where she was featured in “Time Out Restaurant Guide 2001”. In 2001, she founded and became the Director of the Culinary Arts program at the Jewish Community Center, Manhattan. During that time, Gefen appeared in five TV cooking segments on National TV and numerous newspaper articles. She also started working on her recipe book “Art & Cook” (www.artandcook.com/cookbook.htm) published in 2003 with great reviews. From 2003-2008 Gefen was a professional Chef instructor at ICE (Institute of Culinary Education) in Manhattan where she trained aspiring chefs in all aspects of cooking and presentation. At 2008 Gefen joined Unilever as the Corporate Head Chef for NA, where she leads a team of Chefs in charge of development of innovations, product rejuvenation, activation with consumers and deployment of global projects. Einav became the Corporate Executive Chef of Unilever Food Solution in August 2016, leading the North America Chefs team under Customer development and part of the UFS NA leadership team as the culinary thought leader. Einav is the face of the Knorr brand in North America, starring in three TV commercials. She also has a TED talk (https://www.ted.com/watch/ted-institute/ted-unilever/einav-gefen-owning-the-kitchen-again) and competed on the acclaimed Food network competition show “Chopped”.

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