Team
Meet the Founders
We’ve done every possible restaurant job and understand first-hand the complexities and realities that business owners and their teams face every day. We’re dedicated to creating a restaurant industry that is worthy of all the amazing people working in it. Our motivation is empowering independent food businesses with opportunities to grow and thrive.
We formed Prepshift as longtime collaborators and restaurant industry professionals with a shared vision of being more than traditional consultants.
Irene Li, CEO
Irene started a little food truck called Mei Mei Street Kitchen in 2012, opened a brick and mortar restaurant in 2013 and evolved that business into a dumpling company in South Boston in 2023. She spent over a decade developing Mei Mei’s ethical sourcing and fair and transparent employment practices and was recognized for this work as the youngest winner of the James Beard Leadership Award in 2022. She has worked on farms, taught in prisons, and is a graduate of Cornell University. Irene serves on the boards of Project Bread, the Haley House, The Food Project and Lovin’ Spoonfuls and recently released Perfectly Good Food, which she co-authored with her sister. Irene considers carbohydrates her primary love language.
Dylan Gully, CFO
After narrowly escaping a future at Goldman Sachs, Dylan decided to channel his passion for finance and cooking into supporting restaurant teams. As our resident “numbers guy,” Dylan has provided financial services and open-book management training to Boston-area restaurants for the better part of a decade. His lifelong experience with dyslexia has inspired a deep appreciation for inclusive teaching styles, and he believes that training when delivered appropriately and empathetically, can empower any learner. He is a graduate of Tufts University, where he was also captain of the Ultimate Frisbee team. He prefers his bacon at a 7 on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the crispiest.
Carla Cornejo, COO
Carla’s career has spanned several industries but operations development, customer experience, and people management have always been a common thread. Her love for small businesses and food inspired a career pivot to the hospitality industry with a stint at Eataly and as Director of Sales and Operations at Mei Mei. Carla is a proud Houstonian who graduated from Brown University and spent a decade on the Brown Club of Boston Board of Directors. She now continues her work advocating for small businesses as an executive board member of Roslindale Village Main Streets. Carla believes soup is always the answer and can be found knitting and waxing poetic on the virtues of tabouli.
