About The Lils

Shahab turns the science of feline nutrition into recipes a home cook can follow. He built The Lils formulation method, which treats every recipe as an optimization problem and checks it against the industry’s nutrition standards at every batch size, and he cooks each recipe on camera so you can see every step. He came to this with a PhD in industrial and systems engineering from Auburn University and about a decade of optimization work at Georgia Tech and Binghamton University, where he was a professor of business analytics and operations.

Sadie creates the videos, runs our social channels, and answers when you write to us. She wants you to understand what goes into your cat’s bowl and feel comfortable asking questions along the way.

Before co-founding The Lils, Sadie built a career in healthcare analytics and teaching. She earned her PhD in operations management and business analytics from the University of Alabama, researching medical decision-making for patients with chronic disease. Most recently, she was a professor of business analytics and operations at Binghamton University, where she was recognized by Poets & Quants as one of the top 50 undergraduate business school professors of 2021.

That background shapes her approach at The Lils: ask careful questions, look closely at the evidence, and make complex information easier to use.

Pishi graduated Suma Paw Laude from the prestigious Purrinton Institute of Tastology, with a dual degree in Advanced Napping and Recreational Knocking Things Off Tables. He joined The Lils immediately after as Chief Quality Officer. Every recipe passes his inspection before it goes on the site, an inspection he conducts by eating it. Since then, not a single bowl has been left unfinished, not a single recipe has been turned down, and not a single nap has been skipped. He now also supervises one intern.

Lili, formally Miss Lillian, joined The Lils without a degree from the Purrinton Institute of Tastology, but with considerable confidence in her qualifications. She was not the cat we went to the shelter to meet. From the cage next door, she meowed, pawed, and insisted on an interview. She was hired on the spot.

She approaches taste testing with enthusiasm, sampling her own food and then checking the toppings on her boss’s. Her other specialties include fetch, standing on two paws, and expressing opinions at a volume that requires no follow-up. She reports to the Chief Quality Officer, although she regularly takes his seat on the cat tree. She considers this career advancement.