Lauren Dunford

Lauren Dunford

Lauren Dunford is a tech entrepreneur and the CEO and Co-Founder of Safi, a company that is building a manufacturing operations cloud for real-time platform. The platform enables manufacturing teams to achieve operational excellence quickly, cost-effectively, and simply. Lauren is an expert in building and leading teams, and she manages the day-to-day activities of the company to ensure that it runs optimally.

Lauren is a graduate of Stanford University where she got her BA and MBA. She is also a former Fulbright Scholar, where she researched supply chain efficiency in New Delhi.2 She has an extensive background in sales and operations, having worked at Revolution Foods' East Oakland plant for five years, where she led a team managing $65M in revenue.

Lauren is passionate about helping manufacturing teams achieve operational excellence and visualizing data to help teams make informed decisions. She is happiest when she is trail running with friends or Zumba dancing with her husband, Jason.

In 2018, Lauren participated in Launchpad, an action-based program at Stanford d.school that takes new ventures through prototyping.1 The learnings from the course have come in handy, especially when the COVID-19 pandemic struck.1 A year after graduating from Launchpad, Safi was now a team of nine, including three Launchpad teammates.1

Lauren initially joined Savannah Fund with a focus on exploring and launching a tech startup in the Energy sector.3 Her research led her to launch Safi Analytics, a startup that leverages the Internet of Things to make factories smarter and provide factory managers with valuable insights to drive smarter, cleaner growth.3