Leslie Skarra is President and co-founder of Merlin Development, Inc. Merlin Development provides high quality, cost effective research and development services to the food industry. The staff specialized in all technical aspects of food product development from concept through commercialization, including prototype development, formulation, scale up, quality system design and production start up. The client base encompasses major consumer food companies, industrial ingredient suppliers, and food service manufactuers.

 Prior to starting Merlin Development, Ms. Skarraís held various product development and management positions at the Pillsbury Company. Her efforts resulted in the successful introduction of five major product lines in refrigerated dough, grain, and tomato-based Mexican products, and frozen vegetable categories, as well as individual products in the dessert and frozen polybag categories.

 Ms. Skarra received her M.S. in Food Science from the University of Minnesota and holds four patents.