About Me

I am a Certified Health and Wellness Coach, nutrition expert, clinical herbalist, teacher and author of The Anti-Inflammatory Family: The Kid-Friendly, Pediatrician-Approved Way to Transform Your Family’s Health published by Simon and Schuster in 2021.

I began my career working in public health, nutrition and foodservice in New York City. I founded a program that served 7,500 children and their families each year at a non-profit called The Children’s Aid Society. We replaced processed kids’ meals (chicken nuggets and tater tots) with from-scratch meals that represented the vast cultural diversity of NYC families. The “lunch ladies” were my partners, co-developing recipes and making them with love. I was immersed in this work for over a decade, and deeply loved it.

During that time, I had the opportunity to teach Medical Nutrition to physicians and other health providers at Columbia University. Why did busy physicians dedicate their precious weekends over two long years to learn about nutrition? Because each day patients came to them with chronic conditions that were diet and lifestyle-related, like diabetes and heart disease, and these providers saw the limits of prescription drugs to help them. This opened my eyes to a strange fact of our healthcare system—it’s downright terrible at helping people prevent, reduce or reverse the chronic health conditions that the majority of Americans face.

Years later I was confronted with my own confusing, chronic gastro-intestinal condition, and this professional realization also become personal. I searched for solutions in provider after provider. But, like many chronic conditions, GI conditions are complex and multi-factorial. Unless you address them holistically and with a variety of tools, you get nowhere. I didn’t find anyone to guide or accompany me on that journey. I felt so alone.

This sharpened two desires. First, I needed to fully take charge of my health. I did this by immersing myself one part in scientific discovery (getting a Master’s degree in Integrative Health along the way) and one part in self-discovery, becoming much more intimate with the ways of my own mind and body. Then, I turned my attention to coaching others through their own health journeys.

In a nutshell, my approach to health coaching is:

1.     Personalized: You are unique, and so is everyone else. There are evidence-based practices in medicine that can guide solutions, but one size fits all approaches don’t work.

2.     Guided by you: You are the expert on your own body. The expertise of physicians, nutritionists, psychologists and others is there to provide much-needed knowledge and guidance. But you make the decisions.

3.     Holistic: This is a word people throw around a lot, so it requires clarification. For me it means that body and mind, or mental and physical health are inextricably connected. I always work with both.

4.     Integrative: I am trained in, and use, many different lifestyle and behavioral interventions that can coax your body back towards health, including nutrition, herbal medicine, anxiety and stress reduction, mindfulness, physical activity, improved sleep and more. These interventions complement (but do not replace) any prescriptions, surgery, and other medical interventions you need.

Professional roles I’ve had along the way…

I am deeply committed to working with institutions to bring about bigger changes in schools, healthcare and other public systems. Here are some professional roles I’ve held along the way.

• Ayble Health, an amazing company re-envisioning care for patients with GI conditions

• Motto Health, an integrated clinic for patients with complex auto-immune conditions

• University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), Manager of Training and Quality Assurance

• Oshi Health, Another amazing bringing compassionate, integrated GI care to patients

• Healing Kitchen Institute, Director (teaching medicinal nutrition to health providers)

• The Children’s Aid Society, Founding Director, Food and Nutrition Programs

• Amherst College, Executive Chef

• Columbia University Medical Center, Integrative Therapies Program for Children with Cancer

• I’ve also held teaching positions at Columbia University’s Institute of Human Nutrition, The New School Food Studies Program and City University of New York

Seed to Table was born in 2005, when I received a Fulbright Grant for my research project, Seed to Table: Italy’s Cultural Resistance to Industrialized Foods.

Education

• M.A., Health Arts and Sciences, Goddard College

• B.A. University of Pennsylvania

Certifications

• National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach (NBC-HWC)

• Wellcoaches Health and Wellness Coach Certification Program

• Clinical Herbalist, Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism

• Diploma of Culinary Arts, The Natural Gourmet Institute for Food and Health

I am deeply trained in behavioral change theories and modalities, including Motivational Interviewing, Transtheoretical Model, Appreciative Inquiry, Positive Psychology, CBT and Mindfulness.