Hello Everyone!

Thank you so much for showing an interest in my website and your health! Also, thank you for being interested in the training I have done to prepare myself as a health coach.

As a beginning to my health coach training, I spent a year studying and preparing at The Institute for Integrative Nutrition, graduating in May of 2016. In a nutshell, during this year-long program, I learned innovative coaching methods, practical lifestyle management techniques, and over 100 dietary theories: everything from Ayurveda, gluten-free, and Paleo, to raw, vegan, and macrobiotics, and everything in between.

Since that time, I have been constantly learning, taking classes including at Cornell University, studying additionally online, and specifically learning all that I can in Plant-based eating, a top priority for the health of my clients, my husband and myself. I've taken cooking and baking classes both in the USA and in Asia, learning a multiplicity of cooking techniques. It's all been a labor of love as I forge further and deeper ahead into both practical and research-based approaches that guide my decisions and the services that I provide.

My goal is not turn everyone into a vegan, a keto eater or a calorie counter, as I do believe in the bio-individuality of all human beings. Rather, my goal is to enable people to come to understand how they can decipher what the needs of their body are, how their body functions to its best ability, and how they can make decisions about what habits of body, mind, and spirit will feed their own hunger within as well as the foods that will nutritionally make the biggest difference in their health given their family history, cultural connections, and personal desires for their lives. It's all very exciting; I love my work! And I love my clients and care deeply that they become as healthy as they possibly can. Given that, please read on to learn of the doctors and others under whom I have studied and whom I very much respect. And by the way, I hope to meet you soon!

I have studied with the world's top health and wellness experts including:

Michael Greger, MD founder of nutritionfacts.org., world renowned researcher, public speaker and author of cookbooks and world best-selling books, How Not to Die and How Not to Diet and reviewer of top research articles, and videographer/presenter with nurtritionfacts.org. The picture on the right, slightly above, is Dr. Michael Greger, one of my favorite doctors and human beings on the face of the earth. He was gracious enough to allow me to take a selfie of the two of us right before breakfast on the day of his lecture. We shared breakfast together, laughed, and excitedly talked nutrition like the two nutrition nerds we are. What fun.
Michael Klaper, MD respected public speaker, author, instructor within many medical schools in the USA.
Joel Fuhrman, MD World Leader in plant-based eating, practicing medical doctor, researcher, author of many nutrition books, public speaker, educator.
Joshua Rosenthal, MScEd, founder and director of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition
Deepak Chopra, MD World Leader in Mind-Body Medicine, Director of Education at The Chopra Center, Bestselling Author
David Katz, MD, MPH, Authority on Preventive Medicine and Weight Management, Director of the Yale Prevention Research Center
William Li, MD, Author of How to Beat Disease
Walter Willett, MD, DrPH, Chair of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard’s School of Public Health and Bestselling Author
Andrew Weil, MD, Bestselling Author and Expert on Integrative Medicine and Mind-Body Interactions
Susan Blum, MD, MPH, Functional Medicine Doctor, Founder of Blum Center for Health
Geneen Roth, Pioneer of Emotional Eating and Empowerment, Bestselling Author
David Wolfe, recognized Expert and Bestselling Author on Superfoods and Raw Nutrition
Marion Nestle, PhD, MPH, Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health at New York University
Mark Bittman, New York Times Columnist, Bestselling Author

My education has equipped me with extensive, cutting-edge knowledge in holistic nutrition, health coaching, and prevention. Drawing on my expertise, I work with clients like you to help make lifestyle changes and choose health-promoting ways that produce real and lasting results. You will develop a deeper understanding of food and lifestyle choices that work best for you, improving your energy, balance, health, and happiness.

Each session will leave you feeling inspired and motivated. We will talk about things beyond food, seeking to bring balance to important elements of your life such as love and relationship as well as career and money. I will personally and carefully guide you to make simple, small changes that transform your life.

Cornell University

The picture on the right is Dr. T. Colin Campbell agreeing to pose for a selfie with me after one of his lectures. In 2021, Dr. Campbell is a healthy, vibrant 86 year-old leader in the field of plant-based education. He has a huge fan-base of followers, like myself, who study his work and are so grateful for all that he shares with the world to help us to understand that we can heal ourselves by using food as our medicine. Taking course work from him has been a highlight of my life. He's truly a dedicated, warm-hearted, and smart individual, someone who I am honored to have come to know.

I graduated from Cornell University's Nutrition Studies Program where I earned a certificate in Plant Based Nutrition from The T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies. This groundbreaking program expanded upon the best selling books The China Study and Whole and was designed to increase understanding in the role of diet in everyday health and healing. The program is based on Dr. Campbell's lectures, experience, and decades of research. Lectures were also given by Caldwell Esselstyn, MD, John McDougall, MD, and many other experts.

In this three-course series, reductionist "nutrient-by-nutrient" approaches to nutrition were questioned, and the "wholistic" point of view advanced by Dr. Campbell was brought forward. I was trained to think critically about information on diet, health, and disease and to ask questons such as: "Is this information based on scientific evidence or is it incomplete and unreliable?" I practiced relaying scientific information through written assignments, instructor feedback, and interactions with peers in the course.

National Guild of Hypnotists, Merrimack, New Hampshire

I am a fully registered and certified hypnotist having satisfactorily completed the required studies and having been found by the Board of Directors to possess the qualifications required by Constitutional bylaws as of June 29th, 2018.

As a practicing health coach, I know there are often circumstances in a client's life in which the subconscious mind overrides the conscious mind making it all the more easy or difficult for that person to abide by the goals they have set for themselves. The positive or negative mindsets were likely laid down early in life and reinforced on and off throughout one's life based on experiences, relationships, and circumstances.

Hypnosis breaks through those patterns safely and effectively by interrupting the habits of thought that have been pursued in the past and replacing them with new agreed-upon thought patterns.

Rouxbe Online Cooking School

The picture on the right is a celebration graduation party after graduating from the Rouxbe School of Vegan Desserts Baking. I invited 75 friends for an open house at which everyone got to drop in and taste my favorite desserts. What an amazing, fun day it was. Had I known you, you'd have been invited!

Regardless, I have fulfilled the requirements of four months of training and am now certified as of January 10, 2016 in the Forks Over Knives Online Cooking Course. I have demonstrated ability for certification as a FORKS OVER KNIVES PLANT-BASED CERTIFIED CHEF. I very much look forward to sharing recipes within this website as well as with my clients. I also look forward to incorporating cooking techniques into the work that I do with clients as they move forward in their abilities to arrange their kitchens, pantries, and refrigerators, plan, shop, and cook for themselves, their families, and their friends. These are exciting, life-changing skills to acquire!

Rouxbe Online School of Essential Vegan Desserts with Fran Costigan

I completed a four-month rigorous training as a vegan desserts chef July 4, 2017. Now able to prepare and teach others how to make desserts from birthday cakes to aquafaba to pumpkin pies to many other creative and healthy dessert concoctions, I am thrilled to say that preparing delicious vegan desserts is not only possible, it's thrilling. I no longer feel disappointed that I can't eat the pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving or make a cake for my children's birthdays. The best part is that unless I tell others, they never guess it's vegan! I also am able to teach my clients these skills and share with them the secrets of fabulous vegan dessert-making!

The University of Wisconsin--Madison

I graduated in 1995 with a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from UW-Madison. The education that I received provided me with an understanding of presenting coaching concepts to clients at just the right time and in just the right way...when the client is ready and desires to go further and deeper. I am now prepared to create a Health Program with my clients that grows organically out of their lived-experience in combination with significant quantitative and qualitative research that guides our goal-setting. The process itself becomes the path to my clients evolving their own inspired life. It's exciting, transforming, and genuinely life-changing.

My Training

I have studied with the world's top health and wellness experts including:

Cornell University

National Guild of Hypnotists, Merrimack, New Hampshire

Rouxbe Online Cooking School

Rouxbe Online School of Essential Vegan Desserts with Fran Costigan

The University of Wisconsin--Madison