My Story
& Why I Do This Work

It all began in the kitchen

Chopping garlic and layering flavors is where I go to relax and where I feel most at home. My mom, who was a professional chef, used to tell me stories about cooking in NYC restaurants when she was pregnant with me. I like to think this is why I find the rhythm of it to be so meditative. But cooking wasn’t something I took seriously until I discovered my own inspiration in the kitchen. What began as a creative outlet evolved into years of hosting a successful supper club out of my apartment, watching strangers connect over many shared meals. Though I’ve always been a burger-loving omnivore, experimenting with plant foods was where my culinary creativity truly came alive. I had stumbled upon something I felt I was born to do, so I decided to get serious and go to culinary school, where I also studied nutritional healing. After working in a few professional kitchens, I began growing a catering business and was on a path to a career in something I truly loved.

Life took a turn

When my mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, cooking professionally took a backseat as stress and grief took over. Through the next decade of her cognitive decline, my own health also quietly unraveled. I was living with severe fatigue, inflammation, and what I later learned was a sluggish liver and elevated thyroid antibodies pointing to autoimmune activity. Like so many, I felt failed by conventional healthcare—passed from doctor to doctor and told it was "just stress," that I should lose weight, or that a Mediterranean diet would fix everything. While stress was a huge part of the picture, it wasn't the whole story, and it certainly wasn't an answer.

To make matters harder, severe herniated discs and spinal stenosis eventually left me barely able to walk for nearly a year. My body was sending unmistakable signals that something deeper was wrong, and nobody was connecting any of the dots.

My search for answers led to so much more than I expected

Eventually, with the help of a functional medicine doctor who finally ordered the right tests, I began to get some answers. Her work gave me a clearer picture of what was going on, but I wanted to understand it more deeply. So, I decided to go back to school where I studied functional nutrition under the brilliant Andrea Nakayama. Through the lens of physiology and systems biology, I finally understood just how interconnected everything in our bodies really is. And what I found was that there is rarely one single root cause. There are layers, histories, and relationships both inside and outside the body that all matter. Every body is different and every person’s path that led to their symptoms is unique. All of it matters.

Learning to see my own story and listen to my body allowed me, for the first time in years, to turn down the external noise and tune inward. It’s where my healing began. The impact this had on me—mind, body, and spirit—was (and still is) profound, and I knew I wanted to be a guide for others on their path to finally feeling better.