How long have you worked for the NTA? What is your role? 

I joined the NTA in late 2017 and currently serve as Director of Strategic Projects, guiding our Infusionsoft launch. I work with our team to build systems like online registration and marketing automations that help us create structure and bandwidth so we can keep growing. I love that I get to peek under the hood and see how each department works, and then make cool stuff with people I really enjoy spending time with.

What attracted you to work at the NTA? 

My lovely group leaders from the 2017 LA NTP class recruited me (thank you, Jess, John, and Rosemary!!!). I wanted to give back since the NTA had such an impact on my life, and when I saw how awesome the rest of the team was, I knew I wanted to be a part of it.

What do you love about working for the NTA? 

That this team is made up of such smart, kind, interesting people who also happen to be total badasses – it seems like everyone is doing something cool and different outside of the NTA and I feel like I become a better person just by being around them. Also, all the emojis in our slack channels.

What are you most proud about accomplishing in your time at the NTA to date? 

My roles have always been interconnected with others so there isn’t much I do on my own, but I’m proud of our work launching the Career Development and Foundational Wellness courses, and what we’re building right now in Infusionsoft. It’s pretty magical watching our talents come together to make awesome ideas into reality.

Describe the NTA in three words: 

Inspiring, Empowering, Evolving

Describe yourself in three words:

Adventurous, Optimist, Thinker

What do you love the most about our community? 

That we can get serious about challenging and changing a broken status quo, all the while enjoying the good things in life like perfect avocados and laughing at poop jokes.

What is your favorite fat? 

It’s a tie between coconut oil (I mean, come on, what else can be a cooking oil, hinge greaser, mouth rinse and moisturizer?!) and raw cream. Unlike most of us, raw cream only gets more delightful as it sours.

What is your least favorite food? 

Durian fruit, bless all the Chinese elders who love it, but it literally smells like rotting garbage.

What is your most used cook book or recipe blog and why? 

99% of the time I wing it, but every Thanksgiving I make this AIP pumpkin pie cheesecake because it’s so delicious and my family will actually eat it. I just sub out sweet potato for pumpkin puree. And I love my dear friend Aimee Suen’s blog, small eats.

What are you reading or listening to right now? 

I like to work my way through a bunch of books at once – right now I’m into Calvin and Hobbes, Hyperbole and a Half , Radical Equations, Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind, The Bullet Journal Method, and a couple by our awesome grads: Megan Van Zyl’s What Is Cancer, and Steph Gaudreau’s The Core 4. And I’m always re-reading parts of Pema Chodron’s The Places That Scare You and Iyengar’s Light On Yoga.

 In your mind, what are the biggest challenges the holistic health community faces? 

When I think about our goal as a community, it’s to heal the world with holistic, foundational healthcare and regenerative practices that are woven into our social consciousness throughout our lives. The biggest threat is that we never get to a place where any of this is as legitimized, recognized, or accessible as the conventional systems (and eventually more so!). We’re doing amazing work to get there, but there’s still a ways to go. In my eyes, the greatest challenges are: 

• + Providing better access to information and services for the general public, especially marginalized and at-risk populations, like Rise & Root Farm (thanks Ben), WellnessCon and Station CoLab (both created by NTPs!), and so many others.
• + Funding, conducting and advocating for rigorous research in our fields, like the Autoimmune Wellness team is doing.
• + Lobbying for initiatives that support access to information, a consistent standard of care and rights to practice, and regenerative agricultural practices and policies, like CHHE, NANP, FTCLDF, Kiss The Ground, TNAFA, etc
• + All of this hinges on coming together, despite our differences, and empowering ourselves and others in the community with the skills they need to be successful, so they have the resources to fund the work they do and create positive change. (Which is why the Career Development Course was created. And for free resources, HEA is also pretty sweet)