My work connects food, behavior, education, and healthcare—with a full life outside the office, too.
I’m a professional chef, registered dietitian, behavioral scientist, certified strength and conditioning specialist, and healthcare executive based in Houston.
As Vice President of Lifestyle Medicine at Suvida Healthcare, I lead multidisciplinary teams across Texas and Arizona. My background includes academic appointments at UTHealth Houston School of Public Health and McGovern Medical School’s Department of Internal Medicine.
I serve as a national spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and on the advisory council of the Teaching Kitchen Collaborative.
The full academic CV ↓My work spans professional kitchens, university research, medical education and health-system leadership. Each setting has taught me something about what it takes to improve health.
At Suvida Healthcare, I lead registered dietitians, physical therapists, Health Education Coordinators, and hospitality and events teams across 14 centers in Texas and Arizona. Our patients are older adults, many from Hispanic communities.
I lead intervention design, implementation and evaluation, including food-as-medicine programs and university research partnerships. The question is not only whether an idea works, but whether it works in routine care.
I use my training as a professional chef and dietitian to teach culinary skills, build teaching-kitchen programs, and make evidence-based nutrition more useful to patients and professionals.
I taught in medical and public health programs at UTHealth Houston, helped develop interdisciplinary curricula, and contributed to funded research in culinary medicine, food prescriptions and health equity.
My background includes culinary school, a doctorate in behavioral science, teaching medical students, and leading healthcare teams. Outside work you'll usually find me cooking, lifting, cycling, surfing, skiing or tending to an unreasonable number of plants.
That’s the thread through my work with individuals, future clinicians, and healthcare teams: make sound science practical enough to use.