A: My bachelor’s degree is actually in speech communications as I had no idea what I wanted to do, but was always good at memorizing, giving presentations, and being front and center on a stage. I figured you could do that in any field, so I pursued that career path. However, I always had a personal love for exercise and nutrition, so I took a nutrition class, became a group exercise instructor (called aerobics then), a personal trainer, and made my minor in college exercise physiology. As I took those classes, my love for fitness and nutrition grew and I learned about an exercise and sports nutrition graduate program at Texas Woman’s University, just up the road from TCU in Denton, TX. I went to a meeting and walked out knowing I wanted to be a sports dietitian, but oh the path that was ahead.
The goal of becoming a sports dietitian meant finishing my communications degree while taking two nutrition electives, then starting three more years of school to take all the necessary undergraduate nutrition courses (let’s not forget chemistry, organic chemistry, biochemistry, and microbiology to start!) to be a registered dietitian, all the hours a masters degree in exercise and sports nutrition (basically a double masters with the hours), and a full-time, non-paid 1000 hour, accredited dietetic internship. All this to sit for an exam to become a registered dietitian with an emphasis in sports nutrition.
Little did I know that as hard as it was, that journey would launch my career faster than I could blink my eyes. I worked as a dietitian for Lifetime Fitness as I finished graduate school and then got recommended for a job at a sports medicine facility, which was a part of a major hospital system to be the sports dietitian at my alma mater, TCU. From there, the opportunities came. My roommate worked with a strength coach that was working with one of the top young PGA Tour players in the country, the TCU Baseball athletic trainer recommended me to the Texas Rangers MLB team, I was recommended to work with a high school runner whose dad was the assistant head athletic trainer for the Dallas Cowboys, and opportunity after opportunity came. I would say my consistent “YES!”, and my faith that anything can happen, is what opened door after door. I was able to stand on stages to talk about sports nutrition and utilize my first passion and love for communications, and that opened the door for me to work with brands and do nutrition media. My motto was, “I’m going to say YES to everything so that one day I can say NO to what I want.”
So, with a bachelor’s degree in communications and a master’s degree in exercise and sports nutrition, I was able to marry my two passions together to provide quality, science-based nutrition information to consumers and athletes everywhere through speaking, media, writing, and consulting. Eighteen plus years later, with my own business doing what I love, I would say it’s the career of my dreams and I would have it no other way, the good, the bad, the hard…all of it was totally worth it.