The great Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, Life is a journey, not a destination.

That is how I wish to live my life. My journey in life has lead me to develop a deep, committed passion for the field of nutrition. A dietetic internship at Sodexo will expose me to a wide array of experiences in a diversity of settings that will enhance my knowledge and skills, challenge my intellect, and deepen my passion for public service within the field of nutrition. Growing up in the prairie of western Kansas, I was surrounded by wheat fields, corn fields and sunflowers growing tall against big beautiful paint brushed skies. Food was always a big part of my life. As a small child I helped my father in our garden, tending and picking the fruits of our labor. As I grew older, I became more and more curious on how food and plants nourished us. As a teenager I found myself afflicted with anorexia and bulimia and rejected the very nourishment that I had grown to love and cherish. As I battled with eating disorders and eventually overcame them, I rediscovered my love of food and made a decision to become a vegetarian at the age of 17. This new found way of eating opened my eyes and tickled my palate and thus began my journey to understand how the human body interacts and completely depends on food for nourishment, health and most importantly survival. My journey took me to the deserts and mountains of southern New Mexico where I spent 10 months learning the craft of herbal medicine. The outdoors was my classroom where I learned how to identify, collect and make medicine from plants found in the Gila National Forest. Learning herbal medicine deepened my desire to incorporate plants and plant medicine into my life, but there was something missing. I yearned for a deeper understanding of the complexity of how these plants interact with the human body. That lead me to study biochemistry at the University of Washington (UW), where I had the pleasure of taking classes in Ethnobotany, Plant Echophysiology History of Medicine, as well as in Biology and Chemistry to broaden my understanding of how both the body and the world works. I began to hone my leadership, management and communication skills upon graduating from UW. I landed a job at Seattle Central Community College as a manager of the Biology Laboratory. In addition to my duties as a manager I was fortunate to mentor undergraduate students in research projects. Through this experience, I learned how to prioritize my duties as a manager and mentor and set realistic goals for the students, my employees and myself. However, juggling many duties at once and working over 50 hours a week, I realized that it was a challenge to balance both my work and home life. I had to create

boundaries, separating work from home life. To do this I stopped taking work home and blocked out time to spend with my family and friends. Because of this change I was much more productive and focused at work and overall I was much happier both at work and in the rest of my life. Being highly self-motivated and organized I have been able to successfully complete two masters tracks at Bastyr University (BU); the DPD track as well as the research track, both with high marks. For my thesis, I designed a human subjects pilot study, investigating the impacts of nutrition on rock climbing performance. For this project I successfully obtained IRB approval, organized a facility and recruited rock climbers to participate in the study. This experience has not only taught me the power of perseverance when road blocks come up, but also how to organize people and vast amounts of information. The insight I have gained as reward for the dedication to see this project through to the end, will serve me greatly in the future as a Registered Dietitian (RD). I have been able to realize my leadership skills through my role first as vice president and then as president of the Sports Nutrition Club at BU. I have organized events where I collaborated with a team of people to provide whole food based snacks and beverages to athletes at sporting competitions. I have also organized guest speakers to talk to the BU community on sports nutrition related topics. This experience has helped me realize that a leadership position requires flexibility and tenacity to meet the many challenges, which will serve me well in my career as an RD. My compassion and empathy for helping people make healthy life choices has grown and developed as I have gone through various work, volunteer, and personal experiences. Through these experiences I have realized that my passion lies in clinical nutrition. Over the past year, I have had the opportunity to volunteer over 400 hours at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, observing and facilitating in nutrition consults where I have developed meaningful relationships with patients dealing with breast, ovarian and pancreatic cancers. Working with this patient population has helped me realize my desire to work in oncology and how, as a future RD, I could play a vital role in the management and success of individuals suffering from this disease. My immediate goals are to complete a dietetic internship, pass the RD exam, and become a registered dietitian. My long term goals include being hired as an oncology RD and become board certified in oncology. Also I would like to teach nutrition at the college level and collaborate with other RDs and policy workers

to provide evidence based nutrition to the general public and work towards allocating more funding towards research and programs that focus on disease prevention and management through nutrition. My journey has lead me over vast landscapes, where I have learned on the macroscopic level to inside the classroom learning on the microscopic level to now, having synthesized vast amounts of information both technical and emotional to embark on the next phase of my journey, a dietetic internship at Sodexo. I will bring all that I have learned, my strong motivation, leadership and management skills to treat patients using evidence-based research, empathy and compassion.