A bit about me: I’ve built my career around bringing wellness and well-being into everyday life through traditional medical clinics, wellness programs, and now as an author and speaker. The ethos behind what I do lies in the importance I place on balancing both a clinical and medical approach to healthy living with a spiritual and nourishing life centered around self-care and the art and practice of rituals.

I obtained my undergraduate degree in art history at the University of Pennsylvania, and my medical degree from the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. I trained at Columbia Presbyterian in New York City, worked at Columbia’s Center for Women’s Health, and at the Women’s Health Center at the Cleveland Clinic. I am board-certified in Internal Medicine.

While at the Cleveland Clinic, I worked with Dr. Mike Roizen, the Cleveland Clinic’s Chief Wellness Officer, to create Lifestyle180. As the founding medical director of Lifestyle180, we built a groundbreaking lifestyle modification program to treat chronic diseases with nutrition, exercise, and stress management. 

A fortuitous move to Southern California allowed me to shift my focus from not only seeing patients but to writing as well, a transformation that has allowed me to reach a broader audience on the issues of health, wellness, and well-being. My award-winning first book, Braided: A Journey of a Thousand Challahs, was published in 2018, and today I speak around the US, and host virtual and in-person challah-making workshops for private groups and public brands, organizations, schools and museums, for example.

My goal here, and with Braided, is to not only share my own story and journey, but also to help people explore what it means to have a meaningful ritual—and to understand the health and wellness benefits of having such rituals in our lives—and to value the importance of building and sustaining communities. I strive to remind others—and myself—to slow down, be present, and bake challah. My dream is to give people the foundation and tools, the perfect prescription, for a happy, healthy, fulfilled life of wellness and well-being.