March 2025 Issue

TD10
By Elizabeth S. Goar
Today’s Dietitian
Vol. 27 No. 3 P. 30

Today’s Dietitian’s 16th Annual Showcase of 10 RDs Who Are Making a Difference

They may have followed different career paths, but the RDs who make up this 16th annual TD10 share one thing in common: they place a high value on mentoring up-and-coming dietitians. Whether a mentor or mentee, each of our TD10 was quick to share how it impacted their own careers and the profession as a whole.

“Mentoring is essential for the future of our profession. Without mentors and preceptors, the field of dietetics would struggle. Every RD is shaped by those who take the time to share their skills and knowledge,” says Sylvia “Gaby” Phillips, MS, RDN, LD, an assistant professor and dietetic internship director with New Mexico State University.

Dylan Bailey, MS, RD, FAND, senior nutrition specialist with Ketchum, adds, “Surrounding yourself with mentors who can provide guidance … helps improve the overall approach and mentality to being a dietitian and can give you the confidence needed to succeed.”

Those sentiments were echoed not only in conversations with the RDs chosen for this year’s TD10 but also in many of the overall nominations received for this year’s showcase. Winnowing them down to the final list of RDs to honor in this year’s TD10 was a significant challenge, but we are confident you’ll agree that the final 10 exemplify the profession and all that it means to be an RD.

We trust you’ll find their stories inspiring and encourage you to continue making your own mark on this profession we proudly recognize during National Nutrition Month® and on Registered Dietitian Nutritionist Day.

Gemalli Austin, DrPH, RD, CDE
Diabetes Education and Programs Manager
Lake County Tribal Health Consortium
Lakeport, California
While Native American communities’ public health challenges mirror those of the larger US population, they’re exacerbated by alcoholism, domestic violence, and other issues stemming from perpetuating generational trauma. Complicating factors include limited opportunities and resources—barriers Gemalli Austin is helping eliminate through her work with the Lake County Tribal Health Consortium (LCTHC).

“Many Native communities are isolated in hard-to-reach and rural areas,” she says. “There are not as many resources, not just financial but also the skills and abilities to provide education or services.”

Over 13 years, Austin has expanded the boundaries of her role of LCTHC’s diabetes education manager to encompass broader initiatives to improve health outcomes. She founded the Hinth’el Diabetes Action Council as well as guided programs focused on diabetes prevention, chronic disease self-management, tobacco education and cessation, Produce Prescription, and the CalFresh Nutrition Education Program.

“The driver has always been to … increase access to healthy eating and physical activity; to create a community of wellness [where] people feel happy exercising and feel that they’re not alone in eating a healthy diet … that they can afford and have access to,” Austin says. For example, she helped create a community garden along with family wellness initiatives and annual community wellness events. Austin also moved some programs closer to the region’s six local tribes to ensure their needs were being met.

“We try to meet with the tribal members, understand their needs, share what we have, and hear what they’re doing,” she says. By “partnering with the programs the tribes are doing, we can make sure … we’re meeting their needs [and] working together to make change happen.”

Dylan Bailey, MS, RD, FAND
Senior Nutrition Specialist
Ketchum
New York, New York
Dylan Bailey recognized early on that words have the power to help people make healthier choices and to connect those without access to healthy and nutritious food to services that can help.

“The power of helping people navigate this world of nutrition with clear, evidence-backed information is what got me excited to start a career path in nutrition communications,” says Bailey, who provides strategic counsel to food brands and commodity boards with Ketchum.

In his personal time, Bailey has turned his desire to bridge research with real-world applications into more than 40 academic presentations, 30 conference research posters, and 10 peer-reviewed manuscripts. His independent research focuses on sustainability and consumer choice, weight stigma and bias, and the impostor phenomenon in dietetics. He has also independently published more than 20 freelance articles on platforms like Forbes Health.

“I enjoy being able to write something that can impact someone … who is trying to understand the complexities of nutrition,” he says. “I like helping people find clear, simple, and science-backed information.”

Bailey is also passionate about mentoring, something he says he would have benefitted from as an undergraduate “to help me not feel like an imposter.”

He adds, “Find me on LinkedIn. Email me. I always set time for students and others who are interested in talking about the field of nutrition communications or any of the research topics I have published on, like imposter syndrome or weight bias. I’m an open book. Please reach out and let’s talk.”

Melissa Bernstein, PhD, RDN, LD, FAND, DipACLM, FACLM, FNAP
Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Nutrition
Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine & Science (North Chicago, Illinois)
Cincinnati, Ohio
With Food Is Medicine, culinary medicine, and lifestyle medicine poised to explode on the health care scene, Melissa Bernstein is ensuring the next generation of dietitians are prepared for the influential roles they can play.

“While there is tremendous scientific evidence to demonstrate that there are significant associations between unhealthy diet and the development and progression of disease … most physicians and health care providers are not meeting recommended minimum hours or competencies in nutrition to effectively speak with their patients regarding their diet and lifestyle choices,” she says. “As highly educated food and nutrition professionals, dietitians have the training, qualifications, and expertise to be leaders in this space.”

It’s why Bernstein considers the opportunity to prepare students to prescribe and practice food as medicine and lifestyle interventions to be one of the most exciting changes on the RD education horizon.

It’s an area she knows well, having spent the last two decades supporting RDs in their pursuit of advanced degrees. She has also coauthored six nutrition textbooks and numerous chapters and review articles and works directly with professional bodies to raise the profile of nutrition in medicine. She served on the board of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine and currently chairs its Education Committee and cochairs its Nutrition Strategy and Messaging task force. Bernstein also impacts future physicians through her joint faculty appointment in Chicago Medical School overseeing nutrition curriculum.

Though work remains, she says, “I am excited to see that nutrition and medical education is being discussed more on many levels [and] medical students themselves are realizing that there’s a desperate need for providers who are knowledgeable in the basics of nutrition, food, and diet in prevention, treatment, and reversal of disease.”

Ambika Chawla, MS, RD, CNSC, CCTD
Assistant Vice President of System Clinical Nutrition Services
Northwell Health
New Hyde Park, New York
Ambika Chawla’s lightbulb moment came when she was studying nutritional biochemistry. The realization that something from outside the body could have such a significant influence inside “inculcated an interest that I had to pursue. … There was no turning back after that because I could see [nutrition] in action,” she says.

That passion for bridging nutritional science and practical application drove Chawla to create programs that embed nutrition more deeply into patient care—and to her current role heading up Northwell Health’s clinical nutrition services, created under its food transformation project. She was a driving force behind standardizing nutritional care, advocated for nutrition’s inclusion in Northwell’s medical education joint accreditation program, and pushed for its incorporation as a formal critical care bundle. The latter improved delivery of nutrition to critical care patients, reducing ICU length of stay and ventilator days.

Chawla also integrated acute clinical nutrition with preventive medicine to reduce readmissions and improve ongoing management of chronic disease, noting that without addressing prevention, “our interventions as clinical dietitians in the acute care fail.”

“Acute care, as the name suggests, is small. It’s acute. But its impact goes beyond the acuteness,” she adds. “It’s sometimes lifelong, so if you fail to address that preventive aspect, that lifelong aspect of nutritional care or overall well-being, patients are going to continuously be readmitted … that cycle is never going to break.”

That was the impetus behind creating community-based programs to provide hands-on educational opportunities. These include partnering with a local farm for education sessions and cooking demonstrations and a grocery store to teach patients how to shop for healthy eating.

Chawla also integrated nutrition into transitions of care, launching a medically tailored meal program and partnering with community-based organizations.

“If we don’t transition [patients] well and don’t give them tools and access to healthy food again, our interventions are not going to be sustainable,” she says. It’s not enough to “only concentrate on acute care. You have to equally concentrate on preventive medicine.”

Suzanne Domel Baxter, PhD, RD, LD, FADA, FAND
Cofounder/Past Chair, Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Disabilities in Nutrition and Dietetics, Member Interest Group (“Disabilities MIG”), Advocate, and Volunteer
Lexington, South Carolina
Suzie Baxter was at a crossroads in 2016 when an acquired mobility disability forced her to retire from her research professorship at the University of South Carolina. But the accommodation gaps she experienced over the six years between the disability’s onset and her resignation brought the realization that her purpose was advocating for change.

“At that point I became essentially a sponge, trying to learn whatever I could about not only my own disability but disabilities in general. That opened my eyes to three needs within the dietetics profession,” she says. The first was a group for Academy members with or interested in disabilities. Second was more disability educational content in dietetics. Third was greater inclusivity within the dietetics workforce.

It was then that the girl whose love of nutrition was sparked by an Easy Bake Oven and morphed into an award-winning research career—honors include the 2012 South Carolina Outstanding Dietitian of the Year, 2016 Research DPG First Author Publication Award, and 2017 Monsen Award for Outstanding Research Literature—became a fierce advocate for dietetics practitioners with disabilities.

“Accommodations are not a special privilege; they’re basic necessities for people with disabilities to navigate environments that are designed for people without disabilities,” Baxter says.

Her advocacy led her to cofound and serve as the first chair of the Academy’s Disabilities MIG. She also raises awareness of disabled RDs and NDTRs, including coediting Credentialed Dietetics Practitioners With Disabilities Get the Job Done. Royalties from it and her children’s book, When I Grow Up, I Can Be a Dietitian, are donated to organizations promoting a more diverse community of dietetics professionals.

Ultimately, Baxter says she hopes her efforts “will enhance diversity overall within our workforce, not just disabilities but also race ethnicity and gender.”

Sara Elnakib, PhD, MPH, RDN
Department Chair/Associate Professor, Department of Family & Community Health Sciences (FCHS)
FCHS Administration, School of Environmental & Biological Sciences
Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station Cooperative Extension
Rutgers University
New Brunswick, New Jersey
When she began researching food insecurity, Sara Elnakib was shocked to discover that food waste was a significant factor. Labor laws, certain standards, and overproduction all contribute to excessive food waste at a time when 13.5% of the United States has experienced food insecurity.

“It’s this weird paradox that we have in our country where we throw out a third of the food we have and yet one in 10 people are hungry,” Elnakib says. “In a country of abundance … how do we have people who are food insecure?”

Finding answers drives her work in Cooperative Extension Services and public health, including research around food systems evaluation, policy, and environmental change. She also focuses on food waste, diversity, and cultural competence training for nutrition and health care professionals.

For example, Elnakib was conducting ServSafe training for food service workers in a New Jersey school system when the discussion turned to how much food was tossed each day. She helped design a multifaceted solution that altered how food was served, added a “share” table, and donated leftovers. She also helped secure funding for courses on climate change through the lens of food waste.

“The idea was to utilize food in a way that supports food security [by] closing the loop and trying to make sure we’re reusing any food that can be reused within the cafeteria,” she says. Elnakib also worked with the New Jersey Food Democracy Collaborative on policies “that can support a kind of a circular economy to reduced food waste and increase food security.”

Of all her accomplishments, Elnakib considers her students to be her greatest.

“They are amazing individuals who, with or without me, would have succeeded,” she says. “But I feel like maybe I helped nudge them [toward] food systems and focusing on food waste and food security.”

Alefiya Faizullabhoy, MBA, MS, RD, CDCES, CDN, FAND
Senior Manager, Nutrition & Dietetics
Maternal-Fetal Medicine
Northwell Health
New Hyde Park, New York
During the fourth trimester—the trimester after delivery—the focus understandably shifts to the newborn. However, this deprioritization of the mother’s needs can be problematic, particularly for those who are at higher risk for developing postpartum diabetes and prediabetes.

Alefiya Faizullabhoy counters this by ensuring her gestational and pregestational diabetes patients have the nutritional and emotional building blocks needed to keep themselves and their babies healthy in that fourth trimester and beyond.

“We want this baby to have a healthy mother. It’s the foundation of a healthy family,” she says, adding “it’s a catch-22 for many moms [because] so much of their attention gets divided taking care of everybody. [But] the focus … doesn’t need to shift just because their role has changed from being pregnant to being a mother.”

Person-centered care and medical nutrition therapy are central to Faizullabhoy’s approach to diabetes and weight management and influences how she leads a diverse team of dietitians at Northwell Health. Faizullabhoy—a 2025 panelist for Best Diets for the US News & World Report—views herself as the coach responsible for bringing out team members’ strengths. She also encourages shared decision-making and consensus-building while “recognizing that it’s not one-size-fits-all.

“Different problems have different solutions, and sometimes we arrive at those conclusions in a different manner. That’s what makes a team unique,” she says. A board member of the Association of Diabetes Care and Education Specialists and its liaison to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Faizullabhoy believes in an interdisciplinary approach to leadership and patient care.

“No one person can work in a silo,” she says. “Collaborative visits [are] so much more enriching for the patient because you’re ensuring smooth transitions of care and alleviating gaps in patient care.”

Kimberly Feddersen, MFCS, RDN, LD, CDCES
Clinical Dietitian, Certified Diabetes Care & Education Specialist
Federal Medical Center
Rochester, Minnesota
Prison is likely not high on anyone’s list of career moves. It certainly wasn’t for Kimberly Feddersen. But she “had an inkling for change” after a decade at Mayo Clinic and was intrigued when the chief dietitian for the Federal Bureau of Prisons reached out about replacing a retiring RD.

With encouragement from her police officer husband, she took a chance. “I’ve enjoyed it so much that my dream job [of dietetic internship director] … opened and I didn’t even apply.”

Feddersen recognized quickly there was room for improvement, especially around diabetes care. First, she created a multidisciplinary diabetes practice committee (DPC) dedicated to improving diabetes practice. The DPC provided key support for several important initiatives, including introducing insulin pumps for adults in custody with type 1 diabetes.

“It wasn’t just one dietitian’s voice saying we need to do this; it came from a group—a pharmacist, doctor, and [advance practice clinician] all saying we need to be doing this,” she says, noting that hypoglycemia events have declined and A1c levels have improved since introducing the pumps. “That group voice is heard and accepted better than when it comes from an individual, so the DPC was instrumental in moving forward.”

Feddersen also set her sights on education, including overhauling a 12-week diabetes patient education program that helps fulfill the bipartisan prison reform First Step Act. Modeled after American Diabetes Association (ADA) Diabetes Self-Management Education and Support standards, Fedderson’s curriculum features patient-centered education materials and plain language concepts and a facilitator’s guide based on ADA Standards of Medical Care for easy implementation by any health care professional.

She adds, “While the barriers are challenging, [working in a prison] gets easier over time, just like adapting to any population.”

Feddersen also added a nutrition-focused physical exam to intake protocol and got the Federal Bureau of Prisons added to local dietetic internship clinical sites. She hopes the latter will dispel biases about working in the prison environment.

“A barrier to providing adequate health care in prisons is getting workers,” she says. “Having students do education rotations here helps make it less intimidating.”

Cayla Marshall, RDN, CD
Advanced Practice Clinical Dietitian
Froedtert Health

Rachel Ludke, MS, RDN, CNCS, CCTD
Advanced Practice Clinical Dietitian
Froedtert Health
The desire to reduce delays in nutrition for patients needing feeding tubes led Froedtert Hospital’s Clinical Dietetics team to explore opportunities for RDs to practice at the top of their scope—and led Cayla Marshall and Rachel Ludke to recognize the potential for RDs to handle feeding tube placements.

To bring their vision to life, the pair created a program wherein RDs use IRIS technology to place nasogastric and nasojejunal tubes for patients on acute care floors throughout the hospital. It “allows us to reduce the number of KUBs [kidney, ureter, and bladder X-rays] needed to confirm placement and eliminates the need for patients to go to fluoroscopy for placement,” Ludke says. “It’s been a great asset for the hospital overall.”

Marshall adds, “Nurses are often too busy or don’t feel comfortable placing tubes, which can delay nutrition. With RDs stepping in, we can place the tube quickly and accurately, improving patient care and preventing these delays.”

Among the program benefits realized by Froedtert—one of the first hospitals in Wisconsin to implement RD feeding tube placement—are expanded RD practice, reduced costs, and improved patient care.

“From a nursing standpoint, it’s been perceived well. Even the fluoro staff prefers if we place the tubes first as they’re always busy,” says Ludke, noting, “It also allows other providers to realize that the RD scope is broader than traditionally recognized.”

Marshall and Ludke also work to raise nutrition’s profile in the hospital in other ways. Ludke cross-covers in Froedtert’s Transplant Outpatient Clinic and Limb Preservation Clinic and Marshall leads the nutrition department’s Development Council.

The pairs’ efforts mean other providers “can look to us as the subject matter experts [and as] part of the whole multidisciplinary team,” Ludke says.

Sylvia “Gaby” Phillips, MS, RDN, LD
Assistant Professor, Dietetic Internship Director
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico
When the world shut down in March 2020, New Mexico State University’s Dietetics Internship Program flourished thanks to Sylvia Phillips’ vision for bridging the gap between classroom learning and real-world experience: New Mexico’s first virtual reality (VR) and simulation lab for dietetics.

It was the culmination of four years’ work assessing and addressing gaps in dietetics education that started with a grant to expand rural clinical sites. Upon realizing the original scope wasn’t feasible, Phillips instead proposed creating a simulation lab. “At first, the foundation wasn’t supportive,” she says.

Undaunted, Phillips took inspiration from a documentary produced by her husband on tech startups using VR and went back with a proposal to create VR mock patients with common nutrition diagnoses. It was approved and, three years later, the holographic VR case studies were ready to go.

“When the pandemic hit, they were a lifesaver, allowing students to continue their training,” she says. “This pilot grant also allowed me to purchase an artificially intelligent mannequin that could speak three languages.”

The determination with which she approached resolving clinical site shortages “comes from my experience of starting over as an immigrant,” says Phillips, who gave up her private practice in Mexico to start over in the United States. “This translated well into my current roles in academics and as a program director. I’ve also been fortunate to have incredible mentors.”

Phillips is now one of the faculty members delivering VR classes through the New Mexico State University VR twin campus. She also spoke at the VR Healthcare European Symposium—the only dietitian presenting among neurosurgeons, physicians, nurses, physical therapists, and developers.

“The VR project has grown beyond what I originally imagined and continues to evolve with technology,” she says.

— Elizabeth S. Goar is a freelance health care writer in Benton, Wisconsin.