About Rachel

Welcome! I'm Rachel, a Board-Certified Nutrition Health Coach with a Bachelor's (Syracuse) and Master's in Public Health (New York University), with a concentration in Social and Behavioral Sciences. As a First Responder (EMT) for the past 12 years, I've helped patients from the frontlines, putting every skill at my disposal to use, from communicating in Mandarin with Chinese-speaking patients to administering overdose protocols to handle high-pressure situations for patients from all walks of life. As a health coach, I'm rapidly building my practice, working closely with dozens of individuals to find tangible strategies that unlock their health and well-being, from college students to senior citizens. My training is holistic and recommendation-focused, and I've developed research-backed expertise in nutrition and gut microbiome health, combating women-focused auto-immune disease, and helping my clients create well-rounded physical routines incorporating pilates, yoga, and compound resistance training. And if you're starting from ground zero, I have several avenues to help you get off the ground, grow your self-confidence, and find a set of sustainable strategies that you can stick to and build upon. I've also worked as an application coach for top-tier public health programs across the U.S., and can help you build a narrative that feels both genuine and compelling to admissions committees who are hoping to invest in our next generation of public health leaders. Essay-writing is my strong-suit, and I've worked closely with several clients of mine to develop their unique pitch and vision for how they want to shape their public health careers. To give a bit more background on my professional story, my career began coming into focus during graduate school, where I worked on the research team led by Dr. Ryan McCormack, Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Our work focused on studying the impact of screening for substance use and connecting individuals with substance use disorder to referral and treatment services. We also distributed naloxone (Narcan) kits and provided overdose education to patients at risk of witnessing an opioid overdose. This work deeply shaped my public health perspective, and I remain passionate about continuing overdose prevention education and resource distribution in community settings. After completing my MPH, I joined the research team led by Dr. Robert Montgomery, Professor and Chair of the Department of Surgery and Director of the NYU Langone Transplant Institute. Our research explored innovative approaches to abdominal organ transplantation, including HIV-to-HIV transplants, drug trials for highly sensitized waitlist candidates, and xenotransplantation (pig-to-human organ donation) to expand the donor pool and improve outcomes for patients in need of life-saving transplants. Through these roles, I worked with over 1,000 patients across a wide range of backgrounds, conditions, and stages of disease. What became increasingly clear was this: our crisis and acute care systems are not designed to support long-term, personalized behavioral changes - especially in areas like nutrition, stress, and daily lifestyle. These gaps create fertile ground for chronic disease and lead to the overuse of our health system built for emergencies, not prevention. As a coach, I'm here to help you build a healthy future for you and those around you. And if you're hoping to delve into a public health career yourself, I'm here to help you with that too.