You Are Meant for
More Than You Imagined

Are you open to becoming someone your younger self never imagined?

I once believed that I had already achieved the career goal I was destined for.

As the Sports Dietitian for Oregon State University Athletics, I was living out a dream I had carried since childhood.

Growing up in New Hampshire, I was very active in sports, participating in field hockey, alpine skiing, and track and field, and I fully embraced New England’s strong sports culture. I loved the energy of live games and the passion and purpose athletes brought, and I was drawn to being a bigger part of that environment.

I landed my dream job after completing my master’s degree at Oregon State University. Although I began in an academic role, my connections with Athletics led me to volunteer with teams and give presentations, which eventually paved the way to a full-time position. Earning this role felt incredibly rewarding; I had worked my way into an environment I deeply respected.

Working in college athletics remains one of the most meaningful experiences of my life. I worked with hundreds of athletes from diverse backgrounds, each with unique stories, disciplines, and motivations. I admired how they pushed themselves physically and mentally, and I loved the opportunity to apply nutrition and human physiology to support and optimize their performance.

More importantly, it’s where I learned the value of food beyond fuel. It represented culture, identity, comfort, and connection. The most effective recommendations came not only from science but also from understanding the person sitting across from me, including their values, preferences, and lifestyle.

But over time, I realized that my biggest challenge as a dietitian in this specialized role was to continue addressing each athlete’s unique needs.

Meanwhile, another kind of curiosity began to grow.

I became fascinated by emerging research on genetics and the microbiome (what we now call precision health and wellness). The future of nutrition was expanding beyond performance to understanding people at a deeply individual, biological level.

Around that same time, a colleague I had met through college athletics reached out to me about an opening at a biotech startup in Seattle that was pioneering “scientific wellness”.

The opportunity felt exciting, but also deeply unsettling. Leaving athletics meant walking away from the identity I had spent years building.

Still, I applied.

I drove five hours from Corvallis to Seattle for the interview, hopeful and nervous. Then, after all of that effort, the company paused hiring. I remember feeling disappointed, yet strangely unable to let the opportunity go. So, four months later, I reached out again and found that hiring had resumed.

I interviewed again and was offered the position.

It was time to leap!

I negotiated my salary and accepted the offer the day after Christmas in 2016, with my new position starting at the end of February in the coming year.

For those two months before the move, everything felt uncertain, and fear found me.

I had to leave a role and community I loved to find temporary housing in Seattle. I also had to prepare my heart for a long-distance relationship with my partner. We already owned a home together in Corvallis, and he had a thriving career there.

On the job front, I feared that leaving sports nutrition would mean losing a core part of who I was. In some ways, that fear did materialize.

When you step away from college athletics, you lose the daily rhythm of that world. You no longer fully grasp the grind athletes and practitioners experience in real time.

But I eventually realized that identity doesn’t vanish simply because your environment changes.

My years in athletics became the foundation for everything that followed. They gave me credibility, perspective, and a deep understanding of human performance, which I continue to apply to my clients and patients in the women’s health space where I now work.

What started as a leap away from one dream became a leap toward a much fuller version of myself.

Since then, my confidence has grown, not from certainty but from lived experience. I’ve taken risks, navigated transitions, and learned to adapt when things don’t go as planned.

Moving from athletics into the startup world has provided opportunities I never could have predicted. It has challenged me to think differently, made me more resilient, and introduced me to so many incredible people along the way.

The biggest lesson I learned is that growth rarely feels comfortable in the moment. Sometimes the hardest part of change is believing that who you are today can become something even greater tomorrow.

I thought leaving athletics meant giving up my dream. Instead, it taught me that the most meaningful leaps in life aren’t about abandoning who you once were. They’re about allowing yourself to become more than you originally imagined.