NutritionJobs.com: You have been an RD for over 30 years and are also a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. You have two Master’s Degrees (Nutritional Science and Social Service), you are the author of several publications, including “Counseling Tips for Nutrition Therapists,” and you are a leading expert in Motivational Interviewing. All this while also running your own nutrition and psychotherapy private practice that specializes in eating disorders, disordered eating and binge eating. Impressive! Can you tell us how you got where you are?

Molly Kellogg: My first jobs in nutrition were in a WIC program and then in a hospital pre-natal clinic. I wanted to help people eat better! I then started a private practice on a part time basis in the 1980′s. During this time, eating disorders started coming my way and I realized I needed more skills. I started taking workshops, reading, trying to figure it out, until finally I decided I needed to more training and went back to school to get a Social Work degree in the mid 1990′s. As I was getting that degree I realized my colleagues were going to be therapists, and that I could become a psychotherapist too. I never planned to leave the field of nutrition but this is the way it evolved, and the fields are very complimentary. I started getting asked by nutrition colleagues to do workshops and training on counseling skills. Now half of what I do is writing, speaking, and training nutritional professionals on counseling. I mostly train dietitians who work in private practice, outpatient hospital clinics, or eating disorder programs where they realize, as I did, that we didn’t get enough counseling training in our nutrition training.

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NutritionJobs: You recently spoke on the topic of Supermarket Nutrition at FNCE this year and discussed the opportunities for dietitians as “Supermarket Dietitians”. Can you tell us how you found yourself in the position as a Corporate Dietitian for the Arizona grocery store chain, Bashas’?

Barbara Ruhs: My exposure to education in the supermarket setting started when I was an undergraduate at Cornell in the 1990′s. I worked as a research assistant for a work study project leading supermarket tours at Wegman’s (an East Coast grocery store chain). The seed was planted. During graduate school and my internship at Boston University, I did a community health rotation at Boston Public Schools. This experience solidified my interest in public health. My first job was working for the Massachusetts Child Nutrition Programs implementing the Dietary Guidelines in school meals. Changing school meals for better health was challenging due to many things, including financial constraints. Making global changes in government programs takes a lot of time and political will. I found myself asking the question, “There must be a better way to make difference?”. So, I started my own business, Neighborhood Nutrition, to bring the message back to the local level and use retail venues to educate. I pitched the idea to store personnel in my neighborhood at Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s. I even had the opportunity to present the idea at the corporate offices for large retailers in Boston, including Stop & Shop and Shaws. There was a positive response, however, the missing piece was funding. No one had a corporate budget for nutrition education or health promotion. So I continued to build my private practice and worked as a dietitian for Harvard University. The exposure to different ethnic, educational and financial backgrounds of the clientele inspired me to develop new approaches to solve public health issues. Eventually I received a lead about a supermarket job at Bashas’ in Arizona and jumped at the opportunity for my dream job.

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NutritionJobs.com: You received your Diet Technician registered (DTR) certificate at Merritt College in 2008 and have worked at the San Francisco VA Medical Center (SFVAMC) and with Byram Healthcare. Would you consider your jobs traditional or non-traditional?

Nancy Bloom: I would consider both my jobs have traditional aspects but also rather untraditional aspects in terms of what I am able to do under the supervision of an RD.

What does your day look like at SFVAMC?

Working as a DTR at the SFVAMC, I work very closely with the RD’s. I don’t know of any other place that gives you such lateral experience and amount of responsibility in the field. My regular day at the SFVAMC can include a myriad of tasks such as a comprehensive screening of patients at mildly/moderately compromised nutritional risk, nutrition consults, teaching classes, DT intern and RD intern training, and special event planning.

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NutritionJobs: You have been the Nutrition Strategist at Clif Bar & Co. for over 10 years. You started in the Customer Service Department and then developed and expanded the Nutrition Department. Your current role is in Nutrition Brand Strategy, Nutrition Education, Nutrition Communication, and Nutrition Labeling Claims affairs. Tell us how you got there.

Tara DelloIacono Thies: As you mentioned, I started in Consumer Service (CS). They had just launched Luna Bar and were getting tons of nutrition questions that they couldn’t answer. Clif Bar had a dietitian that consulted for them but they decided they needed an RD on staff to answer these sorts of questions. The position quickly evolved into having me train the CS department to answer the nutrition questions we frequently received. I wrote nutrition resources for the CS team. The brand and marketing teams then also started using those nutrition resources, which linked into the development process for new products that would impact the health of women, kids, and athletes. This all fed into the strategy portion of my job, which is now what I spend a lot of time thinking about and doing. Wondering how can we make a healthy product that will really benefit certain populations.

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