The team behind the Academy is a diverse gathering of what we think is total awesomeness. What we share is a passion for healthy inspired living. Our collective goal is to offer you a positive, open, and inspiring education in vibrant living. Please take a moment and get to know us, and we’d love to connect with you online too!
STAFF + FACULTY
Meghan Telpner
Academy Director + Instructor
The first cookbook I ever owned was called “Help, My Apartment Has A Kitchen” and I was well into my 20s when I got it. In 2006, I was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease, an incurable auto-immune disease. With an applied arts degree in fashion and marketing and three years into a career in advertising, I dropped it all and cartwheeled in a different direction, determined to do what I was told was impossible — get healthy. And I did. Within three months, I was 100% symptom-free and have had no sign of the disease since.
This drove me to scream, yell and sometimes even tap-dance from the rooftops that if we give our bodies what they need to heal and be well, that’s exactly what they’ll do.
I made it my goal to continue to learn and share everything I know about health, culinary nutrition and vibrant living in the most fun, approachable, delicious, engaging and judgment-free way possible. I do loads of cheerleading on television, have an online video series called MeghanTV, and am never shy to say what I really think. My first book UnDiet: Eat Your Way to Vibrant Health is an award-winning best seller. What I am most excited about is that it has all has come together to allow me to share my passion and knowledge around the world through the Academy of Culinary Nutrition.
Josh Gitalis
Instructor
I am a clinical nutritionist and functional medicine practitioner. Though my practice is based in Toronto, thanks to modern technology, my client base extends worldwide. I have had the privilege of teaching clinical nutrition for several natural health colleges and am the first Canadian nutritionist to be accepted into the Institute for Functional Medicine Certification Program, where I am currently pursuing certification as an Institute of Functional Medicine Certified Practitioner (IFMCP). I also appear as an expert for various media outlets including CTV News and CityTV.
What sets me apart from most nutritionists is my passion for science and a thorough understanding of the human body, which enables me to treat the root cause of imbalance, rather than Band-Aid the symptoms. This allows me to understand the approach taken in conventional medicine, enables me to read blood work and essentially leverage the best of what modern science can offer, while working with the body’s natural healing mechanisms and using therapeutic nutrition as the key to healing.
I have always been fascinated with the fields of health and the human body. I began studies in these areas at The University of Western Ontario, receiving an honors degree in kinesiology and working on the football team’s sports medicine crew. When I began discovering the world of natural nutrition and the power food and therapeutic nutrition has on maintaining health, resolving acute health challenges and even reversing long-term, chronic health conditions, I was hooked.
I am honoured to be part of the faculty of The Academy of Culinary Nutrition, where I can share my passion for both functional medicine, nutrition, traditional herbal remedies and the latest in modern elixir craft.
Sondi Bruner
Head Program Coach
I wear many hats: holistic nutritionist, writer, cookbook author, food blogger, recipe developer, chocolate lover.
You’ll get to know me best in my role as Head Program Coach for the Culinary Nutrition expert program. I’m here to support your growth in the program, answer all your Qs, extend an ear, or lend you a cup of coconut sugar if you knock on my door. Most of all, I want to empower you to combine the information you learn in this program with your skills and share this valuable information around the world!
I educate people who follow allergen-friendly diets about how to eat simply, deliciously and safely, allowing them to rediscover the pleasure of food and shift their mindsets from deprivation to abundance. Drawing on my extensive personal experience with Crohn’s disease, I aim to help others nourish their digestive tracts and deftly move through stress so they can savour a life of toot-free fun.
Jennifer Forndron
Admin & Kitchen Support Lead
After struggling with a number of health issues and finding myself in a monotonous corporate job for nearly a decade, I set out on a quest for healing.
In 2016, I started my health journey by going back to school to become a holistic nutritionist. The education was eye-opening and awesome but I was craving more. I wanted to learn how to cook food from scratch that would be nutritious, delicious and healing so that I could nourish myself, my family and others around me. This craving led me to enroll in the Culinary Nutrition Expert program in 2017.
My love of dogs and new found nutrition knowledge led me to the holistic dog industry, which I found rewarding yet ultimately failed to scratch my holistic health itch. As much as I enjoy helping our four-legged friends, my true passion has always been the health of the less furry and more bipedal members of our planet. In fact, since graduating from the Culinary Nutrition Expert program, it was a goal of mine to work with Meghan, so I think it’s fair to say that it really is a dream come true to join the Academy of Culinary Nutrition team.
Nicole Benson
CLIENT SERVICES, PROGRAM COACH + CULINARY NUTRITION EXPERT
Nicole is passionate about healthy food and teaching others how to fuel their bodies with delicious whole food. She has a food blog where she posts healthy recipes. She used to run a small plant-based catering company, specializing in gluten-free and dairy-free dishes. Nicole has also taught Restorative Yoga classes, and is currently working as a Virtual Assistant for different wellness clients.
Lora Appleby
PROGRAM COACH + CULINARY NUTRITION EXPERT
I’ve been a dental hygienist for the past 14 years and continue to enjoy that career. Along with my love and respect for teeth (one of the first stages of digestion!), nutrition and what we choose to chew on has become a major passion in my life. I enjoy educating people in my community through workshops about foods that help us heal and prevent disease, specifically digestive cancers.
My grandfather, Giovanni, grew up on a farm in Italy and when he moved to Canada, he brought his love for food and gardening with him. I had the privilege of spending much of my childhood and adult life on his farm where he instilled in me “The power of a seed.” This is a lesson I will cherish, pass on to my children and continue to practice every year in our family garden. Almost time to pick the Romano beans!
I have always loved cooking. Since having children I have become more inspired to create nutritious and delicious meals and snacks to fuel my family.
I am extremely excited to be a part of the Academy of Culinary Nutrition team and community.
Jaclyn Beaty
Program Coach + Culinary Nutrition Expert
Jaclyn has over 12 years of experience working in various health educator roles within the Corporate Wellness industry. With a degree in Nutritional Science from the University of Missouri, Jaclyn has continued her education to become a Certified Healthy Behaviors Coach, Certified Wellness Practitioner, Culinary Nutrition Expert, and Certified Functional Nutrition Coach. Through her years of experience, Jaclyn has worked with employee groups nationwide to help foster a corporate environment that promotes optimal well-being within the workplace. In addition to personal health coaching services and nicotine cessation coaching, Jaclyn has created course content, health challenges, health education material, and client communications, bringing practical and relevant programming to self-insured companies seeking to reduce their healthcare costs. After stepping back from daily job demands to care for her young children, Jaclyn has continued to offer life-changing health coaching, meal planning, cooking classes, and children’s nutrition packages through www.jaclynbeaty.com. Her enthusiasm for health is contagious as she provides high-level education and support for individuals who want to improve their life through nutrition and the life-giving skill of knowing how to cook.
Outside of work, you can find Jaclyn attempting culinary magic in the kitchen, slalom skiing, exploring the great outdoors with her family, and challenging herself to not let anything from her backyard garden go to waste.
Melanie Connolly
Program Coach + Culinary Nutrition Expert
I’m Melanie Connolly, a Culinary Nutrition Expert and Functional Nutrition & Lifestyle Practitioner.
I graduated from the CNE Program at the Academy of Culinary Nutrition, The Institute of Transformational Nutrition (ITN), The Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN) and Holistic Nutrition Labs Full Body Systems Program. I’m also a Program Coach in the Culinary Nutrition Expert Program.
My culinary nutrition focus is women’s health and teaching strategies and tools for getting healthy meals on the table.
Theresa Diulus
PROGRAM COACH + CULINARY NUTRITION EXPERT
Theresa Diulus is a Spring 2014 CNE graduate. She is also a Nutritional Therapy Consultant, Health Coach, and has her MPH-Nutrition. Theresa began her wellness journey with a diagnosis of Hashimoto’s Hypothyroiditis at the age of 28, thyroid cancer at 40 and put on observation for Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma at 44. At that point, she looked for a connection between her health and nutrition. That led her to become educated in nutrition and experiment with many different ways of eating (vegan, paleo, vegetarian, AIP, Whole30, ketogenic), arriving today at her own whole foods-based eating style. Her lifelong passion for cooking combined with what she’s learned drives her to create delicious recipes enabling her to sustain a healthy lifestyle that she happily shares with those around her.
Laura Hearn
PROGRAM COACH + CULINARY NUTRITION EXPERT
Food is such a huge part of our lives and one of the biggest components to our health. It’s something to be celebrated and enjoyed!
Mealtime can be used as a tool to connect with our kids and teach them healthy eating habits that help to create a positive, healthy relationship with food. But when life gets busy, it’s often one of the first things to fall by the wayside.
I know this firsthand. After embarking on my own health journey, I saw a big shift in my family’s eating habits and our attitude towards food.
Now, as a Culinary Nutrition Expert, I help busy families bring more confidence, joy and ease into their kitchen through cooking classes, meal prep services and kitchen coaching!
Caitlin Iles
Program Coach + Culinary Nutrition Expert
My name is Cait Iles and I’m Certified Nutritional Practitioner and Culinary Nutrition Expert with a keen interest in keeping up to date on the latest and greatest in nutrition and wellness research. I’m so passionate about helping my clients feel happier, more energetic, and totally in love with their lives because I’ve been on the other side and know that there’s more to life than aches, pains, and fatigue. In my practice I assimilate the latest research with time-tested, evolution-based nutrition concepts to help my clients achieve the boundless energy, glowing skin, and healthy bodies that they’ve always thought were beyond their reach. My mission is to help my clients change their relationships with food, so they can create their healthiest bodies and their most fulfilling lives. I fully believe that true health starts with what we put in our bodies and that once we’ve figured out the foods that nourish our bodies from the inside out, we can achieve things beyond our wildest dreams!
Suzy Larsen
Program Coach + Culinary Nutrition Expert
I’m passionate about health and food. My website is a resource you can refer to when you you’d like some healthy ideas for your own family.
My journey in the professional health began when I became a Certified Aromatherapist in the early 2000s but this course of study only spurred my interest in other paths holistic. Included in my search for personal and professional health enlightenment was becoming a Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist, a Nutritional Consultant, a Functional Nutrition Coach, classification as a Culinary Nutrition Expert….and a whole bunch of hard-won life experiences.
I’m especially keen on helping others become aware of a whole new way of approaching food—each bite either helping or hindering health goals. The best way to do that is to learn to love the kitchen and know for certain what’s going into your tummy. That’s not how it always was for me though. Even though I did my best to prepare healthy meals I never spent much time there (I guess I wanted to get on with other things) consequently undervaluing its importance. Then one day it all clicked for me: “if my health is so important why am I not putting in the effort to get to the heart of health—food preparation?” I needed to put the heart back in my kitchen and embrace it with gusto. The kitchen is where health begins and if I wanted to be my best physically and mentally then I would take that food processor by the horns and learn to cook from scratch. Not surprisingly it’s been one of the most exciting adventures of my life.
The recipes included on my website are inspired by a few things. First, I was no stranger to anxiety and insomnia and have since learned how big a role food can play in relaxation and sleeping. Recently I began offer a powerful recipe e-book called, “40 DINNER INSOMNIA-BUSTING RECIPES FOR DEEPER SLEEP (WITH GUIDE)”.
Secondly, I am a mother of a 11 year old and if I want her to have the best chance at health in a world plagued by conditions and diseases then I must commit to her health too by providing nutritionally stellar and visually appealing dishes. Sadly the food that a lot of kids crave nowadays has nothing to offer in the way of health but with a little effort (sometimes a mountain of effort), we can set them on track for an amazing future.
There’s an underlying theme to the Custom Meal Plans and Custom Recipe E-Books I offer: each is designed to balance blood sugar. This seems to be the key to battling many health conditions. The other two extremely important themes to my recipes are that of being gluten and dairy free. So please visit my kitchen virtually and we’ll both learn to cook together from scratch and put the heart back in the kitchen because that is where health begins.
Gillian Macgregor-Spurr
PROGRAM COACH + CULINARY NUTRITION EXPERT
Hey, I’m Gillian *waves*, I am a certified running coach and 2018 Culinary Nutrition Expert graduate. I moved to Canada, from Scotland, in 2014. At that time, I was really unfit and unhealthy, and had no idea how to truly be healthy with movement and nourishment.
In 2015, to kickstart me on my health journey, I set myself a goal of running a 5K race and, as they say, the rest is history! I stumbled my way through, having no idea how to actually train for a 5K nor how to actually eat healthy; I read books and articles, listened to podcasts, attended webinars and conferences and slowly was able to sift through the rubbish!
I came across the Culinary Nutrition Expert Program in 2018 and jumped at the chance to increase my nutrition knowledge. Not only did this program give me a deep understanding of nutrition, I gained so much confidence in the kitchen, and can now confidently create food that will fuel my body for optimal running performance and recovery. I love helping people run their best and feel good in the process.
Lizette Marx
Program Coach + Culinary Nutrition Expert
Lizette has been passionate about cooking healthy, delicious food for others and deepening her culinary skills and knowledge for more than 30 years. She is a professional holistic chef and baker, certified nutrition consultant, culinary nutritionist and 500 RYT yoga instructor. Lizette was one of the lead instructors for the Natural Chef program at Bauman College for 10 years and while there co-authored the Flavors of Health Cookbook with the college’s founder and president, Dr. Ed Bauman. Lizette now devotes her time to her own business, Kitchen Treasures™, a culinary nutrition education and personal chef in the East Bay that she runs with her husband, also a clinical nutritionist and chef.
Lizette regularly offers healthy cooking demonstrations and classes to corporations, organizations and private groups. Most notably she has developed a series of plant-based cooking demos and classes for the Physicians Wellness program at all of Kaiser Permanentes Diablo Valley locations. Her classes focus on traditional farm-to-table and international cuisine with an emphasis on bringing mindfulness and joy in the kitchen, understanding the healing qualities of SOUL (seasonal, organic, unrefined, local) food flavors, mastering anti-inflammatory cooking methods and gluten-free and paleo baking. When not in the kitchen, Lizette teaches weekly group and private yoga classes and maintains a nutrition consulting practice.
Sylvia Ng
PROGRAM COACH + CULINARY NUTRITION EXPERT
Sylvia is deeply grateful that her journey has been shaped by her travels around the world. Learning about other foods and cultures while living in communities, volunteering on farms, and cooking her way through different countries has evolved her passion and ethos for food and sustainability as well as her compassion for all living things and the earth. Sylvia’s time spent in ashrams, eco-villages, a vegan animal shelter farm as well as farmers markets, a donation-based restaurant, and yoga & meditation centers across the world influenced her ethical values behind creating Chefs for CHEFS and working on her first cookbook.
Veronica Jean
Program Coach + Culinary Nutrition Expert
In case we haven’t met yet, hello! I’m Veronica Jean. I’m a Nutritionist, a Culinary Nutrition Expert, as well as the founder and host of Networking Nutritionists. I’m also a mama, avid reader, and overall student-of-life.
Late in my teens, my life hit rock-bottom—hard. I had youth on my side, yet I was struggling with debilitating digestive, hormonal, and mental health diagnoses. Despite multiple prescriptions from my doctors, I just kept getting worse. I knew I needed to find a different solution to reclaim my health. So, I changed the course of my life in search of the answers! My own experience healing fuelled my dedication to helping others.
Since then, I’ve worked in the nutrition field for 15 years, and have been fortunate to gain experience in a variety of roles—from directing a 7-figure health food store and multi-disciplinary clinic for a decade, to education and government contracts, to maintaining a private practice at capacity and contributing to the non-profit sector. These days, I bring my diverse experience to Networking Nutritionists because I believe in the power of connection!
At the Academy of Culinary Nutrition, I’m privileged to share my passion for learning as a Program Coach!
Wendy Rose
PROGRAM COACH + CULINARY NUTRITION EXPERT
I’m Wendy Rose, 2014 Graduate of the Culinary Nutrition Expert Program and back for my 7th year as a CNE Program Coach.
I’m thrilled to be part of the CNE team sharing this profound knowledge with our global community from around the world.
I grew up having digestive issues & allergies and started looking at food as the enemy. It wasn’t until I changed my mindset and embraced what I could eat versus what I couldn’t eat that my healing journey truly began.
The CNE program taught me the benefits of healing foods and the art of recipe development allowing me to feel confident in the kitchen.
What you eat truly affects the way you feel. When you educate yourself you can heal yourself.
Food is part of our everyday life. The best advice I can give is to make time to cook healing and nourishing meals from scratch. Spend time with loved ones in the kitchen. Learn a new skill, or make a new recipe then sit down and enjoy some laughs together over a meal. Get out in your community and support local farmers, head to a local restaurant, start a cooking club, attend workshops, or enjoy your own backyard garden.
Along with sharing my love of cooking with family and friends I work behind the scenes for The Ultimate Health Podcast and The Ultimate Baby Podcast. Both are great resources to keep up-to-date with the latest information in the natural health and wellness space. Be sure to tune in for topics on nutrition, mindset, lifestyle, pregnancy, parenting and so much more.
Heba Saleh
PROGRAM COACH + CULINARY NUTRITION EXPERT
Heba Saleh has a background in writing, business, and education. She has been working as a digital marketer and brand strategist for a few years. She has a Master’s in English with a focus on Cultural Studies, and a minor in Business. In 2020, she incorporated her marketing and consulting business, Key of Life Ventures. She is also a health and wellness advocate for the past 15 years. During the pandemic, she obtained both a yoga teaching certification through YogaSix and a culinary nutrition certification through the Academy of Culinary Nutrition. Her calling is to empower others to take ownership of their health journey through education, community, and accountability.
Nicola Solomonides
PROGRAM COACH + CULINARY NUTRITION EXPERT
I’m Nicola, a Certified Culinary Nutrition Expert and Instructor, and the owner of Good Gut Feelings.
Being a long-time IBD patient, I’m passionate about helping others with digestive issues and chronic illness to eat for health and be active patients. I adopt a food-focused approach to health, simply because the food we choose to eat is so important, and is something everybody can work with. My aim is to help people play an active role in improving their health and to simplify the world of ‘healthy eating’ so that it can be incorporated into daily life for the long term.
My culinary nutrition focus is on helping those with IBD learn how to eat in a nutritious, health-promoting way, working with their personal food tolerances, and making the most of the food that supports their gut and overall health, and helps them feel their best!
Lindsay Taylor
Program Coach + Culinary Nutrition Expert
Lindsay is a cookbook author, health researcher, doula, and mom who transforms an academic background into real-food, real-world, and practical solutions to help modern moms feel supported, nourished, and energized as they embrace the challenges and joys of new motherhood.
Nicha Petrakos-Willcox
PROGRAM COACH + CULINARY NUTRITION EXPERT
I have spent more than twenty years cultivating a nutritious lifestyle to support my own conditions and the IC/BPS community. My time at the Academy of Culinary Nutrition gave me the tools I needed to make lasting changes for myself, my family, and my clients. I continue to grow, learn, and cultivate my craft to the best of my ability.