We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Marisa Woodward a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Marisa, appreciate you joining us today. Looking back on your career, have you ever worked with a great leader or boss? We’d love to hear about the experience and what you think made them such a great leader.

The best boss I have ever had was actually from a job completely unrelated to nutrition. It was a job that accidentally fell into my lap when I was in college. I worked for a woman named Bridgette, who owned a crystal and metaphysical store in Marietta, Georgia.

The first time I was introduced to her store was from my friend, Abi, who worked there at the time. I remember having a particularly tough day. She invited me in, the energy in the space was soft and inviting. She recommended I should interview for a position there, so I did – not thinking it was going to absolutely change the way I view entrepreneurship or a positive work dynamic.

I worked for Bridgette for five years while I was in college and after graduation. You can imagine that school, on top of being a student-athlete, and having full-time internship took up a lot of my time, but working for this woman was worth going into that store during each weekend and every second of my free time to help out with business endeavors. She was the most supportive boss of my dream of becoming a dietitian.

During my last year of college, I was diagnosed with POTS and Dysautonomia. I remember calling my doctor on the way into the store for my shift explaining the brain fog, elevated heart rate, and other symptoms I was experiencing. The person I was on the phone with mentioned how I was no longer on any health insurance plan. I walked into the store, in tears of course feeling so helpless, and Bridgette immediately scheduled an appointment for me to see her dietitian, kinesiologist, and chiropractor.

This story stands out to me the most, because it was a time in my life where I felt the most support in any job I have had. She continued to show up for me and still does even though I have become a dietitian like I was working so hard on during my time working for her.

Marisa, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Marisa Woodward and I am a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and also a retired collegiate cross country and track athlete. My professional background in nutrition is actually attributed to my experience as an athlete and I totally stumbled into my career path by accident due to lack of knowledge between the difference of a nutritionist and a dietitian.

I really started taking running seriously early on in my engineering-focused high school. I originally had it planned that I would become an underwater welder at one point. While there was support in that career decision from my family, my dad educated me on the dangers of that job and ‘if I were to have a family someday, I should rethink that decision.’ At the time, I was already a part of the varsity cross country team and taking a nutrition course.

I guess the stars aligned at some point that year because it wasn’t soon after that my track coach started getting inquiries from the head coach at a little holistic university in Marietta, Georgia. A university I had never heard of and truly thought was an internet scam. Turns out this small college tucked in the woods near Atlanta, was one out of three schools in the state of Georgia with a dietetics program. Upon the campus visit, I was introduced to the nutrition department where the head coach confidently stated that I was interested in the dietetics program. She should know that indirectly she’s the reason I am a dietitian because I played along with it after my mom tried to correct her that I was interested in becoming a nutritionist. Four years later with a bachelor’s degree, 9 month unpaid internship with Duke University, and several months of studying for the national exam, here we are.

I now am a nutrition counselor supporting athletes, athletic individuals, and everyday people in my nutrition practice, Feed The Intention, LLC. My nutrition counseling business is designed for one on one support, not just in nutrition and physical movement, but also in relationship to food and body, and recovery habits like sleep and stress management. This one on one approach is essential because I do not believe in the “one size fits all approach” – many things effect peoples individual health and having a support system can be essential for positive outcomes in my client’s goals.

My clients often come to me for support in their challenging athletic endeavors. I work with people training for marathons, IronMans, ultramarathons, backpacking trips, climbing to the top of El Capitan in Yosemite, the list really goes on. What I have discovered in my professional career, is that no one is immune to disturbances in their relationship with food and body. These one on one conversations lead to often sharing struggles with their relationship to food and movement, which I take into consideration in interventions and goals that come out of sessions.

What sets me a part from traditional counseling is that I am never just working on nutrition and how that support training. I am looking at my clients from a whole person point of view. With this approach, I often find myself referring my clients to additional support systems to create more of a team for their wellness support like therapists, medical practitioners, physical therapists. We create a multidisciplinary team so they are able to get a whole approach.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

There was a time after my internship that I was considering completely giving up on becoming a dietitian. My internship was tough. I moved to North Carolina to complete the dietetic internship and only in a few months of being there, my personal life was in rough shape. I was considering quitting the internship to move back to Atlanta to deal with what was going on personally. With everything going on, studying for the national exam was non-existent so I went into my first exam attempt with little to no preparation, just hoping for the best. Obviously “hoping for the best” is not going to give you a passing score. That day, I remember scrolling through jobs to become a flight attendant. My partner, who is now my husband, shut my laptop was I was scrolling on the job market and told me I had come to far in this process to decide to change it up. The studying process became a long one for that exam, but I didn’t give up on it and I am so thankful becoming a flight attendant didn’t happen.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Once I became a dietitian, my first job was actually for a athletic league in Atlanta. I worked there for two years alongside a team within the health department. This job was very media focused for the athletes. My job consisted of managing the foodservice staff, performing and analyzing body composition stats for the athletes, providing game day meals, snacks, and a lot of other miscellaneous tasks that did not feel fulfilling.

There was a time in that job, where I was told the nutrition counseling aspect of my responsibilities had to be stopped. That kept me from interacting with the players and having that one on one approach with them like I do now in my business. Without getting to know the athletes, and them getting to know me, how was nutrition supposed to be something they cared about or something they notice improving their performance and recovery?

Shortly after, the values of that role no longer felt aligned with the work I was trying to do or the lives I was trying to positively impact. That’s when I decided to pivot and start Feed The Intention, LLC, to really work with people where the investment in their personal health was something no one could take away.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://feedtheintention.com/feed-the-intention-website
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/feedthebrunette/?igsh=ZWNibW9sbXBuZ2g%3D&utm_source=qr

Image Credits

Photos By: Jenna Neilsen