From Dishwasher to Dietitian:

Breanna’s interest in nutrition started when she was a child. She loved learning information about food and nutrition and loved to study nutrition facts labels while sitting at the kitchen table, trying to learn what all the numbers meant.

When Breanna was in high school, she was employed at a grocery store for a couple of years where she got exposure to all types of products for sale. She pivoted to a new role working at the local hospital kitchen as the job paid better and offered better hours. This job better aligned with her goal of trying to keep her grades up while finishing her senior year of high school while being dually enrolled as a college student. At the time of her application, the hospital kitchen was only hiring for a tray line/dishwasher position. Breanna took the position and through her hard work, was eventually promoted to diet tech where she worked in the office near the dietitians. Breanna enjoyed hearing the dietitians talking about nutrition and also realized she had a knack for knowing which disease state required which special diet within the hospital. When Breanna graduated high school, she wondered what it would be like to go to college and learn the science behind why certain disease states required special diets.

While in college studying to be a dietitian, Breanna worked several years at the local hospital in her college town. She was also an inventory manager for an on campus food pantry called the SHOP (Students Helping Our Peers). Breanna also completed many volunteer hours giving back the community, like working for local food pantries and soup kitchens.

Breanna’s hard work in high school and college earned her a spot to Iowa State University’s Dietetic Internship, a time when landing a dietetic internship had a less than 50% match rate. Iowa State chose Breanna out of well over 100 applicants to complete her food service and clinical rotations with the local Veterans hospital, a highly prestigious offer. Breanna received experience in all of the required areas, and more, but flourished when working with patients in an outpatient clinical setting on weight loss.

Upon completing her dietetic internship and passing her board exam, Breanna moved to the East Coast where she’s been working with patients on weight loss ever since. While weight loss/gain is always her patients primary goal, her patients have also had other needs, like pre-diabetes, Type 2 Diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, GERD, and food allergies.

Breanna has personal experience losing weight and implements her own advice. She successfully lost over 50 lbs after having her first child and has lost 40 lbs since having her second child April 2025.