BIOGRAPHY
Personal Background
Carmen was born in Evanston, Illinois and moved around to several different cities and states before landing in Chattanooga, TN at eight years old. She comes from a small family, with one older sister and her mother and father making up the household. After seeing how diet drastically improved her acid reflux and her father’s battle with high cholesterol, her passion for nutrition, health, and wellness was born. Carmen and her family have lived a revamped, healthier lifestyle for the last twelve years. Finding a balance between optimizing health without sacrificing enjoyment of food is a lifestyle that she hopes to share.
When not in school, Carmen spends her down time visiting family and friends in Chattanooga and participating in outdoor activities such as hiking, walking and biking along the river, and taking her dog Trooper to the dog park.
Academic Background
Currently in her final year in the nutrition program at the University of Tennessee, Carmen will be graduating in May 2018 with a Bachelor’s of Science in Health and Human Sciences, Nutrition: Dietetics. Since deciding on this program, she has volunteered in the Graduate Nutrition research lab under Dr. Colby, participated in the Get Fruved initiative to promote healthy eating on campus, spent time as a VOLS 2 VOLS peer educator, and also had the opportunity to work with other nutrition majors in her sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma.
In the spring of her sophomore year, Carmen began volunteering in the nutrition research lab for the first time. She was part of a group of undergrads and graduate students who visited local schools and taught students about the MyPlate curriculum and physical activity. They also performed food frequency questionnaires on the children and entered data into NDSR software. That fall the same group of graduate students led the Get Fruved initiative on campus to educate students on incorporating healthy diet and exercise plans into college lifestyle. During the 2014-2015 school year they set up displays at various on-campus events to promote the program. In that same year, her junior year, Carmen became active as a VOLS 2 VOLS peer health educator. Inclusive of many different topics including healthy relationships and mental wellness, this program held events in order to educate students about the importance of overall health. Also in this year, Carmen worked at Summit View Health Services in Farragut,TN as an assistant to the nutrition coordinators. In her senior year, she spent some time with the Academy of Student Pharmacists in order to explore the option of attending pharmacy school post-graduation. Ultimately she decided to take some classes in a new area of study in order to find her calling.
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Post Graduate Plan and Career Goals
In the fall of 2016, Carmen had the opportunity to leave Knoxville for a year to work full time and explore where she wanted to take her degree. With a part-time schedule of business classes taken at Chattanooga State Community College, she excelled and discovered a new found interest in accounting. Almost immediately she found a job as a bookkeeper and began learning the basics on counting, consolidating, and data entry. Although she wanted to initially continue her career in this direction, she plans on finishing the nutrition program first and then continuing her education in an accounting program in the fall after graduation. The marriage of these two fields will provide her the opportunity to start her own business, a private practice in which patients are provided with nutrition therapy in addition to supplemental holistic, all natural therapies.
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