Contributors

Katherine Shagoury is the editor of Integrative Practitioner. She brings a decade of experience creating and managing content for national healthcare audiences as a digital editor and professional journalist, including serving as managing editor for a popular medical billing and coding association and as a reporter for the Boston Globe, Boston.com, and USA Today. A certified personal trainer and nutrition coach with the National Academy of Sports Medicine, a certified group fitness instructor with the Athletics and Fitness Association of America, a certified barre instructor, and a TRX qualified trainer, her passion for and commitment to healthy living fuels her enthusiasm for supporting the integrative healthcare community.

Kellie Blake is a registered dietitian, licensed to practice dietetics in West Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky. She graduated from the University of Kentucky in 2001 with a Bachelor of Science in Dietetics and in 2018, she became an Integrative and Functional Nutrition Certified Practitioner. In 2015, Blake was recognized as a Top Ten Dietitian by Today’s Dietitian Magazine. Blake practices in a variety of areas including psychiatry, hospice, and enteral and parenteral nutrition. She is also the Chief Nutrition Officer for KyKana Corporation, a Kentucky-based company on a mission to bring health and healing to Appalachia. In addition, Blake owns a private practice, NutriSense Nutrition Consulting, LLC, where she utilizes her functional nutrition training to assist clients in preventing and reversing chronic disease. Blake has used functional medicine and nutrition to reverse her own autoimmune disease and is passionate about sharing the food as medicine message. She is the author of The Psoriasis Diet Cookbook, and maintains a nutrition and lifestyle blog and Instagram account.

Carolina Brooks is a functional medicine practitioner who uses a systems biology and science-based approach to healthcare involving nutrition, genetics, herbal medicine, endobiogeny, and orthomolecular medicine. She has also trained in Ayurveda and Chinese medicine, ear acupuncture for addiction cessation, coaching, neuro-linguistic programming, and hypnotherapy. Brooks works to educate, support, and empower clients to take responsibility for optimizing their health. She has first-hand expertise in managing stress and improving energy levels in high-pressure working environments. She runs her own clinic, Anthrobotanica, based in London, and works as a consulting practitioner for Holistic Heart Center of America. She consults wellness start-ups and clinics, formulates supplements, and has created herbal products for both the wellness and hospitality sectors. She runs corporate wellness programs and has developed educational courses for practitioners and the general public. She started her career in investment banking before establishing her consultancy practice in the wellness sector.

Melissa Carr is a registered Dr. of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), lecturer, and health writer. She has a degree in kinesiology and worked in medical research in Japan prior to her Traditional Chinese Medicine studies in both Canada and China. As a result, she loves to blend Eastern and Western natural health knowledge and therapies. In practice since 2001, Carr enjoys integrating patient care with other healthcare professionals because she believes that this provides the best patient experience and outcomes. Having worked with some of the top names in sports and entertainment, Carr was chosen as one of the few acupuncturists for Vancouver’s 2010 Olympics and Paralympics, and she also volunteered at the World Police and Fire Games. As a passionate educator, Carr has been a teaching assistant for anatomy and an instructor for nutrition at the West Coast College of Massage Therapy. She continues educating the public about natural health matters via lectures, including to Blue Cross, David Suzuki Foundation, Fraser Health Authority, and the University of British Columbia. She is an advisory board member of Alive magazine, writes for several publications, and was a columnist for a Vancouver newspaper. She is now in the process of writing a book on nutrition from a TCM perspective.

Bill Reddy began his career as an Aerospace Engineer, flight-testing helicopters with the U.S. Navy, putting satellites in space with the U.S. Air Force Space Test Program, and supporting the director of flight test for the Joint Strike Fighter program. He continued his education pursuing master’s degrees in Mechanical Engineering at Florida Institute of Technology and Systems Engineering at George Mason University. He changed careers and studied acupuncture and oriental medicine under professors and graduates of Beijing and Shanghai medical schools in 1997 at the Maryland Institute of Traditional Chinese medicine. Since that time, he has been working on bridging the gap between acupuncturists and physicians and pioneering integrative health across the nation. Reddy has served on the executive committee of the Integrative Health Policy Consortium for seven years and has been co-chair of the Federal Policy Committee for the past five years, and currently co-chairs the Education Committee. He has presented at national conferences, including the Integrative Healthcare Symposium, the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine, the International Congress of Integrative Medicine and Health, and the American Traditional Chinese Medicine Association, and is the author of over 100 publications. He enjoys training in tai chi, qigong, and modern arnis, and practices at Inova Hospital in Fairfax, Virginia.