History and
Leadership

David M. Eisenberg, MD, is the director of culinary nutrition and adjunct associate professor of nutrition at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. He is the founding Co-Director of the Healthy Kitchens, Healthy Lives conference, and founding Executive Director of the Teaching Kitchen Collaborative, a group of 30+ organizations with teaching kitchens, all of which seek to establish and evaluate best practices relating to nutrition, culinary and lifestyle education.

From 2000-2010, Dr. Eisenberg served as the Bernard Osher Distinguished Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, founding director of the Osher Research Center and the founding chief of the Division for Research and Education in Complementary and Integrative Medical Therapies at Harvard Medical School. He simultaneously served as the director of the Program in Integrative Medicine at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital.

David is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Medical School. He completed his fellowship training in general internal medicine and primary care and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine. In 1979, under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences, David served as the first U.S. medical exchange student to the People’s Republic of China. In 1993, he was the medical advisor to the PBS Series, Healing and the Mind with Bill Moyers.

He has served as an advisor to the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration and the Federation of State Medical Boards with regard to complementary, alternative and integrative medicine research, education and policy. From 2003-2005 David served on a National Academy of Sciences Committee responsible for the Institute of Medicine Report entitled, ―The Use of Complementary and Alternative Medicine by the American Public. More recently, David served as a member of the US National Board of Medical Examiners Clinical Skills Committee and its Communications Task Force.

David has authored numerous scientific and educational articles involving complementary, integrative and lifestyle medicine and continues to pursue research, educational and clinical programs relating to integrative and lifestyle medicine. As the son and grandson of professional bakers, David aspires to bring together the culinary and medical communities to enhance comprehensive health care for all.

Katie Welch is delighted to utilize both her personal passion for food as medicine and more than 20 years of advancement experience to fortify and enhance the work of the TKC. She previously served as the Executive Director of the Cambridge Public Library Foundation, leading a rapid expansion of fundraising and community building to support a seven-branch library system. At the Library Foundation, Katie worked closely with dedicated board members to design, elevate, and expand a comprehensive development platform to drive all types of fundraising and build towards a $10M endowment goal. Katie began her career at The Guidance Center in Cambridge, MA, rising to the role of Director of Development before becoming the Director of Development and Marketing for Riverside Community Care, the largest nonprofit health and human service organization in MA.

Katie holds a degree from Tufts University and a certificate from the New York Center for Homeopathy. She is a board member of the Friends of the Melrose Public Library and Grassroots Environmental Education. When she’s not at work, Katie likes to experiment with new recipes and enjoy nature with her husband and two young daughters.

After completing her MBA at McGill University, Margaret realized that her interests lay in the public sphere vs private business. This led to working in a government agency, a nonprofit consulting firm, an arts center as well as several political campaigns. She is a community builder who advocates for DEI in all of her work.

Margaret holds a graduate certificate in nonprofit management from Northeastern University and is a Society for Human Resources Certified Professional. She is an elected Town Meeting Member and serves on several nonprofit boards. She is excited about TKC’s mission having been a member of a local CSA for many years.

Rachel focuses on member engagement and operations at the TKC.

Rachel Bartlett is a Registered Dietitian with a Master of Science in Nutrition Education. She has worked with USDA food programs, nutrition policy, research, and health promotion in early care & education (ECE) settings. Recently, Rachel served as an Implementation Advisor to several states for a change management program to promote healthy eating and activity in ECE settings at UNC-Chapel Hill. She has experience in coalition building and training and is excited to leverage her skills and experience with the TKC.

Before working in nutrition, she was in culinary book publishing. In her spare time, Rachel enjoys outdoor hikes, yoga, and discovering new recipes.

Emily focuses on content creation and educational resources.

Emily’s insatiable curiosity for food began when she moved to NYC and visited a farmers market for the first time. The more she cooked with whole foods the more she connected the dots between what she was eating and how she felt; and the more she wanted to support others in eating and living more healthfully. She began volunteering on urban farms in NYC and abroad, preparing nutritious meals in shelters, and leading cooking and nutrition classes throughout the city. To hone her own cooking skills, she volunteered as a kitchen assistant at the Natural Gourmet Institute, a health supportive culinary school in NYC, where she would later receive a certificate in culinary nutrition.

Eventually this passion became a career. For the past five years, Emily has enjoyed working in this overlap of cooking, nutrition, education and community engagement. In 2019, she took a year away from the office to work in kitchens across the country, including Chez Panisse in Berkeley, CA. Emily now lives in Asheville, NC with her husband and her sourdough starter.

Kate focuses on helping the research efforts of the TKC.

Kate is a Registered Dietitian with her Masters in Public Health. She has previously worked with school food service administration, restaurants as well as a private practice dietitian. She has completed her 200hr yoga teacher training. In addition to her work with the TKC she teaches an undergraduate course at Northeastern University focused on public health nutrition programs in community settings.

Jen leads the research efforts of the TKC.

Jen started her career in public health doing lab bench science at Harvard in the environmental health department investigating occupational health exposures and poor health outcomes. She went onto Johns Hopkins where she helped perform a study of the rescue and recovery workers at the World Trade disaster site and the physical and mental health consequences of their first response efforts. Jen then returned to Harvard where she earned her joint Doctor of Science degree in Epidemiology and Nutrition where she studied diet and lifestyle and associations with cancer in the large Harvard cohorts. In her postdoctoral years, Jen joined a neuro-epidemiology group at Harvard where she studied viral and other environmental exposures and risk of Multiple Sclerosis. As a research associate, she worked at the Channing Lab where she continued her work in preventative medicine looking at sleep and circadian rhythms and risk of cancer and other outcomes. Jen jointly held an appointment as Instructor at the Harvard Medical School where she worked in the Anesthesia Department of Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital helping to conduct randomized clinical studies.

Jen connected with David Eisenberg at the Nutrition Dept where she worked with him to create a study to investigate the teaching kitchen as a preventative health intervention. Now, Jen helps the TKC establish research projects and begin to develop research protocols for the multi-site research efforts of the collaborative.

In addition to her research efforts, Jen was a residential first year proctor and academic adviser at Harvard College for 15 years and continues to sit on the Freshman Board of Advisers where she continues to advise Harvard freshmen. Jen currently lives in Cambridge, MA where she loves to run along the Charles River and dig in her community garden.

Stacey focuses on the Marketing and Communications of the TKC.

Aside from Stacey's professional experience in creative marketing for start-ups and growing businesses, she has helped open several food businesses, taught plant-based cooking classes, built food gardens, and completed training in multiple holistic wellness modalities. She has a B.S. in Environmental Affairs and an M.S. in Holistic Nutrition.

Stacey is passionate about healthy food, sustainability, and holistic wellness, and enjoys utilizing her creativity to support the vision and share the stories of those changing lives through food.