Rachel Begun, MS, RD is a food, nutrition and sustainability expert, executive and culture development coach, strategist and thought leader. She has spent her career focused on improving the health of people and the planet by creating better food products, improving food and health systems, driving thought leadership and public education, and building stronger organizations. Rachel began her career as a nutrition science expert, working for foodservice management, retail and consumer goods organizations to drive product and programming development, lead communications efforts, and act as an organizational subject matter expert and thought leader, internally and externally. As she developed her business management and leadership skills, she pivoted to a broader platform and in 2009 launched a strategic communications firm to work with organizations committed to innovating food products and food systems. Since then, Rachel has built a national reputation for driving strategic and tactical change within organizations, and as a nutrition and wellness public educator, having conducted over 1,000 interviews with major print and broadcast media outlets, writing for trade and consumer publications and being a public speaker. Rachel’s impact has always hinged on her ability to engender better communications and collaboration between senior leaders and across teams, develop a shared vision, and inspire action to tackle challenging issues, thereby building next generation products and programming and influencing organizations’ abilities to achieve their business goals and become thought leaders in their categories and industries. Rachel is now an executive and leadership development coach. She works with leaders and leadership teams to help them build and model the organizational and cross-organizational cultures they envision, with a particular focus on those prioritizing wellness and/or sustainability as core business values. In this effort, she is able to operate at the intersection of all her core competencies and experience – health, wellness and sustainability, executive team development and alignment, education, communications, and business strategy and growth. Rachel graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Emory University in Atlanta, GA with a B.A. in Biology and a concentration in pre-medical studies and earned a M.S. degree in Nutrition Education from Columbia University. She is completing the Hudson Institute of Coaching certification program in September 2021 and will soon after become a certified coach by the International Coaching Federation.