Today we’d like to introduce you to Lauren Cornell, MS, RD.
Lauren, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I was raised in a home where my mother prepared most of our meals and taught our family to appreciate food in its simplest form, sourcing local and organic ingredients whenever possible. I took my upbringing and this knowledge for granted, and only as an adult did I truly understand and appreciate it, especially at a time when healthcare and health problems are at the forefront of our nation’s issues.
I moved out to Los Angeles nearly 13 years ago for a career in the film & television industry and worked as a server at a restaurant in the interim — a foreign world to a girl who hardly stepped foot in restaurants growing up. As I witnessed people’s eating habits, I became aware of the beliefs and misconceptions surrounding healthy eating, quickly learning that the general public probably does not have their health in mind when making food choices. Seeing this, and comparing it to my own views on food, launched my fascination with the science of nutrition. I began reading books on nutrition, agricultural progression, food politics, and food science, attending lectures, and even experimenting with my own diet. Two defining events that occurred later in my life eventually solidified my decision to pursue this passion as a profession.
The first was my witnessing a family member’s successful battle with breast cancer, which took a positive turn from a then-hopeless prognosis with the help of medical nutrition therapy. Through the help of a dietitian, my family member was able to improve her health significantly and prolong her life by several years. To witness first-hand the science of nutrition give life back to a person was influential in forming my occupational goals, to say the least.
The second event occurred while I was traveling to Guatemala in the summer of 2009 to study Spanish. The school that I attended shared a building with a clinic that was busy around the clock treating local families who stood in line for hours, and the majority of the cases were related to malnutrition and digestive disease. This prompted me to do some research, and I found that the majority of mortalities in Guatemala were caused by these two problems, largely due to factors such as inaccessibility to nutrition education, lack of healthy food options at affordable costs, and poor food safety and sanitation regulations. When my home-stay mother was diagnosed with a GI tract disorder for which she was not given adequate diet advice, I realized that this very avoidable problem needed attention on a global level, and I wanted to help. The idea that lives could be enriched by adequate nutrition and that many countries lacked the nutritional resources that we in the United States take for granted led me to developing my goal of working to implement and improve government dietary standards in third-world countries.
Upon returning from my stay in Guatemala, I made the decision to change careers and began the six year-long path to obtain my graduate degree and credentials and become a registered dietitian. I honed my clinical practice while interning at the VA Hospital and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Not too soon after completing my credential, I opened my private practice, Lauren Cornell Nutrition, specializing in gastrointestinal diseases & disorders in pediatrics and adults. Lauren Cornell Nutrition celebrated its 5th birthday this year and could not be more happy or proud! Though I practice privately full-time, I also work in the Gastroenterology Department at Cedars Sinai part-time as their GI dietitian and volunteer with the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation’s Los Angeles Chapter.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
No life endeavor is a smooth road, though I must say I’ve been quite lucky in my path to both becoming a dietitian as well as building a successful and thriving practice. I attribute that luck to simply being on the path I was meant to travel. I have the best patients, the most inspiring colleagues, and feel consistently t interesting work.
Entrepreneurship is a daily challenge in itself, but I would say the moments that I’ve been most tested in my career have centered around dietitians not yet having a majority position in the healthcare industry (mostly to do with insurance coverage) and being a female entrepreneur. I never thought I’d list the latter as a challenge because I truly feel advantageous and strong as a woman, but I have had professional interactions where it became clear that my gender may be an issue for the opposite party. Through my heightened awareness in being able to identify these moments, by honing my clinical expertise, and by exercising a professional intolerance when they arise, I face these obstacles head on but do not let them slow me down. I can’t and I won’t. I simply do not have time for it.
I do have one motto when dealing with conflict, which arises often in business, and that is to handle each instance with compassion. There is a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt that reads, “To handle yourself, use your head. To handle others, use your heart.” I live and work by that.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
Through my private practice, Lauren Cornell Nutrition, I administer medical nutrition therapy to assist in the treatment, prevention, and management of diseases and disorders. I work with my patients’ medical teams to ensure that the nutrition component of their day-to-day is aligned with their treatment plan. Essentially, I provide guidance on specialized diets, food and supplement choices, meal plans, patient education, motivation for change, and tube feed orders for those who must receive their food via enteral nutrition. I work with all ages (pediatrics and adults) and all types of conditions but specialize in gastrointestinal diseases and disorders. I also get to work closely with athletes administering sports and performance nutrition advice as a passion.
I’ve been fortunate to have had a lot of professional accomplishments and success with business in my years of practice so far, but what I’m most proud of are the strong relationships that I’ve developed with my patients and the feedback that I’ve received related to my bedside manner. I really try to demonstrate and promote respect and compassion among everyone with whom I come in contact, be it with my patients, with other practitioners, or with my business partners and vendors. Falling back on these two values in communication has never steered me wrong. I believe it’s this skill in doing right by others in addition to my clinical knowledge that set me apart from other dietitians. I also just have a lot of fun with my patients!
What were you like growing up?
Ha! Little Lauren was perhaps the polar opposite of the professional Lauren I am most hours of the day today. Growing up, my priority was always fun. I looked for any way to make people laugh, chose to spend my time with friends and family instead of doing homework and studying most of the time, and was immersed in the arts as a dancer and theater rat. I made fast but strong friendships with everyone I came into contact with and cherished the time I spent with others.
I grew up on an island – in Key Largo, Florida – so the laid back island life was the only way I knew. I don’t think I even owned a pair of closed-toed shoes until I went to college, where I pursued undergraduate degrees in Theater and Film at the University of Florida. Back then, I never thought in a million years that I would become a scientist later in life because I was so creatively motivated, but in hindsight, I was always interested in biology and how things worked as a kid. Because I spent most of my formative years in the ocean, I was fascinated with marine biology and always thought I wanted to be an ichthyologist (basically, a fish scientist) and study shark behavior for a living. That was until I had a really great theater teacher in high school who convinced me otherwise. But I somehow found my way back to the sciences and am so happy that I did! I truly love what I do and feel that helping people improve their health through nutrition is my true calling.
Contact Info:
- Address: 2001 S. Barrington Ave.,
Suite 312,
Los Angeles, CA 90025 - Website: laurencornellnutrition.com
- Phone: (424) 259.3652
- Email: info@LaurenCornellNutrition.com
- Instagram: @LaurenCornellNutrition
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LaurenCornellNutrition/
- Twitter: @LaurenCornellRD
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