How I Got Into This Field
The Founder Story
The Early Instincts of Science and Art
From a young age, Michelle was drawn to the intersection of natural biology and creative expression. As a child, she would fill a paper cup with water, pluck flower petals from the yard, gently rub them, and drop them into the cup intuitively releasing their fragrance. This early curiosity mirrored the principles behind essential oils, a quiet blending of science and artistry that would later shape how she came to understand the world.
Movement was her first language. She began gymnastics at the age of two, learning to channel strength, balance, and energy through the body. In grade school, she played the flute, exploring sound and rhythm. At eleven, she took up cheerleading a collaborative and expressive outlet that balanced the more cerebral demands of school. A few years later, she joined a choir, where she discovered the precision and control of the voice and how singing engages the entire body in connection and expression. As a teenager, her creative world expanded into theater, set design, and musical performance, a necessary counterbalance to her studies in chemistry, biology, calculus, and physics.
These experiences didn’t teach Michelle how to express herself; they gave her space to do so naturally. Singing in a choir was particularly formative. She didn’t simply hear harmony. She felt it. Standing at the center of an ensemble, she experienced sound physically, sensing the vibration of each chord. On rainy days, when the wooden chapel roof absorbed moisture, the overtones seemed to deepen, as if another unseen choir were singing back. This embodied understanding of rhythm, resonance, and interconnection would later become central to how she approaches the human body and healing itself.
A Natural Affinity for Biology and Balance
At the same time, Michelle was deeply fascinated by the natural world, by how cells and planets mirror one another, and how everything in nature fits together in intricate yet harmonious systems. She was naturally drawn to chemistry, biology, and physics, just as she was to whole foods and herbs. She had an intuitive sense of how systems functioned, whether in the human body or the physical world around her. Even in gymnastics and cheerleading, she instinctively understood body alignment, balance, and composition without needing to consciously analyze them.
In her adult education, Michelle chose to study biochemical engineering, drawn to its blend of biochemistry and design and the possibility of creating health-focused innovations. Years immersed in calculus, physics, and multiple branches of chemistry provided a rigorous and invaluable foundation. Over time, however, she found the field increasingly tied to processed medicine and industrialized food systems. She realized she wanted to work with health in a way that aligned with nature rather than altering it, supporting the body’s inherent intelligence instead of overriding it.
Design Thinking: A New Lens on Problem-Solving
As a counterbalance to the rigid structures of engineering, Michelle turned to interior architecture, a field rooted in pure design, where space itself becomes the medium for problem-solving. She found the experience both refreshing and formative. It taught her how to work with a blank canvas, navigate open-ended challenges, and carefully document existing conditions, skills that would later become unexpectedly essential in her approach to health. At times, she even applied them practically at home, designing and building custom solutions that reflected the same thoughtful precision.
Yet, despite her deep appreciation for design, she found herself missing the intricate biological tapestry of the human body. She realized she wanted to merge her scientific foundation with her design mindset not to solve spatial problems, but to work within a living, physiological medium. This desire to unite structure, intuition, and biology would ultimately shape the way she approaches healing today.
Merging Science, Intuition, and Holistic Health
Michelle eventually returned to school, this time earning a master’s degree in holistic nutrition. Her thesis focused on holistic nutrition for non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and she initially intended to specialize exclusively in cancer care. And she did. Over time, however, her work revealed a deeper truth: cancer is never isolated. It exists within a broader web of chronic patterns, layered imbalances, and long-standing stressors within the body.
As her practice evolved, Michelle expanded her work to address not only cancer, but the interconnected conditions that often surround it: digestive disorders, hormonal imbalance, autoimmunity, fatigue, and systemic inflammation. Over more than 23 years, she has worked one-on-one with over 7,000 clients across 22 countries, analyzing more than 10,000 holistic health footprint data sets. This depth of experience has shaped an understanding that is both rare and deeply informed.
For Michelle, art and science have always been two halves of the same whole each giving context and dimension to the other. This perspective naturally led her to holistic health, where she approaches every case as a living, three-dimensional system. When she looks at someone’s health, she doesn’t see isolated symptoms or disconnected test results. She sees a dynamic picture of how the body is functioning as a whole, often revealing patterns that conventional models overlook.
Holistic health, in her view, goes far beyond protocols. It is about clarity and empowerment. Michelle helps clients understand how their body’s chemistry, rhythms, and responses interact so they can participate actively in restoring balance. Healing is not static; it is an unfolding process. She brings both scientific precision and intuitive insight to guide each person through that journey thoughtfully, respectfully, and with deep care.
