History
I was born and raised in Western New York and graduated from Canisius College (now Canisius University). I spent more than twenty years working for local health plans, focusing on the health and wellness needs of older adults in the community. I developed educational resources for members and managed plan benefits like fitness programs and wellness cards. I created and taught wellness classes all over Western New York for employer groups, community organizations, senior centers and more.
Read on for more background, or click here to go directly to my training and certifications.
The Early Years
Wellness has always been woven into my life. I grew up with a grandmother who was a vegetarian and went to the gym—long before anyone else’s grandma was doing that sort of thing. Helen wasn’t a cookie-baking grandma. She was a read the labels, eat your vegetables, stop that slouching kind of grandma. She took vitamins. She practiced reflexology. Her bookcase was packed with what my brother and I affectionately called her “cure yourself with food” books. I adored her.
Helen died when I was in my late twenties, so she never got to see me create New Sky Wellness. Still, it’s incredible how much of what I do today is rooted in what I learned from her. In the 1980s and ’90s, her beliefs were nearly radical—that some fats are healthier than others, that artificial sweeteners weren’t the miracle they were marketed to be, that food could genuinely hurt or heal us. Today, those ideas are largely accepted as common sense.
The Inspiration
I don’t remember Helen ever practicing yoga, but while going through old family boxes recently, I found handwritten notes—hers—about spinal exercises and yogic breathwork. She never used the word Ayurveda, yet she instinctively knew that meat was hard on digestion and which spices could soothe different ailments.
Helen wasn’t perfect. Like many women of her generation, she smoked for much of her life. She quit when I was ten, after several attempts, finally turning to hypnosis. It worked—she was smoke-free for nearly twenty years—but she still died of lung cancer. As she aged, she exercised less. Cooking became harder, and processed foods became more frequent.
Helen taught me that perfection isn’t the goal. Learning is. Staying curious is. Trying new foods, new practices, and remaining open to new ideas as we navigate life in this flawed—but still remarkable—machine we call the human body.
I miss her every day. And I am deeply grateful to her for laying the foundation for New Sky Wellness.
My Wellness Journey
My fitness career began in 2002. I was diagnosed with a stress-related autoimmune disease and required abdominal surgery. During my recovery, I discovered Pilates. It restored my strength and I quickly became an instructor, teaching twice-a-week classes for several years.
I was a consistent gym-goer for a long time, but when I began running in 2013, it soon replaced the gym for me. I completed my first marathon – the Buffalo Marathon – in 2014. When I was expecting my son, I ran throughout my pregnancy, right up until my due date, and returned to running post-pregnancy as soon as I got the ok. I ran a half-marathon three months postpartum.
In 2018, I trained for and completed the Buffalo Marathon a second time, with an almost-three-year-old son at home – an almost-three-year-old who hated sleep and broke his arm halfway through my marathon training. The stress of balancing work, life and training created another health scare for me, sending me to the ER with heart attack symptoms.
It wasn’t a heart attack, thank goodness, but an anxiety attack – and it was a wake-up call. My doctor recommended taking some time off from running. “Have you tried yoga?” he asked.
A New Path
Dutifully, I tried yoga. I’d love to tell you that it dramatically and immediately changed my life, but it didn’t. My first class was okay. It felt good to move and stretch. The instructor had a calm voice and a soothing vibe about her.
But I went back, week after week. Yoga didn’t leave me out of breath and exhausted like running did, but I could feel that I was using muscles differently and challenging my body in new ways.
One day during class, the instructor brought me a yoga block and placed it under my hand as I struggled to hold my balance in triangle pose.
“I don’t need that,” I told her.
She smiled. “Why make it harder than it already is?”
That question struck a chord in me. Making things harder than they already were was my specialty. Maybe yoga was here to teach me how to change that.
I went on to complete my initial 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training in 2021 and I continue to pursue my 500-hour Advanced certification. Through yoga, I was introduced to Ayurveda and completed my Ayurveda Specialist certification in 2024. Both yoga and Ayurveda are lifelong studies, and I look forward to discovering the new ways they will shape my work.
Certifications & Training
- Group Exercise Instructor, National Exercise Trainers Association
- Certified Personal Trainer, National Exercise Trainers Association
- Registered Yoga Teacher (200 hour), Yoga Alliance
- Certified Wellness Practitioner, Wellness Alliance
- Certified Wellness Coach, National Exercise Trainers Association
- Senior Fitness Specialist, National Exercise Trainers Association
- Certified Corrective Exercise Specialist, The BioMechanics Method
- Certified Ayurveda Specialist, Yoga & Ayurveda School