Vani Hari Founder of The Food Babe.com and Truvani
You probably know Vani Hari "The Food Babe," a nationally known health food activist. But did you know she grew up in Charlotte and graduated from South Mecklenburg High and UNC Charlotte?
Her Indian immigrant parents named her "Vani," which in Punjabi means "the voice." She lives that out as a blogger, influencer and consumer advocate. Hari has taken companies to task like Chick-fil-A, Kraft, Starbucks and more recently Kellogg's, arguing they have harmful ingredients in their products. She marched at Kellogg's headquarters, bringing more than 400,000 signatures and demanding the cereal company remove dyes and the chemical BHT from its products. She has testified before the U.S. Senate, spoken at the Democratic National Convention, and appeared on CNN, Fox News, Good Morning America and more.
Hari is the daughter of a mechanical engineering professor and a math teacher. She got her college degree in computer science and took her first job for the consulting firm, Accenture. She started researching nutrition after suffering appendicitis in 2002 and vowed to get healthier.
“For most of my life I was addicted to industrial processed food but then I had a health crisis and I woke up,” she says. “I stopped outsourcing my decisions to industry experts and demanded to know the truth about what I was putting in my body.”
In her first three years as a blogger, “The Food Babe” attracted more than 57 million views.
“Little did I know this blog would change the world," she has written. Her cookbook Food Babe Kitchen is a New York Times bestseller. She co-founded a line of organic food known as Truvani.
Hari lives in Charlotte with her husband and two children. You can find her on Instagram @thefoodbabe.
Addy Collett Founder of The Health Club
Collett is opening a new fitness and recovery club called The Health Club on Monroe Road this month. Her goal was to create an upscale fitness facility and recovery club with a holistic approach. The 18,000 square foot space features an open-concept gym, classes for bootcamp, Pilates and more. It has luxurious locker room spaces with saunas, steam rooms, cold plunge and hot tubs. More than 600 founding memberships were sold within minutes.
Collett was born and raised in Charlotte and graduated from Charlotte Latin. She has always been a lover of the outdoors. She grew up hiking, skiing, and running. But she found her passion for group fitness while attending the University of South Carolina.
"I struggled to find my way at USC amid the party scene but quickly fell in love with the community and social aspect of working out and group fitness," Collett said. She started her personal Instagram account @FindYourAltitude about healthy living and finding balance as a college student. She now has more than 13,000 followers.
Jeremy Boone Founder of Athlete By Design
Boone is a performance coach, motivational speaker, best-settling author and the guy you want to bump into when you’re walking into work, dropping your kids off at school or anywhere you could use some general good cheer.
Boone was born in Mobile, Ala., raised in Greenville, S.C. and came to Charlotte after graduating from the College of Charleston in 1995. He made a name for himself working as a speed and performance coach for the Carolina Panthers. He’s coached Olympic athletes from around the world as well as local athletes such as former UNC Charlotte quarterback Chris Reynolds, NASCAR driver Joey Logano, and young players in Charlotte FC’s Academy.
As he progressed in his career, Boone's emphasis shifted from the physical side of sports to the mental. He teaches leadership principles to coaches and athletic directors in high school, college sports and professional sports as well as the corporate world.
When he became a parent, he also saw the value in coaching parents. Boone wrote Parent Your Best (following up his earlier work, Coach Your Best) about the traps parents fall into when they push their children too hard in athletics. He stresses that parents should encourage young athletes to play multiple sports and that they need to teach kids to take responsibility for their own actions. He tells a story of a friend who kept bringing cleats to his daughter's school before soccer practice because she forgot them, until Boone intercepted them one day to break the cycle.
Dr. Ana-Maria Temple, M.D. Pediatrician at Integrative Health Carolinas
Ana-Maria Temple was working full-time as a hospitalist in Charlotte and raising three children, ages 2, 4 and 6, when she had an epiphany that changed the course of her life. All three of her children were sick, she says. Her 2-year-old had allergies so bad he had to skip Easter egg hunts outside or his eyes would swell shut and he would break out in hives. Her 6-year-old had acute asthma and eczema, which quickly turned any cold into an ear or sinus infection. Her 4-year-old had ADHD and “a booger” problem, with a runny nose for the ages, which she describes in her book Healthy Kids in an Unhealthy World.
Somewhere between doctor visits recommending her children be on medication for the foreseeable future and a lecture on nutrition at her children’s school, “the fog lifted,” as she writes. Temple went home and cleaned out the family pantry, replaced processed foods in her children's diets with fruits and vegetables, and began a quest for healthier lifestyles that took her family all the way to New Zealand for a time.
When she started making lifestyle changes, “no one liked me, including my husband," she wrote. "We fought over food all the time.” Her friends and medical partners questioned her sanity and the depth of her research. But she stuck by her motherly instincts and slowly but surely her children started getting better. She returned to Charlotte determined not to practice medicine the same way, so she opened her own practice to share what she'd learned.
Hope Skouras Founder of The Whole Hope
The Charlotte native, wife and mother of three is a certified integrative nutrition health coach. She created a product called Lemon Swirls, which you add to a glass of water—or mug of steaming water, child’s water bottle, or even a cocktail—to get a jolt of lemon flavor with a boost of good health. Lemon Swirls contain lemon, ginger, turmeric and honey, which give it anti-inflammatory properties, antioxidants, and Vitamin C.
“It’s instantly hydrating,” Skouras says. “It’s great for your skin. It’s great for digestion.”
For Skouras, it all comes back to digestion. At age 17, she was diagnosed with Crohn's disease and at age 22, she underwent an operation to remove a portion of her small intestine. She controlled her symptoms with medication until another flare up in 2020 after having her third child during COVID. It was then that Skouras decided to give holistic medicine a try. Inspired by the nutrition coach at her doctor’s practice, she decided to get certified herself.
She was drinking lemon water every day and passed on advice to her Instagram followers at @thewholehope to do the same. Many commented that they didn’t want to take the time, which prompted her to create her own easy-to-make formula in her own kitchen. She released the product last January and it's taken off. Lemon Swirls are now available at Reid’s Fine Foods. Plans are in the works to start shipping Lemon Swirls throughout the Carolinas, and hopefully, Skouras says, beyond.
“Mentors have said to me, ‘trust your gut,’ which makes me laugh because all of this is because of my gut,” she says. “So I need to keep trusting it.”