Building Bridges: Jean's Mentorship Journey with Diversify Dietetics

Jean Liu, MS, RDN, LD

“I feel seen as a queer, Asian, neurodivergent provider. I feel that Diversify Dietetics started at just the right time for me to feel supported as a new dietitian these past few years."

Q: Why did (or why do) you want to become a nutrition professional (registered dietitian, registered dietetic technician, etc)?

A: I became interested in nutrition while attending college at UC Davis - it was a time when I became very invested in my health. After a hard relational experience, I threw myself into trying to “be as healthy as possible” via a lot of running, exercising, and eating specific foods, and then becoming fixated on details about food like calories and tracking. I was Googling “how to be healthier” (which, as we know, can be a slippery slope for health advice), but I simply didn’t know any better. So for better or for worse, my fixation manifested into this desire to become a dietitian. At the time, I didn't realize how unhealthy that obsession was, and I think that is also unfortunately very normalized within our field. Some more background about me is that I grew up as an athlete and I did a lot of body-focused sports like gymnastics and cheerleading. So my obsession drove me to want to become a sports dietitian, which I think of as the dream job so many dietitians want. So my desire to become a sports dietitian became an all-consuming goal that felt very validated. At the time, I was being mentored by the sports nutritionist at UC Davis, who, I think, saw right through me, so when I said: “I want to do what you do. How do I be you?” she was the one who recommended that after I graduated if I still really wanted to be a sports dietitian, I become familiar with the treatment of eating disorders. I took her advice to heart, and I started working at an eating disorder treatment center during my gap years before applying to my MS/DI. And that was when my world opened up and I realized, my passion for nutrition was centered on disordered behaviors, and in deconstructing that I realized that my true passion lay within wanting to help folks like myself - people who have a disrupted relationship to *actually* having a healthy relationship to food/themselves.

Q: Is there a person or group or activity/event you’ve been able to get connected to thanks to DD - what has that looked like and how has it impacted your personal or professional growth?

A: My first mentorship pairing is someone that I am still connected with, Laura Iu, and I was following her on Instagram for years at that point when we got matched. So leading up to that moment, I had a parasocial relationship with this person that I really admired as an Asian ED RD on social media. So when I was paired with Laura, I was like, “oh my goodness, I finally get to meet and personally know this goddess” and so that was incredible! That was also during lockdown in the pandemic between 2020-2021 and there was a lot of Asian hate, and it was a really hard thing to talk about anywhere because people were just very uncomfortable with the topic, understandably. But I was able to talk to Laura about that a lot, and that felt invaluable. She was validating and such an important support to me through that time. Since then, we’ve remained connected through an Asian ED clinician supervision group, which was created from the BIPOC ED Conference.

The following year, I had the opportunity to mentor another Taiwanese dietitian which was such a fun experience. We weren’t practicing in the same spaces as she was a public health/pediatric clinical dietitian, but we both had shared lived experiences of feeling out of place in our roles (aka imposter syndrome), and being interested in exploring other areas of dietetics.

This past year, I was in the ED/Private Practice Pod and met Sydney Cavero-Egúsquiza, and Sydney has not only become one of my closest personal friends, but also been someone who’s taught me more than anything I've ever learned about private practice. Sydney has not only provided me with step-by-step resources to get started, but she also offered a workshop on billing and insurance for our pod. 

When Jean described Sydney she said, “we're friends and humans first, but with a professional layer of mutual support and mentorship. Receiving professional guidance from someone that I love and trust is something I’m so grateful for.”

Q: How did you feel after finding the DD community?/ Did anything change once you got connected with DD?

Just knowing that there is a space to come to that is centered on diversity is valuable because of the norm that presently exists in dietetics. So simply knowing the space exists already brings in the value of safety. Despite never participating in any in-person spaces, I still feel very connected to the virtual DD space, knowing that even in the small world of eating disorder clinicians, I feel seen as a queer, Asian, neurodivergent provider. I feel that Diversify Dietetics started at just the right time for me to feel supported as a new dietitian these past few years.

Q: Do you have any advice to share for others who may be struggling on this journey?

A: First, I’m curious what that struggle is and what you're feeling about what you’re struggling with. If it’s about finding people who can connect with you about what you’re going through, know they exist and know that you’re not alone! Personally in my journey to become a dietitian, I was very fortunate to have felt community in my journey to become a dietitian. At UC Davis in California, where I did my undergrad and DPD program, there was actually a lot of diversity and POC in my program, which was very encouraging. It was only after applying to grad school for my MS/DI at Simmons University in Boston and learning that that internship was “very diverse,” and then seeing that I was one of two Asians (with a few other people of color), did I then realize how lucky I was to have started studying nutrition in such an inclusive and supportive space. And so again, I think it’s key to find connections that feel safe and to remember that you are never alone in what you are going through!

Q: What would the field of nutrition & dietetics look like if we were to reshape it?

A: I think that the field of nutrition and dietetics could change the world, and how the world thinks about and approaches nutrition and health professionals. If the field was reshaped, I can imagine a world where we could be better respected and valued in our communities, medical communities, and by the public in general, which in turn could transform people’s health from a top-down approach with folks getting credible nutrition education, expertise, and support from professionals that are actually trained and qualified!

I would start with changing the access to how to become a dietitian and the schooling process. I think we really need to talk about how trivial some requirements are (e.g. needing any kind of a Master’s degree) and what it is we *really* want for our profession. I think we need to first, make school more affordable (this is a systemic education issue, not just a dietetic issue) and then calibrate what it is we really want dietitians to be trained in and go through, and why. I have very specific opinions on what dietitians can be better trained in, but I am biased about that as a passionate eating disorder treatment dietitian! Ultimately, I think we need more dietitians to be trained in trauma-informed, anti-oppression, and agentic care - which is not at all what we learn about in our schooling.

I think the field needs to be reshaped internally, and that starts by acknowledging the ways we CAN have so much power to change our communities - especially in the outpatient private practice space. We not only help people change their behaviors as behavioral scientists, but we are anthropologists who observe and examine why people have these behaviors as they move through the world. We need to learn so much more about social interactions, the intersectionalities and identities in these social interactions, and why people have the motivations for what they do. Learning to have this deeper understanding of people’s varied lived experiences can play such a powerful role in helping people. If we're just staying at the surface with diet and eating (which, yes, is important), we’re going to be missing the deeper ways our work can be life-changing. Yes, food is going to be the bedrock of how we teach our clients and patients how to take care of themselves, but it’s just the key to unlocking the door to how a person continues to explore what their needs are and why they have learned to ignore/challenge their needs. From there, a person can actually grow into taking care of not only their bodies, but also their mind, soul, and then their families and loved ones - it’s the domino effect of community care that I really believe can change the world. If we could teach people to focus their energy on how to be authentically healthy, which in turn helps to model to those around them how to live and be authentically healthy - can you imagine the amount of energy that would be redirected to meaningful change in our world? I believe in this vision and I feel lucky to share this vision with so many other dietitians I met through Diversity Dietetics. Here's to refocusing our time and energy on the things that really matter, which is a hope I have for beyond the field of nutrition and dietetics but also the world around me.