Meet the bloggers taking on Natural Products Expo West 2015

Brandon Waloff is a holistic health counselor from The Institute for Integrative Nutrition (2005). Professionally, he has worked with clients as a health coach leading individual and group programs on whole food nutrition, wellness, lifestyle and cleansing protocols. He is an expert in the natural product industry and has worked as a national educator, sales manager, consultant and currently as a social media marketer for wellness brands.

Originally trained as a fine artist and printmaker, Brandon went through his own healing crises and transformation after a trip to Japan in 2003. He has since immersed himself in holistic health, cleansing and nutrition practices, studying Western herbs, energy work and movement/dance. In 2010 he received his 200 hour YTT in Michaelle Edwards YogAlign© method and has spent almost ten years studying the work of Gabrielle Roth’s 5 Rhythms, Contact Improvisation and Ecstatic Dance.

You find him sharing on his page, The Health Crunch and @soulclarity on Twitter and Instagram. Brandon loves to dance almost more than anything, he currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Erica Dermer is founder and head celiac in charge of Celiac and the Beast. She started her website because she felt like she had a new and humorous voice to bring to the gluten-free table, and desperately needed some celiac catharsis through writing and blogging. With a background in marketing and market research and development (including the food and beverage industry), she’s always had a soft spot in her heart for packaged goods, marketing, and branding in the specialty diets industry. It also helps that she’s a self-proclaimed terrible cook, so she relies on many gluten-free products to help her get through her day without burning down the kitchen. She uses humor to get through her diagnosis and living gluten-free in a world full of wheat. As a celiac and gluten-free advocate, her aim is to educate the world about celiac disease and the importance of this wonderful "less than 20ppm" universe we live in. She has partnered with her non-celiac significant other, who not only designs gluten-free themed merchandise for Celiac and the Beast, but is a key taste-tester for the brand. Her first book, "Celiac and the Beast: A Love Story Between a Gluten-Free Girl, Her Genes, and a Broken Digestive Tract" was released in October 2013 and highlights her life with a celiac disease diagnosis and what she's learned along the way.  

Jennifer D. Harris, based in Atlanta, is a gluten-free consultant and product specialist. After she was diagnosed in 1997 with celiac disease, Jennifer began a mission to educate businesses and consumers on the boundless possibilities of living a gluten-free lifestyle. In addition to offering keen insights on gluten-free products, Jennifer founded the Gluten-Free Go-To Guide to equip businesses with the skills they need to extend their dining selections to the gluten-free consumer. In addition to penning her own blog, Jennifer also writes for Examiner.com as the Atlanta Gluten-Free Food Examiner and is a regular contributor to Gluten Free Living Magazine.

Jennifer has been a fixture in the natural products industry for more than 10 years, first as a buyer at an independent natural health food store where she turned the store into ‘the’ place to purchase gluten-free products. She also spearheaded labeling all gluten-free products with a shelf tag and watched as traditional grocery stores began to follow her lead. Second, she has served as a researcher and product reviewer who hasn’t missed Expo West since 2009 because it is ‘the’ place for natural products and sets the schedule for product launches throughout the year. Jennifer is responsible for bringing many gluten-free products to Georgia, including introducing Udi’s Gluten Free breads and muffins before they were in distribution and only known to the gluten-free blogging community.

As a gluten-free advocate, Jennifer has served as a volunteer on the board of the Gluten Intolerance Group of Atlanta, where she recruited members, scheduled meetings, wrote the newsletter and organized its highly successful vendor fairs. Jennifer also volunteered her time with Camp WeeKanEatIt, a gluten-free camp in Georgia, by obtaining product donations to fill the menu with gluten-free foods to ensure camp is a unique and safe experience.

Jennifer remains active in the Atlanta community as the only member of the Atlanta Food Bloggers Society following a gluten-free diet and sharing her restaurant and product finds with the community. Her weekly updates as the Atlanta Gluten-Free Food Examiner are well received and respected in the gluten-free community.

Lindsay is a digital marketer based out of Los Angeles. Her company, LTM Digital, focuses on digital marketing strategy, product marketing and social media with a focus on technology, health and wellness, and e-commerce. She believes in innovation and is constantly keeping her fingers on the pulse of new and emerging trends in the digital marketplace. Lindsay has been gluten free since 2012, which was the inspiration in creating her health and wellness blog, FitandAwesome.com. In her free time she enjoys surfing, snowboarding, playing soccer and hanging out with her husband, their newborn daughter and golden retriever.

Better known as “Mommy Greenest,” Rachel Lincoln Sarnoff is a journalist and former CEO of Healthy Child Healthy World, who was editor of Children magazine before she had three of her own.

Rachel was featured in Los Angeles and Lucky magazines and appeared on “The Today Show” and “CNN Headline News,” among others. The author of The Big List of Things That Suck, Rachel is a Los Angeles based writer and consultant who publishes MommyGreenest.com, sharing healthier parenting advice with less judgment, because you shouldn't have to be a scientist to raise healthy kids.

Follow her @RachelLSarnoff and at YouTube.com/RachelSarnoff.  

Sarah Kay Hoffman is a wellness expert specializing in food allergies/intolerances, digestive health and women’s issues and is the founder and author of Sarah Kay Hoffman, along with the founder of A Loving Spoon nut butters. She is a certified health coach (CHC) from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, mama via adoption plus foster-to-adopt advocate and wellness expert.

Sarah Kay Hoffman holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities in Marketing, Mass Communications, and English.

Sarah Kay Hoffman has helped thousands of women via her blog, e-books and health coaching programs live their healthiest and happiest lives by fueling and healing with food and lifestyle vs. drugs and medication.

Through her blog, she helps inspire women worldwide via hundreds of unprocessed recipes by navigating food, various protocols and special diets (gluten free, dairy free, soy free, Paleo, GAPS, SCD, autoimmune, etc.). She inspires living and leading a vibrant life even when things don’t go as planned through her stories on living with autoimmune, embracing infertility, raising baby and more.

Her mission is to walk alongside other women who have ever been or are beginning to enter into the footsteps she has taken and to help them rejoice in knowing (her life mantra), “When gravel roads are all you’ve ever known, you learn to find beauty in the dust.”

Whitney creates video, social media content and digital products to raise awareness about how to make healthy eating choices, develop a planet-friendly lifestyle and live life to the fullest. She the founder of EcoVeganGal.com and author of several ebooks. Passionate about business and marketing, Whitney has helped countless entrepreneurs create strategies for social media, YouTube and brand building. She's taught classes for BlogHer Food and Rouxbe, spoken on panels for Fitness Magazine and Blog Well Summit, and has been interviewed for magazines (Laika Magazine) books (Vegan Business Book) and websites (highimpactblogging.com). 

Jules Shepard is a regular contributor to many magazines, including Living Without’s Gluten Free & More (where she is also Associate Editor) and Gluten-Free Living, as well as Prevention.com. She is the author of three highly-regarded published books and numerous e-books on gluten-free living and cooking. She is a featured “Celebrity Chef” in Living Without’s Best Gluten Free Cookbook and is a featured Contributor to Dr. Alessio Fasano’s 2014 book, Gluten Freedom.

Jules also hosts a popular weekly radio show, personally pens one of the community’s most active gluten-free blogs, oversees the annual Gluten-Free Cookie Swap, and moderates her Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and Google+ presences.

In addition, she runs a gluten-free flour company and logs tens of thousands of miles a year speaking to, teaching and encouraging gluten-free consumers around the country. As an industry consultant, she helps companies in their transition to offering safe gluten- and allergen-free foods, and she has also spoken at numerous industry and retailer events, including Natural Products Expo East education seminars and Healthy Baking Seminars.

As a passionate gluten-free advocate, Jules has had an active role recently. When the FDA appeared stuck in neutral regarding long-overdue gluten-free food labeling regulations, Jules brought the gluten-free community together by co-founding 1in133.org and building an 11-foot-tall, one-ton gluten-free cake in Washington D.C. to get the FDA’s attention. The FDA not only attended the event, but promised to front-burner the regulations, which it did. It announced final labeling regulations in 2013 which will take effect in August of 2014.

Jules can be found at gfJules.com and @THEgfJules.

Jackie Day successfully fought to rid California public schools of soda. She’s pleaded before a school board to rescue a pig being sold for slaughter at the county fair in Miami. And she’s spoken on the evening news on behalf of fish in Malibu. Aptly hailed as a “Mover and Shaker” by the American Public Health Association, Jackie believes there isn’t a creature too big, or too small, when it comes time to stand up—and speak out—for their wellbeing.

Jackie has been featured on the CBS Evening News, CNN, NPR, and TIME Magazine. Also, she was the subject of the PBS documentary, Tipping the Scale: an in-depth investigation of the childhood obesity epidemic. Jackie was also a featured speaker in the Natural Products Expo East education session: "Promoting Your Plants: How to Successfully Market Plant-Based Products to Consumers."

Jackie Day received a Teacher of the Year Award from the Los Angeles County Department of Education and a Healthy School Hero Award, from the National Education Association.

At the state level, Day was selected to serve as a co-chair of California Sen. Tom Torlakson’s task force on youth and workplace wellness. California Project LEAN and the California State PTA have also honored Jackie for her teaching excellence and activism. As a result of her successful advocacy work, Jackie was selected to serve as a health policy consultant for the Kaiser funded Healthy Eating Active Living (HEAL) campaign.

Jackie created the popular blog, My Vegan Journal, where she provides tips and inspiration for plant-based living. Her savvy writing and social media skills garnered her recognition on the Dr. Oz Show for having one of the “healthiest” Facebook pages in the USA.

Jackie, who has been vegan for more than 30 years, published her first book, The Vegan Way: 21 Days to a Happier, Healthier Plant-Based Lifestyle That Will Transform Your Home, Your Diet And You (Macmillan), in 2016.