Leah Evert (MBA’19) has over 15 years’ experience in employee health, wellness, and engagement. She works as the global wellbeing lead at McCormick, Inc., and formally as the global director of associate wellbeing at Marriott International. Additionally, she served as a senior director at Wellness Corporate Solutions (now LabCorp Employer Services) where she consulted with over 30 companies on their employee health and wellness strategy including Hilton Worldwide, Johns Hopkins, and ExxonMobil. 

Previously, Evert served as a nutritionist in the U.S. Army Reserve for nine years where she engaged in humanitarian missions bringing healthcare to low-income communities across the United States. Additionally, she worked as a sports and wellness dietitian for the U.S. Air Force and held a private practice in nutrition counseling. 

Evert is also the author of Nourishing Resilience: The Thriver’s Guidebook. In it, she shares stories about her triumph over metastatic (stage 4) breast cancer, as well as stories of others who have thrived despite adversity. Her formula for success using nutrition, exercise, mindset, kindness, authenticity, and love has helped her to beat the odds despite initially being given a 1-4% chance of survival. 

She’s also the co-founder of The Willow Foundation, which provides funding to researchers that strive to find a connection between diet, exercise, and mindset and improve outcomes for late-stage cancer patients. 

Evert holds an MBA from The McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University where she was the 2019 recipient of the Daniel Walker McNeil award for excellence, a master’s degree in Sports Nutrition & Exercise Science from Marywood University, and a bachelor’s degree in Exercise Science from James Madison University, where she was a two-year captain and all-conference awardee on their division-one softball team. She’s a Registered Dietitian/Nutritionist and ACSM Certified Exercise Physiologist.