Monica Aggarwal, MD, is an adjunct Associate Professor in the University of Florida’s Division of Cardiovascular Medicine where she conducts research on the impact of nutrition in chronic illness. She also serves as the Chief Medical officer of the not-for profit, 4Roots Farm which is looking at how to improve food quality to improve human health.  She received her medical degree from Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine and subsequently went on to complete a residency in internal medicine at Tufts University Hospital in Boston, MA. She then completed a cardiology fellowship at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, MD. 

Dr. Aggarwal’s own path to understanding the impact of nutrition in illness started soon after the birth of her third child, when she developed an advanced form of rheumatoid arthritis. She was placed on medications that gave her severe side effects. It was only through learning about the microbiome (gut), its impact on the immune system and the role of nutrition in affecting the gut, was she able to truly heal. Determined to change the face of medicine, Monica left private practice and returned to academics in order to pursue research on the role of diet and to create an integrative cardiology practice focused on nutrition and lifestyle.  

To learn more about Dr. Monica visit her website here.

Dr. Kim Allan Williams, Sr., is the Endowed Professor of Health Equity and Chairman of the Department of Medicine at University of Louisville (UofL). He originates from the South Side of Chicago, and transitioned from the inner-city Chicago Public Schools to the College of the University of Chicago (UC), where he majored in biology (AB’75). He earned four Maroon varsity tennis letters, playing number one singles for his last three years, and subsequently taught and played tennis professionally. He trained at UC’s Pritzker School of Medicine (MD’79), internal medicine at Emory University (1979-82), and back to UC for Cardiology (1982-85), Clinical Pharmacology (1984-85), and Nuclear Medicine (1984-86). He is board certified in Internal Medicine, Cardiovascular Diseases, Nuclear Medicine, Nuclear Cardiology, and Cardiovascular Computed Tomography.

Dr. Williams began his academic leadership as UC faculty (1986) and was promoted to Professor of Medicine and Radiology in 2003. He became the Dorothy Susan Timmis Professor and Chief, Division of Cardiology at Wayne State University in 2010, and was the James B. Herrick Professor and Chief of Cardiology at Rush University (2013-22). He also served as Rush’s Associate Dean for Faculty Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (2020-22) until his appointment as Chairman of Medicine at UofL in 2022.

He has served as President of the American College of Cardiology and the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology (ASNC), and as Chairman of the Board of the Association of Black Cardiologists (ABC). His career has focused on advocacy for national nutrition education, eradication of national and international health care disparities, improved healthcare access, overall health system reform, sustainable health care financing and increased access to advanced cardiac imaging. Dr. Williams has been a delegate for cardiology to the AMA for over 20 years and has served as a consultant for the FDA and CMS. He is active on the Task Force advising the 2022 White House Conference on Nutrition, Health and Hunger.

He was the founder of the Urban Cardiology Initiative in Detroit, Michigan, aiming to reduce ethnic heart care disparities, and continued these community-based efforts in Chicago at Rush, including the H.E.A.R.T. program (Helping Everyone Assess Risk Today), screening for heart disease, intervening with education, nutrition and lifestyle changes. At University of Louisville, he transitioned the H.E.A.R.T. program to include diagnostic testing for risk assessment (Helping Everyone Address Risk Today).

He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Disease Reversal and Prevention (https://ijdrp.org/index.php/ijdrp). He is an internationally recognized author and speaker with over 1300 original research manuscripts, book chapters, editorial and guideline publications, online resources, movies and lectures, most recently on the topics of cardionutrition and health equity.

He has been perennially named in America’s Top Doctors and has received multiple national and international awards including lifetime achievement recognition from ABC (Daniel D. Savage Award), ASNC (Mario Verani Lecturer), National Lipid Association (Lifetime Membership Award), the German Cardiac Society (Gold Key Recipient and Keynote Lecturer) and the Australia New Zealand Society of Nuclear Medicine for over 20 consecutive years of Keynote Lectures (2002 to 2022).

Dr. Stoll is board certified physician specializing in sports and regenerative musculoskeletal medicine and is a recognized as an international leader in lifestyle medicine. During his career, he provided care to top Olympic, professional, and collegiate athletes as well as Royal families in Europe and the Middle East. An innovator, he is the co-founder of the Plantrician Project, the International Plant Based Nutrition Healthcare Conference, the International Journal of Disease Reversal and Prevention, and the Regenerative Health Institute, a unique collaborative project with the Rodale Institute that integrates a regenerative vision of human health, agriculture, and the environment. He was a member of the 1994 Olympic Bobsled team and served as a team physician for the United States Bobsled and Skeleton Team and Lehigh University. Dr. Stoll served as a member of the Whole Foods scientific and medical advisory board and consults with healthcare organizations globally to integrate lifestyle medicine solutions.

Every year Dr. Stoll hosts the very popular one-week total health immersions in Florida and helps attendees recover lost health, reverse disease, and restore emotional balance. In addition to authoring numerous books, scientific articles and speaking internationally, Dr. Stoll has appeared on a wide variety of national shows including the Dr. Oz show, hosted a 2018 PBS special Food As Medicine, and numerous documentaries including The Game Changers, Eating You Alive, Disease Reversal Hope, Plantwise, and upcoming Revive TV series.

Hari Pulapaka is a full-time, tenured Associate Professor of Mathematics in his twenty-fourth year at Stetson University. Born and raised in Mumbai, Hari has been in the United States since 1987. After completing a Ph.D. in Mathematics at the University of Florida in 1995, a professional midlife crisis led to a fast-paced, top-of-the-class graduation from classical culinary school in 2004. Hari, a four-time James Beard Best Chef semifinalist has, by invitation, cooked at the historic James Beard House in New York City on seven occasions and was a featured chef at the 2018 James Beard Awards in Chicago. In 2016, Hari was recognized as a GRIST 50 fixer for his innovative and active work in the area of food waste reduction. Hari is a Worldchefs Certified Master Chef (WCMC), a Certified Executive Chef (CEC) with the American Culinary Federation and was inducted into the American Academy of Chefs. Hari serves as strategic advisor on matters of sustainability for Postelsia, is a member of the Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO) Group and the Academic Working Group of Food Tank, and is a Chef/Partner for Enroot Organics, PBC. Hari has published multiple books and his latest book, co-authored with his wife, Dr. Jenneffer Pulapaka titled “The Heart Healthy Plant-Based Cookbook: 101 Recipes for Lowering Blood Pressure, Reversing Heart Disease & Cardiac Recover” published by Hatherleigh Press and distributed by Penguin Random House is scheduled for release by December 2023.

Dr. Sharon Wasserstrom is board certified in Internal Medicine and Lifestyle Medicine. She is uniquely skilled in providing tailored lifestyle management that helps prevent, improve and reverse already established disease.

Dr. Wasserstrom received a B.A. in psychology from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. She then went on to earn a master’s degree in interdisciplinary studies in biological and physical sciences at Touro College in Dix Hill, New York. She received her M.D. at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel and the completed her residency in internal medicine at North Shore University Hospital of Manhasset.

Dr. Wasserstrom worked as an internist for Montefiore Medical Group in Bronx, New York for 15 years before joining UCF Health. She has achieved a certification of professional achievement in medical nutrition and has completed nine courses in nutrition biochemistry, growth development and aging, medical nutrition therapy, clinical nutrition and counseling techniques. She was also in the first class to ever receive board certification in the field of lifestyle medicine from The American Board of Lifestyle Medicine (ABLM).

She is a highly talented and experienced physician with a passion for improving patients’ lives in a way that works for them. With 15 years of experience working in outpatient care, she is highly familiar with diagnosis and treatment of multiple disease states and health concerns.

Josh Taylor serves as the Head Farmer for 4Roots, overseeing the design, install and operations of the farming components for the campus. Josh is the founder of Do Good Farm, a non-profit that exists to end hunger and malnutrition around the world, through sustainable farming. The goal is to teach and empower people to grow their own food, instead of just shipping rice and beans over and over again. Do Good Farm has worked on projects around the world, like the Discovery School in Burundi, Africa and an orphanage in Honduras, and locally a farm-to-table school cafeteria concept at Hope Charter School that exists to impact malnutrition in the school system of the food deserts in our own back yard.  

Josh also founded and runs House Blend Cafe. House Blend exists to change the world by giving away 100% of the net profit from the operation into hard situations around the world, like helping to end human trafficking, bringing clean water to people in need, etc. Do Good Farm is the expression that seeks to end hunger and malnutrition.  

Josh has been in the restaurant business for over 30 years and is passionate about the culinary side of farming. Part of his passion is designing farms that will produce food every single day of the year and farms that will sustainably continue to produce food indefinitely. That means growing edible perennial vegetables that people may not be used to eating, like cactus, tree spinach, moringa and many others. The culinary piece of that puzzle is crucial in order to teach people how to cook these unique foods so that they will love to eat them.  

Josh graduated from Georgia Tech with a degree in Business Management, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary with a Masters of Divinity, Full Sail University with a degree in Audio Engineering and is currently pursuing a doctorate from Southern Evangelical Seminary in Apologetics.