Biography

Dr. Marissa Cloutier is an award-winning assistant professor and registered dietitian in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, College of Public Health at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA. She has taught in higher education for over twenty years. Over the course of this time, Marissa has passionately and successfully brought the issue of climate change to the forefront of her nutrition, biology and public health-related curriculum. Her pedagogical approach has included related community service-learning and civic engagement projects.

To expand upon her abilities to educate about the nexus of nutrition, climate change and public health, Marissa proposed and was accepted to undertake a largely self-directed doctoral program at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, MA. Marissa’s doctoral studies were a compilation of atmospheric, water and agricultural sciences with epidemiology, biostatistics, nutrition science and environmental health courses. Her studies at Harvard culminated in a dissertation that correlated the healthfulness of global diets to impacts on climate change and international water resources. Marissa also holds a master of science degree in human nutrition and metabolism from Boston University (Boston, MA) and a bachelor of science degree in nutrition sciences from California Polytechnic State University (San Luis Obispo, CA).

Marissa grew up in the Central Valley of California, where her extended family grew grapes for the wine industry and ardently celebrated the consumption of foods from the earth. This instilled a zeal for health and nutrition that ignited Marissa’s career in dietetics and education, as well as her authorship of an eight-time New York Times best-selling book, The Mediterranean Diet, and other various publications.

Marissa has appeared on television, radio and in print, and has enthusiastically delivered speeches in various venues espousing the need for healthful eating (especially in ways that preserves traditional cultural foods) for individual and planetary health.

Education

• ScD, Nutrition Science, Harvard University School of Public Health
• MS, Human Nutrition and Metabolism, Boston University
• BS, Nutrition Sciences, California Polytechnic State University

Curriculum Vitae