CHEF Coaching Faculty

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Karla Arancibia, MD, MPH

CHEF Coaching Faculty

Karla Arancibia is a lifestyle medicine physician and health and wellness and culinary coach providing services in Latin America, Europe and the United States. She is the co-founder of the Latin American Lifestyle Medicine Association (LALMA). She is a graduate of the CHEF Coaching program and is co-founder of the Lifestyle Medicine Clinics in Latin America and owns her own health and wellness coaching practice Healthview Lifestyle Institute in the U.S. Karla has also served as professor at Ricardo Palma University in the first accredited specialty in Lifestyle Medicine in Latin America for physicians and health professionals, where she was director of the culinary medicine workshops. She has been a speaker at several international symposiums, on radio, and on television.

Jane Barg, NBC-HWC, Chef

CHEF Coaching Faculty

Jane Barg is a National Board-Certified Health and Wellness coach and a chef. She received her health coach training from Duke Integrative Medicine, Durham, NC. Jane oversees the education for the CHEF Coaching Program and serves as a member of the program faculty. She provides patient education as part of the CHEF Coaching study. In her private practice, Jane works with individuals and groups to help them make the changes needed to live healthier lives. She offers both culinary and health coaching programs in person and remotely. She is the founder of the Artful Palate catering company and has taught culinary classes in the Philadelphia region.

Laura Klein, MBA, Chef, Health Coach  

CHEF Coaching Faculty

Laura Klein is the owner of Well Seasoned Coaching and faculty for the CHEF Coaching program. As a Culinary Coach, Laura focuses on the challenges of maintaining a healthy lifestyle in today’s busy world.  Through a combination of nutrition education, healthy goal setting and home cooking skills Laura helps her clients achieve their wellness goals. Laura’s coaching credentials include certifications from the Coaches Training Institute, Wellcoaches, The American Council on Exercise and Genavix Wellness Corporation. Additionally, Laura holds a certificate in culinary nutrition from the Natural Gourmet Institute and is a graduate of the CHEF Coaching program and the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts. Laura collaborates with physicians to teach healthy cooking classes to their patients and the public, both live and virtually.  Laura is also a chef instructor at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts. 

Rani Polak, MD, Chef, MBA, ICF-PCC

Director, CHEF Coaching Program

Culinary Medicine Training Lead, Department of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health

Dr. Rani Polak is the founding director of both the Culinary Healthcare Education Fundamentals (CHEF) Coaching program at the Institute of Lifestyle Medicine, and the Center of Lifestyle Medicine at Sheba Medical Center, Tel Aviv, Israel. His work, alongside lipid clinical care, focuses on translational research related to the Culinary Coaching method, which combines culinary training with health coaching principles. Dr. Polak is the principal investigator of the Culinary Coaching research group, which was the first to demonstrate the impact of a culinary medicine intervention on weight in a bi-center randomized controlled trial. After over a decade at Harvard Medical School, he now leads the CHEF Coaching program through Wellcoaches and directs culinary medicine training through the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, helping to disseminate culinary medicine to thousands of clinicians and health coaches worldwide. Dr. Polak’s work has been featured in many media outlets, including Scientific American, the International Herald Tribune, U.S. News & World Report, and USA Today.