Vanessa Rissetto has never followed a straight line. The registered dietitian and CEO of Culina Health went from history major to marketing MBA to a second bachelor’s degree before finding her calling in clinical nutrition. In Stage Hope’s first in-person episode, recorded in Hoboken, New Jersey, Vanessa joins Cassandra and Kayoll to talk about growing up as “a good Haitian girl,” why “what do you want to be when you grow up?” is the wrong question, and why it’s never too late to change your mind.
Then the conversation turns to May 2023, when Vanessa was diagnosed with HER2 triple-positive stage 1A breast cancer after a year of persistent itching that doctors had dismissed as eczema. She walks through the providers who finally listened, the friends who mobilized to get her answers fast, and how she pushed for a treatment plan that let her keep showing up as the face of her company while raising millions in funding. Along the way, she shares practical advice for anyone who feels intimidated in the doctor’s office, from using AI to find your blind spots to befriending the person at the front desk.
Vanessa also opens up about the harder parts of survivorship: the scans that bring back the fear, her decision about reconstruction, and the low hum of recurrence anxiety. She, Cassandra, and Kayoll talk honestly about being “the strong friend,” reconciling Haitian culture and faith with science, and learning who really shows up when you need them. It’s a raw, funny, and deeply real conversation about how cancer can force you to stop living for everyone else. Stay tuned for Part 2.
Transcript
Cassandra Dell: Hey, it’s Cassandra.
Kayoll Gyan: Hey, it’s Kayoll. And you’re listening to the Stage Hope podcast, a place where you can check out from the weight of your everyday worry and check in for joy, hopefully some laughs, and skills to do life better to help you center your well-being.
Cassandra Dell: So tune in for the gems. Stay to connect. We’re in this together.
Vanessa Rissetto and the Mission of Culina Health
Kayoll Gyan: Vanessa Rissetto is a nationally recognized registered dietitian and the CEO and co-founder of Culina Health, a revolutionary telehealth clinical nutrition care company created in 2020.
Under Vanessa’s leadership, Culina Health has raised $20 million in venture funding while Vanessa was undergoing treatment for breast cancer. She has emerged as one of the most influential voices in the food as medicine movement.
Cassandra Dell: She is a trusted care provider for physician referrals with patient outcomes consistently surpassing industry averages, and her strong leadership team strives to make nutrition care more inclusive and accessible for everyone.
She is a frequent guest on the Today Show and continues to provide nutrition insights to numerous high-level publications, including The New York Times, Vogue, Women’s Health, Pop Sugar, Refinery 29, Allure, and more.
Kayoll Gyan: She has also been recognized by Essence, Byrdie, and NPR. Vanessa continues to elevate the role of dietitians in the digital era, blending evidence-based science with cultural competency to shape the future of healthcare delivery.
In this episode, Vanessa discusses her experience with breast cancer, breast reconstruction, how you can eat well in today’s landscape, and how Culina Health is changing the way registered dietitians practice, advocate, and engage with their patients.
Cassandra Dell: Hello, hello. It’s Cassandra Dell.
Kayoll Gyan: Hey everyone, Kayoll Gyan. And you’re listening to Stage Hope. Today, we have a lovely guest: Vanessa Rissetto.
Vanessa Rissetto: Hi! How are you?
Cassandra Dell: I’m great. We are so excited to have you. We are in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Kayoll Gyan: First time here in person. First time episode. But also first time to Hoboken? Cassandra Dell: Yes, I think so. I can’t remember.
Vanessa Rissetto: You must experience it here. It’s good.
Cassandra Dell: First time on a PATH train to get over here.
Vanessa Rissetto: Where did you grow up?
Cassandra Dell:
Vanessa Rissetto: Girl, we stay in our parts. We go to 42nd, maybe Columbus. After that, we go back down. You guys are like, “How can I cross this river to New Jersey? Who’s over there? I’m afraid.”
Cassandra Dell:
Vanessa Rissetto: Now you see it’s not scary. Come on down.
Cassandra Dell: First off, I’m just going to say it: this is our first live in-production shooting. So Vanessa, thank you for the honor of being here. We are super excited to kick off 2026 with this big energy. We’re ripping the band-aid on doing these things. So let’s just get right into it.
Kayoll Gyan:
Vanessa Rissetto: I know. At first, I was like, “Wait, we’ve got to save something for the show.” Don’t worry, I can talk to a wall and I’ll get it to talk back.
From History Major to Registered Dietitian
Kayoll Gyan: We’re just going to go right into it. Cut us off; this is a conversation. We were doing our little research on you, reading about your flow of education prior to becoming a dietitian.
Can you tell us more about that journey? Walking through being a history major, an MBA, and then boom, landing as a dietitian.
Vanessa Rissetto: I’m a good Haitian girl, and so I went to college and told my parents I would be a doctor. But the thing about these Haitians, they’re like, “You should just wake up knowing all the things.” They don’t want to give you the resources that you need. That was the difference.
I had to figure it out. I was a good student, but I also wanted to party. So I decided to study history. It felt like it would be the easiest major to get the highest GPA so that I could then apply to grad school.
Spoiler: it really wasn’t easy. I had to write twenty-page papers all day long and read like a thousand pages a week. But I’m a good reader and I’m good at writing. Then my dad was like, “Oh, well naturally then you should be a lawyer.” So he signed me up for my LSAT exam.
Cassandra Dell:
Vanessa Rissetto: And I was like, “I don’t know, leave me alone.” I went to check out marketing at NYU and got a master’s in marketing, but I always thought science and medicine were interesting.
Actually, I went to a dietitian and she helped me lose weight. I thought the way she did it was so interesting. She didn’t take anything away from me. She didn’t say I couldn’t eat rice and beans every day. She just showed me how to do it.
I asked her a lot of questions, and it sounded medicine-adjacent. She did her internship at a hospital. I was like, "Check, check, check. I'll learn all that stuff, but then I can do this food piece."
Vanessa Rissetto: This is after I had a master’s in marketing. Because I hate money, obviously, I went back to school and did a whole second bachelor’s. Then I did my internship at Beth Israel and Mount Sinai, and I got hired at Mount Sinai and worked there for a pretty long while.
Kayoll Gyan: Wow. You’re ping-pongy, but I like your headspace and understanding that journey.
Vanessa Rissetto: I don’t like it when people ask, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Guys, shut up. What do you want your life to be like? That’s a better question.
How about being a good person? Leave these kids alone. Go out there and explore, and guess what? Change your mind if you want.
Cassandra Dell: I love that. I think so often people feel trapped, especially if they go to school for one thing and then decide to deviate from that specific discipline. It’s like, “Oh my god, what am I going to do?”
Vanessa Rissetto: I was talking to one of my mentors and she asked how old I was. I was 37 and she’s like, “Girl, you’ve got time for two or three more careers.”
Kayoll Gyan: It’s okay to reimagine. Sometimes when you go to school, you feel like you have to stay with it because of the money and student loans. But I love that you’re like, “No, I’m going to redo this.”
Vanessa Rissetto: Do what makes you happy. In 2026, if it does not bring me joy, I’m not doing it. I’m not here to make you comfortable while I sit in discomfort.
The Path to a Cancer Diagnosis
Cassandra Dell:
Vanessa Rissetto: I was diagnosed with HER2 triple-positive stage 1A breast cancer in my left breast in May of 2023. I had pervasive itching in my left breast for one year.
I had multiple mammograms and ultrasounds. I talked to all my doctor friends and they were like, “There’s nothing there.” And it was true; there was nothing there when they checked. They told me it was eczema.
Then it came back pretty bad and I called a friend here in town, Ozzy, who is an OBGYN. I told him the itching was back and he said, “Use the steroid, and if it doesn’t stop, I’ll send you for another mammogram.” That was November of 2022, but I went to Seattle for work and just forgot. I was living my life.
I wasn’t out of bounds with my checkups; I am meticulous. Then I went to a new PCP at One Medical, Dr. Kara Deonarine. I told her I had itching. She asked, “What else?” I said, “Nothing else.” She said, “Okay, I’ll send you for the mammogram sooner, but don’t get that in your head.”
Kayoll Gyan:
Vanessa Rissetto: Yes. She is excellent. The people at that One Medical on 17th Street ideate with you. As a clinician, I’m listening to them and I’m quite impressed.
Two days later they told me to come back because they saw something. The doctor showed me that I didn’t have a tumor or a lump, but all these little grains of rice. He said it could be nothing or something, but I couldn’t have a biopsy until July.
I was like, “You’re so cute. Do you know who I am?” I am quite resourceful. On my phone, I texted Dr. Yevgenia Pashinsky, a GI doctor who is excellent. I told her she better call the guy that runs NYMI, Dr. Barry Bersin, and get me in there.
She told me Barry was in Iceland but would be back Monday. Monday, someone called and told me to come Thursday at ten. It was the same kid—the same doctor who told me I couldn’t come in earlier.
When he looked at me, he didn’t say anything. He told me it was Memorial Day weekend, so someone might call me Tuesday or Wednesday. I told him, “He’ll call me tomorrow.” He didn’t think so, but I did.
The next day, Dr. Barry Bersin called me and said, “There is a malignancy here. It is new. You are going to have to deal with a lot of stuff, but I promise you’ll be okay.”
He also said, “I don’t really know who you are, but people seem to care about you. Why did I have to break the Mount Sinai glass to see your chart?” I told him I was a former employee. He said he called my OB, who stopped a plane to instruct him. Then he made my appointment with my surgeon for Friday.
Advocacy and Access in Healthcare
Cassandra Dell:
Vanessa Rissetto: I say their names every time I can because they listened to me. I am alive because my friends mobilized and pushed. This is the type of attention and service we all need.
Kayoll Gyan: Having that access is huge. Not everyone has that leverage. How immediate was this?
Vanessa Rissetto: From the time I was diagnosed to the time of my first surgery was three weeks. It would have been two weeks, but they thought they saw something in the right breast on the MRI.
I couldn’t get that specific biopsy appointment for a week. When I went in, they realized it was just a fat deposit and I was good to have surgery.
At Culina Health, 70% of our business comes from physicians. We deliver care collaboratively with physicians, NPs, and PAs. Insurance companies pay us to talk to patients for one hour every week, whereas a PCP only has seven to twelve minutes.
A PCP is the first person who is going to unearth something wrong, but they aren’t given time. That’s why I tell people to go to One Medical; they spend forty-five minutes with you.
I am in the business of making sure people feel seen and heard. Bias exists, I’m not stupid, but the teams at Sinai and Dana Farber—like Dr. Sara Tolaney—they spent two and a half hours with me out of the kindness of their hearts.
I meet other women, particularly Black women, who hear they have triple-negative cancer, get a lumpectomy, no chemo, and no radiation. Then they’re told the chance of recurrence is 30% and the cancer comes back. No one told them 30% is a high number.
I’m over here with doctors telling me, "This method is curative, so you must do it this way. Here is where we have flexibility because you're early stage."
Kayoll Gyan: Medicine is objective, but a lot is subjective based on the individual. How did you walk through selecting your treatment?
Vanessa Rissetto: I told people I didn’t want to leave anything on the table. I’m a clinician; I can read research. I read all the papers to see what was negligible or not.
The protocol was 12 weeks of Taxol, nine months of Herceptin, and twenty rounds of radiation. They told me I couldn’t get away without chemo because it was the “home run blocker.” I was thinking, “I’m going to do 12 weeks of chemo, I won’t be on TV anymore, and these investors might stop giving me money.”
My best friend Robyn Ziemba has been my support human since 1992. We were sitting across from Dr. Amy Tiersten, and Robyn said, “Excuse me, Dr. Tiersten. She’s the face of her company. What else can we do? She can’t lose her hair and be sick.”
Dr. Tiersten said, “I didn’t know that. Tell me more about your company.” Then she told us we could do Kadcyla (TDM1). It was a longer course of chemo, but I wouldn’t lose my hair in the same way. Nobody knew I was sick until October or November of 2023 when I decided to tell them.
Cassandra Dell:
Vanessa Rissetto: When I was doing my internship, I heard an attending say, “I’m only practicing medicine.” I asked what that meant, and he said, “It means I’m not God. I see things work 80% of the time, then there are outliers. Sometimes I’m just playing with my ego, trying things.”
Hearing that made me realize I’m allowed to ask questions. At Culina Health, we ask patients if they want us to talk with the physician on their behalf or if they want us to arm them with bullet points.
Go into ChatGPT and have a dialogue. Ask, “What are the blind spots I wouldn’t think about?” Then bring those to your doctor. If a doctor has an adverse reaction to you asking questions, go get another doctor.
Kayoll Gyan: That sounds simple, but getting a new doctor can take a year. You feel like you don’t have time because you want to address the disease.
Vanessa Rissetto: I tell people, if you want to go to Dana Farber, be friends with the person at the front desk. “I’m losing my mind, can you send this stuff over?”
Be nice and bring chocolate. It goes a long way. I’m literally saying bring a dessert to the woman behind the desk and wish her a happy New Year. She will move mountains for you because she’s the most powerful person in the city. Most people are kind and want to help if you tell them you’re freaked out.
The Realities of Treatment and Recovery
Cassandra Dell:
Vanessa Rissetto: I did Kadcyla (TDM1), which is targeted. I had it every three weeks for over a year. In the beginning, I didn’t feel great, but then I was okay.
I did radiation twenty times. When I finished, I didn’t realize I was going to be emotional, but I cried. At the end, my oncologist told me I felt like garbage because I’d had a year’s worth of chemo.
I handle my stuff, so nobody checks on me. That is my existential crisis. I’m the "strong friend." I raised thirteen million dollars and doubled my business while going to work every day.
Vanessa Rissetto: I did in the beginning, and then it would come back randomly. I’m a person who normally wakes up at five to work out, but recently it’s been hard to get back into that routine. That was frustrating.
Kayoll Gyan: For me, I thought radiation was the easier part. I started work a week later, and the fatigue slowly crept up on me. I didn’t even realize it was fatigue until months later because I was so used to being on the go.
Vanessa Rissetto: That’s because you guys are just like me. You think, “Isn’t this normal?” Sometimes I wonder about numbness in my foot and realize it’s radiation from three years ago.
Cassandra Dell: I was diagnosed in October of 2024. Chemo was crap. At first, I thought I could eat normally, but then I paid the price.
Kayoll became my partner in crime, advising me on symptoms. My eyes changed, my leg felt different, and I was dealing with neuropathy. You’re slowly having to mentally adjust to symptoms without freaking out.
Vanessa Rissetto: When you’re a clinician, you know too much. You have a pain in your eye and wonder if you need a brain scan. You have to redirect. People say, “Don’t think like that,” but you can’t stop it from entering your brain. It’s an unpleasant thing.
Navigating Survivorship and Recurrence Anxiety
Vanessa Rissetto: When you’re getting treatment, it feels good to know chemo is covering your back. But it’s a kick in the face when you finish. I went to Europe after a clear scan, and when I came back, a mammogram showed calcifications in the surgical bed.
The resident told me, “Your cancer was calcifications, so maybe the cancer is back.” I told her I didn’t like her. I texted the surgeon that the resident didn’t know how to deliver a message and I needed a biopsy tomorrow. I had to wait fourteen days for them to tell me it was just post-radiation changes. The whiplash is real.
So then I told the surgeon, Dr. Marco Harmaty, that I wanted a DIEP flap. He showed me photos of women with these mangled breasts and said he couldn’t get it perfect. To me, they looked perfect.
Then he told me he would have to take fat from my stomach, but he stopped and said I didn’t have enough fat, so he’d have to take it from my back. He said, “Girl, you do not want that.” 12 hours? Seven surgeries? I decided I was good.
If I have a recurrence, I’ll just have nothing. But Dr. Marco Harmaty said we would do a DIEP flap then because otherwise, I’d have a distortion in how I look.
Now, I get a little turned up. Mammograms aren’t enough; I want full-body scans. People tell me I look skinny, and I have to think, “Do I have cancer again?” A friend of mine had HER2 triple-positive cancer nine years ago. She fell recently, got an MRI, and found cancer at the base of her spine. A punch in the face after nine years.
Personal Transformation and Lifestyle Changes
Vanessa Rissetto: I don’t know who Vanessa was before. I was living to make everybody else comfortable. Cancer saved my life. The universe knocks, and if you don’t listen, it kicks the door down.
I was in a marriage that was very transactional. My ex-husband is lovely and my brothers-in-law are my best friends, but there was stuff in there that didn’t bring me joy. I’m not going to take all the hits for everyone anymore.
You’re in a system with your family and friends, and if you change your role, people don’t like it. But you have to live with yourself. I had to make changes so I wouldn’t get sick again.
Kayoll Gyan:
Vanessa Rissetto: I don’t drink alcohol. I exercise every day. I eat green vegetables at lunch and dinner. I make every meal at home. My kids go to school with rice, beans, and carrots. I’m not a gossiper. I’m just busy working.
When the diagnosis came, it made me feel like I must be doing something wrong. I’m Haitian, so we have that Catholic guilt. My parents look at me like, “You’re walking with bare feet, that’s why you have a cold.”
Reconciling Culture, Faith, and Science
Vanessa Rissetto: Bad things happen to good people. The night before my second MRI, I went to get the anointing of the sick. The Monsignor said it was for physical healing. Then I didn’t have anything in my right breast. I’ll take it. I believe whatever I want to believe.
Kayoll Gyan:
Vanessa Rissetto: When you’re up, you know who your friends are. When you’re sick, you see who shows up. A friend from high school hired a driver and took me to chemo. I didn’t know I meant that much to her.
My best friend Robyn Ziemba never let me down. Then there’s my mom. Culturally, the sharing of emotions is not a big thing. It’s very stoic and internal.
Cassandra Dell: I relate. Am I managing my family while doing this, or who is the patient here?
Vanessa Rissetto: It’s a damaging thing. You need to be dutiful and put family first. My parents will call and ask how the kids are. I tell them, “Physically I’m fine, but emotionally I’m messed up in the head.” Ask me how I’m doing. Take me to a movie.
Some friends send messages saying, “I’m so sorry I haven’t reached out, I’ve been busy.” I don’t care. But then you meet someone you’ve known for a month who goes above and beyond.
My parents are good people, but they aren’t emotional. I tell my kids to process their feelings. If someone holds space for you that you can really trust, you get through it faster.