Rachel DePass

1. What brought you to study Holistic Nutrition at IHN?

I spent years building a career that looked great on paper and felt very hollow in practice. I was making good money in finance and completely miserable doing it. Meanwhile, the version of me that felt most alive was the one haunting the supplement aisles of gourmet grocery stores, befriending vendors at the farmer’s market, and embracing my role as my friend group’s “witch doctor.” Health and nutrition were never things I had to motivate myself to learn about, my interest in these topics was already hardwired.

What took time was giving myself permission to take them seriously.

At 35, I finally did. I applied to IHN’s Holistic Nutrition Program in 2022 and began slowly trading in the golden handcuffs and false security of my finance job for work that finally felt fulfilling. It hasn’t been a straight line, I’ve taken breaks along the way — but I’m proud to say I’m graduating this year, nineteen courses and one 140-hour co-op later.

My why comes down to two things. First, the personal: I wanted a career I could be genuinely proud of, one built around something I’d been studying for free, for fun, for years. Second, the professional: the nutrition industry is noisy. Oversaturated with quick fixes, miracle supplements, and conflicting advice that leaves people more confused than when they started. I want to be one of the steady, knowledgeable voices in the middle of all that, someone people can actually trust.

2. What professions have you worked in prior to enrolling at IHN?

I was working in Marketing, PR and/or Investor Relations at varying financial institutions and regulators across Canada. Early in my career, I also did a brief stint at a creative PR agency in Calgary working with lifestyle, event, and CPGrelated businesses.

3. What degrees or academic achievements did you have prior to IHN?

I have a Bachelor’s Degree from Western University and Post Graduate Public Relations degree from Humber College.

4. What are your goals and aspirations as a CNP?

First Dates is where my focus lives right now. Building that brand is the goal.

But this program has changed something in me I didn’t expect. I came in unsure about whether I wanted to work directly with people. I’m leaving with a completely different outlook. The more I’ve learned about health, the harder it’s become to stay quiet about it. Because the things that actually move the needle for people’s health aren’t complicated — small shifts in diet, in daily habits, in what people are exposing themselves to — can genuinely change the trajectory of someone’s life.

My background in marketing and PR has also opened up another lane I find myself drawn to. There are a lot of wellness and supplement brands out there with a great product and no idea how to communicate it credibly. That’s a gap I understand well and could see myself stepping into as a consultant down the road.

5. What is something you overcame in your life, that you didn’t think you could?

Imposter syndrome.

For a long time, I let self-doubt make decisions for me. I convinced myself I wasn’t experienced enough, knowledgeable enough, or ready enough to pursue the things I cared about most.

Around the same time I was navigating a difficult breakup, I was also dealing with some health challenges. It forced me to slow down and pay attention to myself in a way I never had before.

I started taking care of myself consistently. I moved my body, paid attention to what I was eating, read more, created more, protected my time, and kept the promises I made to myself. None of those habits were dramatic on their own, but together they changed the way I saw myself.

IHN reinforced that shift. Understanding how closely connected the mind, body, and spirit are gave me a completely different perspective on health and on my own life.

I still experience self-doubt from time to time, but I’ve learned that confidence doesn’t come before you begin. It comes from consistency, resilience and the discipline you hold yourself to.

6. What has been your personal best achievement?

I don’t think my personal best achievement comes down to a single moment. It’s been more about the process of building a life that actually reflects who I am and having the patience to let it happen slowly.

For years, the things I was most excited about existed only in the margins of my life. After my 9-5 weekdays in finance, I was taking IHN courses and teaching Lagree Fitness at a local studio. On weekends, I was in my kitchen recipe testing, for what would eventually turn into my stuffed Medjool dates business, First Dates. And then showing up to every dinner, gathering and work event with chocolate date samples stuffed in my bag.

I had no real strategy, I was just following my interests and creativity. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, without a formal plan or a clear finish line, I had kinda built something. Fitness classes that were waitlisted every week. A holistic nutrition education that was reshaping how I understood everything about health. And a product that kept people reaching for another one before they’d even finished the first.

First Dates officially launched in January 2026. Nice timing, as Medjool dates are really having their moment in the healthy snacking space right now. This is a product that began in my kitchen with no agenda other than to cure my own late night sweet tooth.

Looking back, the achievement isn’t any one milestone. It’s realizing that the life I had been building after work and on weekends eventually became my real life.

How creative and physical I am. After years parked behind a desk, I don’t think anyone who knew me then would have predicted that the things that bring me the most joy involve using my hands or being outdoors.

Cooking, making things, being outside, playing sports, teaching fitness classes — I need to move and I need to create. I truthfully didn’t realize this about myself either until I finally had the space to figure it out.

One of the things I’ve appreciated most about IHN is the flexibility to move through the program at your own pace. For someone balancing a lot of personal and professional commitments at once, that’s made all the difference. What’s surprised me is how naturally the courses connect to each other. The more you learn, the more everything starts to click into place.

I also love that the knowledge translates. I can have a real conversation about nutrition with someone who has zero background and actually make it land. That’s not easy to teach.

My co-op at Ripe Nutrition has also been a highlight. Ripe is a Toronto-based bone broth brand, female-founded by Alex Baird, and she brought me in at the ground level — operations, marketing, creative content, the day to day of actually running a brand. She was incredibly open and generous with her knowledge and the inner-workings of the business. It was one of those rare experiences where my nutrition background and my marketing background both had a seat at the table at the same time. For someone building my own brand, the opportunity couldn’t have been better.