Jessica Wilson, MS. RD. (she/her)
Dietitian. Author. Podcast host.
Jessica Wilson, MS, RDN (she/her) is a co-creator of the Amplify Melanated Voices challenge that went viral in 2020. She is a clinical dietitian, consultant and author, and podcast host whose experiences navigating the dietetic field and food policy spaces have been featured on public radio shows and in print media, including TIME, Slate, the New York Times, Bustle, The Daily Mail, and the Washington Post and on ABC Primetime News.
In 2023 Jessica started her podcast Making it Awkward. From the beginning she started highlighting the gap between research and reality. From her ultra-processed food experiment and connecting processed food hysteria and trad wives, to her expertise in the Making America Healthy Again(MAHA) movement and RFK Jr’s health claims, Jessica has been in front of conversations about food policy. Her guests include MAHA spokesperson Jeff Hutt, Great British Bakeoff alum Mike Wilkins talking about farming, and highly esteemed director emeritus of Duke’s World Food Policy Center Dr. Kelly Brownell, who told Jessica that soda, Cheetos and baby formula have the same impacts on the body as crack cocaine.
Jessica has worked as a clinical dietitian since 2007 and is acutely aware of how both the public health and medical framing of “healthy eating” and “obesity” has contributed to disordered eating and self blame.
She speaks openly and candidly about the harm caused to people by designating individual identities and bodies as risk factors, rather than targeting the structural inequities and violence that marginalized individuals must endure and which contribute to whether we fall into the social construction of Health. She organizes and energizes communities, both small and large, and is a leader in the conversation to deconstruct the narratives we have all been told about our bodies.
Her book, It’s Always Been Ours; Rewriting the Story of Black Women’s Bodies was published on February 7, 2023 in Hardcover, Audio and eBook. You can order it here!
Queer and Trans Healthcare
Jessica is passionate about her work with queer, nonbinary, trans and intersex clients. She currently works with Lyon Martin Health Services to build their specialized eating disorder program.
Jessica was born in Sacramento, CA, the Tribal land of the Nisenan people, and after living elsewhere for 14 years she returned to the city that she now calls home. She got her start in organizing community members during her time living in Oakland, CA and went on to lead international conversations about what is broken in the ways that we tend to bodies.
She comes from a long lineage of family members on her father’s side who have a connection to the land. Her father grew up spending summers on his grandmothers farm gardening, farming and picking cotton on the adjacent property. Both he and Jessica have always found a way to tend a garden and get their hands dirty.