Meet Our Experts

PEDIATRICIAN

Jen Trachtenberg, M.D., F.A.A.P.

Jen is a nationally renowned parenting expert, board-certified pediatrician, and has maintained a successful private pediatric practice in New York City for over 20 years. She is also an Assistant Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and a mother of three children.
Dr. Jen has appeared numerous times on NBC's TODAY show, CNN, and Fox News, contributes regularly with health and parenting topics, including child development, newborn care, nutrition, childhood obesity, and sleep issues to Parents Magazine, Romper.com, Today.com First for Women Magazine, NY Times, Fatherly, The Bump, Your Teen Magazine, USWeekly (Celebrity Baby Expert), Care.com and Good Housekeeping
She has published two parenting books, The Smart Parent's Guide to Getting Your Kids through Check Ups, Illnesses and Accidents , and Good Kids, Bad Habits: The Real Age Guide to Raising Healthy Children and now is creator of her one of a kind, video parenting manual Pediatrician in Your Pocket.

PEDIATRICIAN

Dr. Leah Alexander, M.D., F.A.A.P.

Dr. Leah Alexander, M.D., F.A.A.P. began practicing pediatrics at Elizabeth Pediatric Group of NewJersey in 2000. She has been an independently contracted pediatrician with Medical Doctors Associates at Pediatricare Associates of New Jersey since 2005.
After graduating from Kalamazoo College and Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, she completed her pediatric residency at Overlook and Morristown Memorial Hospitals. She is board certified in General Pediatrics. Outside of the field of medicine, she has an interest in culinary arts.

Registered Dietitian

Nicole Silber, RD, CSP, CLC

Nicole Silber, RD, CSP, CLC & mom is a registered dietitian, board certified specialist in Pediatric nutrition, and certified lactation counselor. Nicole has worked with hundreds of children and families with chronic medical conditions, food allergies, and picky eating.
Nicole has appeared numerous times on ABC Good Morning America show, CBS, and contributes regularly with dietary and nutrition topics, including , , food allergies, picky eating, infant nutrition, and breastfeeding to Parents Magazine, Huffpost, CNN and more.
Prior to her current roles she was a clinical nutritionist at the Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia.

Nutritionist & Consultant

Robin Barrie Kaiden, MS, RD, CDN

Robin Barrie Kaiden, MS, RD, CDN, CSSD is one of the nation’s leading experts in personal wellness, nutrition, physical fitness, and weight loss. As the founder of Robin Barrie™, her Manhattan-based practice and consulting group, she has cultivated a following for developing individualized, realistic, and results-oriented plans that ensure diet and fitness goals are achieved and maintained for a lifetime. Robin also consults regularly with top physicians, educational institutions, fitness centers, private clubs, and various private and professional groups in the tri-state area.
Renowned for her wealth of expertise and a trusted resource for print, television and online media, Robin is regularly tapped to contribute to local and national health, lifestyle, and entertainment stories for CBS, NBC, ABC, Parenting, Golf Fitness, and Forbes.com, among other media outlets and social channels. She has also appeared as an exercise model for CBS2 and WB11 Morning News.
A graduate of Cornell University “With Distinction”, Robin received her Bachelor of Science Degree in Nutritional Sciences with an Exercise Science Minor and was a member of the esteemed Kappa Omicron Nu, Golden Key, and Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Societies. Her higher education includes a Master of Science Degree at Columbia University, where she majored in Applied Physiology and Nutrition and completed her Dietetic Internship Program.

Lauren Panoff

Lauren specializes in plant-based living and vegan and vegetarian diets for all ages. She specializes in writing about parenting and a wide variety of health, environmental, and nutrition topics.

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and freelance writer with 13-years of experience in the field of nutrition and dietetics. She is the author of three books, including the Anti-Inflammatory Diet One Pot Cookbook. Through her writing she demonstrates her passion for helping people achieve ideal health and make transformational changes in their lives.

Markita Lewis

Markita is a clinical dietitian with a passion for the biological, social, and cultural aspects of eating. She enjoys writing about nutrition and wellness, food justice and policy, cultural food ways, and the psychology of nutrition.

Melissa Mitri

Melissa is a health writer with over 12 years of experience in the field of nutrition. She specializes in helping women move away from restrictive habits that lead to vicious yo-yo weight cycles. Melissa enjoys writing about health, nutrition, and fitness with the goal of simplifying complex health topics for the reader.

Else Scientific Advisory Board

Professor

Jon Vanderhoof

Former Vice President, Global Medical Affairs at Mead Johnson Nutrition. Pediatric gastroenterologist at Boston Children's Hospital, Senior Lecturer in Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. Prof. Vanderhoof is a Pediatric Gastroenterologist in Boston, at Boston Children's Hospital, a Senior Lecturer in Pediatrics at the Harvard Medical School, and Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics at the University of Nebraska College of Medicine. He was Vice President, Global Medical Affairs and Chief Medical Officer, for Mead Johnson Nutrition, published over 200 peer-reviewed papers, reviews and chapters in books in various areas of Pediatric gastroenterology and nutrition, served as President of the North American Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition and on the Editorial Boards of numerous scientific and clinical journals.

Professor

Yvan Vandenplas

Yvan Vandenplas did his medical studies at the ”Vrije Universiteit Brussel” and trained in pediatrics (1981‑1986) at the same University. He became Head of the Unit for Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition in 1987 and is Head of the KidZ Health Castle, at the University Hospital Brussels (UZ Brussel) and has the Chair of Pediatrics since 1994. He has more than 500 publications listed in Medline. His main interests are infant nutrition (probiotics, prebiotics, protein, cow's milk allergy), gastro-oesophageal reflux (diagnostic procedures, treatment) and functional gastro-intetsinal disorders. He is now associate editor of the Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition.

Professor

Raanan Shamir

Prof. Shamir is the Chairman of the Institute of Gastroenterology, Nutrition and Liver Diseases at Schneider Children’s Medical Center of Israel, and is a Professor of Pediatrics at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel. He is the past President of the European Society of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition (ESPGHAN), published more than 250 original papers, reviews and comments, book chapters and guidelines, and serves as an Editor for the pediatric section of Current Opinion in Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism, is the Senior Associate Editor of the Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition (JPGN), and serves as a reviewer for journals in the field of Pediatrics, Nutrition, Gastroenterology and atherosclerosis.

Professor

Ron Shaoul

Prof. Ron Shaoul is the Director of the Pediatric Gastroenterology Unit at Ruth Rappaport Children’s Hospital, Haifa, Israel. He is a Member of the ESPGHAN Porto pediatric IBD working group and a Clinical Associate Professor in Pediatrics at the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine and a member of the European Pediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease Working Group. He has authored about 120 peer-reviewed articles, and is a reviewer for prestigious journals in the field of pediatrics and gastroenterology.

Professor

Hania SZAJEWSKA M.D.

Hania Szajewska, MD, is Professor and Chair of the Department of Pediatrics at the Medical University of Warsaw.
Until June 2019, she served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition. Previously, Prof. Szajewska served as a member of the Council and then as the General Secretary of the European Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition (ESPGHAN). She also served as the Secretary of the ESPGHAN Committee on Nutrition. Most recently (January 2019), she joined the Board of Directors of the International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics. Prof. Szajewska has broad interests in pediatric nutrition but her research focuses on the effects of early dietary interventions on later outcomes, the gut microbiota modifications such as with probiotics and/or prebiotics, and diarrheic diseases. She is or has been actively involved in several European Union-funded research projects. She is an enthusiastic advocate for the practice of evidence-based medicine.
She has co-authored more than 320 publications. In 2020, Prof. Szajewska has been ranked as one of the world’s top 2% most-cited researchers.

Professor

Carina Venter

Dr. Venter obtained her PhD from the University of Southampton, supervised by Prof. Stephen Holgate and Prof. Hasan Arshad in 2007. She moved from the UK in 2015 where she had been performing research into food allergies and allergy prevention as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Portsmouth at the David Hide Centre on the Isle of Wight. Dr. Venter (PhD RD) is currently an Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Section of Allergy/Immunology at the Children's Hospital Colorado and University of Colorado Denver, where she is conducting research in allergy prevention and working with children with food allergies. She is a member of American, European, and British Allergy Societies. She moved from the UK in 2015 where she performed research into food allergy prevalence funded by the Food Standards Agency, UK. She is a member of European and American food allergy guidelines on Allergy Prevention. She was also a member of the NICE (UK) and National Institutes for Allergy and Infectious Diseases Food Allergy guidelines.