Claudia Fernandez, DrPH, MS, RD, LDN

Claudia S. P. Fernandez, DrPH, MS, RD, LDN
Director, New Business Development
Director, Leadership Core, Food Systems Leadership Institute
ACOG Leadership Institute Program Director
North Carolina Institute for Public Health
UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health

Campus Box 8165
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-8165
Phone: 919- 843-5560
Fax: 919- 843-5563

Areas of Expertise

Leadership Development; Program Development and Evaluation; Leadership coaching and counseling; Communication strategies; Distance Education and Educational Media design, development, and evaluation;Research Design & Implementation; Nutrition, obesity, and eating disorders

Bio

Claudia Fernandez serves as the director of the Leadership Core for the Food Systems Leadership Institute, a program focused on developing the leadership and food systems capabilities of Deans of Agriculture in US Universities. Previously she helped found the Managing in Turbulent Times: the Kellogg Fellowship for Emerging Leaders in Public Health Program (ELPH), a minority based leadership development program focusing on managing through financial, human resources and communications crisis.  Through her work with executive education programs (PHLI, SEPHLI, ELPH, MAPH) she specializes in ongoing leadership coaching to groups and individuals. A certified provider of the scientifically-valid psychometric instruments Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator, Fundamental Interpersonal Relationship Organizations (FIRO-B), Bar-On Emotional Intelligence, CPI 260, and Change Style Indicator, she provides individual counseling and group workshops on leadership development, team building, communications, and interpersonal relations.

For the Public Health Training Network, the Emerging Leaders Fellowship, and other groups she teaches Communicating in Turbulent Times: Managing Communications During Crises. She also has co-authored a series of distance-education based simulations which teach skills for managing complex and evolving crisis situations in communications/public relations, human resources, and financial crisis.

Before changing her focus to leadership development work in 2000, Dr. Fernandez specialized in nutrition and worked in nutrition research and counseling for more than 15 years.  As a registered dietitian and nutrition expert, she served as director of the Nutrition in Medicine® project, creating a series of interactive CD-ROM modules teaching nutrition to medical students. At UNC she has taught the graduate course, The Psychology of Eating, served as an instructor in the medical school, and has taught in the healthcare programs at Duke University as well. She continues to be active in the nutrition community as a speaker to both public and professional audiences and as an advisor to project teams working on nutrition-related issues, such as pediatric obesity.

Dr. Fernandez earned her BS in nutrition from Miami University of Ohio in 1986 and her MS in clinical nutrition from Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts in 1988. She then pursued further education in psychology and counseling at the Harvard University Extension School and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she earned her doctorate in leadership studies in 2003. She worked in obesity research and treatment with world renown researchers at Harvard for more than five years before joining the Duke Center for Living in 1992. In 1997, she accepted a faculty position with UNC. In 2001, she joined the North Carolina Institute for Public Health, the practice arm of UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health. Her work with the Institute has included serving as a distance education specialist, an evaluation specialist, and a business plan advisor in the Management Academy for Public Health.

Claudia lives in Durham with her husband, Ruben, her toddler, Alexander, their newest addition to the family, Ethan, and miniature Dachshund (who really runs the place), Ginger.