My story
Debra is a Certified Human Potential Coach. Her certification is with the Human Potential Institute Certified Coach Training Program with Dave Asprey (the founder of Bulletproof & Upgrade Labs) & British physician, Dr. Mark Atkinson. Her passion for biohacking and health has her determined to help others avoid the health pitfalls she experienced early in her own career. Debra continues to study up on the latest longevity and weight loss science, and bring it to her clients in a playful, accessible manner. She translates the nutritional science into English. Debra is also an Upgrade Collective Ambassador, leading the weight loss & fasting special interest group. She has helped her clients lose weight, gain mental clarity, triumph over fatigue, and reignite their professional passion.
Debra started her career on the stage. She studied acting at the nationally acclaimed Piven Theatre Workshop with such talents as John Cusack, Joan Cusack, and Jeremy Piven. Her vocal training began at Northwestern University’s vocal department while still attending high school. She declined an opera scholarship at Oberlin Conservatory to study musical theatre at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM.)
Debra graduated magna cum laude from Tufts University and received a Masters of Fine Arts in musical theatre from San Diego State University, where she graduated Phi Kappa Phi as a Marion Ross Scholar.
Debra has performed in regional theatres and cabaret clubs across the country, most frequently in Los Angeles, San Diego, Boston, and South Florida. In Professionally Speaking at the Off-Broadway, The Miami Herald hailed her “a comic sparkplug.” Her role in Triumph of Love won a KPBS-TV Patté award. Her one-woman show My Nights With George, Kurt & Cole, (co-written and directed by comic genius, Phil Johnson) was featured at various venues throughout Southern California and won Best New Play and Best Actress at the 2003 San Diego Actors Festival, and the San Diego Playbill Billie Award for Best Actress in a musical. In 2019, Debra won a San Diego Theatre Critics Circle Award (Craig Noel) for Angels in America: Parts 1 & 2.
She decided to take a hiatus from performing to explore the “other side of the table.” As a talent manager at Creative Artists Agency, under world-famous super-agent Michael Ovitz, she helped to guide the careers of such actors as Donald Sutherland, Patrick Dempsey, Halle Berry, Alyssa Milano, and Antonio Banderas. Having been yelled at by some of the most powerful players in Hollywood, she decided that performing was just as difficult, but a lot more fun.