Leadership

Kathryn (Kate) Ackerman, MD, MPH, FACSM is the Founder and Director of the Female Athlete Program and Biennial International Female Athlete Conference at Boston Children’s Hospital, the Associate Director of the Sports Endocrine Research Lab at Massachusetts General Hospital, and an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She earned her BA from Cornell University, MD from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health, and completed her residency in internal medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. She completed her sports medicine fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital and endocrinology fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
She chairs the US Rowing medical committee, is a member of the World Rowing medical commission, and is a Deputy Editor of the British Journal of Sports Medicine. Her research focuses on female athlete health and the various aspects of Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S). She has authored/co-authored over 100 articles and book chapters related to sports medicine, endocrinology, rowing, bone health, and female athletes, including position statements with the International Olympic Committee. Athletically, Dr. Ackerman represented the US as a lightweight rower at the World Championships, having taken up rowing as a walk-on at Cornell. She has multiple National Championships titles and still competes with her teammates for life as a masters athlete. Most recently, she has become a Member of the National Leadership Council for the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance, a $220mill initiative to improve health and performance globally. Dr. Ackerman is leading the Alliance’s focus on scientific advancements for women.

Kate Ackerman, MD, MPH, FACSM

Emilie Burgess, MS, RDN, CSSD, LDN

Emilie Burgess is a board-certified specialist in Sports Dietetics specializing in sports performance, low energy availability, disordered eating, and eating disorders in athletes. She currently works as a sport & eating disorder dietitian at Laura Moretti Nutrition LLC, co-chair for the 2025 Female Athlete Conference, and a contract dietitian for USA Track and Field.
Emilie was most recently the Athletics Sports Dietitian for 34 varsity teams at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and served as the Exhibitor Chair for the 2023 Female Athlete Conference.
As a dietitian, Emilie has worked at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Boston, Cambridge Eating Disorder Center, and at Home Base Program, a Boston Red Sox and Massachusetts General Hospital program. During the pandemic, she transitioned to Boston Hope, a COVID-19 field hospital where she helped co-lead and build the food service department.
Emilie has also worked as a clinical nutrition specialist in the Division of Sports Medicine and Female Athlete Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Recreation, and completed a sports nutrition fellowship program at the University of Washington through the Gatorade Sports Nutrition Immersion Program.
Emilie earned a BS in Dietetics at the University of Connecticut, where she competed as a Division I tennis player. She went on to earn a MS in Nutrition and Food Science, and completed a dietetic internship at West Virginia University.

Grace Saville, BS

Grace received her Bachelor’s degree at Georgetown University, where she majored in Biology of Global Health and minored in physics and math. Grace is a Clinical Research Assistant at the Wu Tsai Female Athlete Program, at Boston Children’s Hospital. Grace was the Logistics and Communications chair for the 2023 Female Athlete Conference.

Jennifer Coulombe, PhD

Jennifer Coulombe earned her M.S., Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering and Interdisciplinary Quantitative Biology fellowship at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Before joining the Female Athlete Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, she was a post-doctoral fellow at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center / Harvard Medical School, where she investigated the effects of spaceflight and artificial gravity on musculoskeletal health. Additionally, Jennifer was an Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORSIE) post-doctoral fellow at the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine (USARIEM), where she researched the effects of U.S. Army Basic Combat Training on female soldiers’ reproductive health and bone stress injuries. She is the Director of Operations for the 2025 Female Athlete Conference.

Trent Stellingwerff, PhD, FACSM

Dr. Trent Stellingwerff serves as a Senior Advisor, Research & Development at the Canadian Sport Institute Pacific (Victoria, Canada), joining CSI Pacific in 2011. In this role, he directs several different research projects across different sport performance discipline areas, with Master’s, PhD and Post-Doctorate students involved. He has also provided physiology expertise to Canada’s National Athletics, Rowing, Triathlon and Mountain bike teams. His primary sport and research focuses are in the field of physiology and nutrition interactions, as well as environmental (altitude and heat) expertise. He co-chairs OTP’s Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S) working group. Prior to 2011, Trent was a Senior Scientist in Performance Nutrition for PowerBar at the Nestle Research Center (Lausanne Switzerland). Trent has more than 115 peer-reviewed scientific publications, and authored 10-book chapters in the areas of exercise physiology, skeletal muscle metabolism, sports nutrition and performance. Trent has been an invited expert presenter and author for many international nutrition consensus statement meetings with the IOC (International Olympic Committee), FINA and World Athletics (WA; formally IAAF), and is a member of the International Advisory Board for the IOC Diploma Program in Sports Nutrition. Over the years, Trent has attended and/or serviced athletes and sports over 4 Olympic/Paralympic Games, 4 Commonwealth Games and >15 World Championships across several sports.

Julie McCleery, PhD

Dr. McCleery's work in the sports world is at the intersection of research and practice. At the University of Washington's Center for Leadership in Athletics she serves as the principal investigator for two projects - Ambitious Coaching and State of Play: Seattle-King County - both of which have translated into community-based efforts to ensure equitable access to high quality sports experiences. Ambitious Coaching research explores the core practices of highly effective coaches and underpins the Center's ACCEL Coaching Certificate program. The State of Play research, a landscape analysis of youth physical activity in King County, serves as a springboard for the King County Play Equity Coalition, a 95-member organization focused on systemic change in youth sports. Julie also teaches masters and undergraduate students. Prior to joining UW, she ran a consulting business, worked in education policy, was a high school teacher, and was on the US National Rowing Team as both an athlete and a coach. She received a B.A. from Georgetown University, an M.Ed. from Harvard, and a Ph.D. from the University of Washington. She enjoys hiking with her two dogs.