Tamara S. Melton

Videos

By Roadtrip Nation

Milestones

My road in life took a while to figure out.

Growing up, she loved to cook and always thought she would be a chef—she applied and was accepted to culinary school, but she had an epiphany that it wasn’t really what she wanted.

Inspired by her family members’ struggles with diabetes, she switched her major to nutrition and dietetics.

Ended up passing out at the sight of blood during her nutrition support rotation, which made her realize that working in the hospital scene was not for her.

After getting her graduate degree in nutrition, she taught part time at Georgia State University and worked in weight management for nonprofits.

At age 28, she got an opportunity to play a critical role in developing the new health informatics program at Georgia State University, where she served as program director for four years.

In order to broaden her knowledge of the field of health informatics, she did a certificate program at Duke University where she was the only non-nurse in the program.

She ran into an old college friend at a conference who helped her get her current position at Morrison Healthcare—says, ”They were looking for a dietician who knew about data. That’s me!”

Says she has always had an entrepreneurial heart—she consults and educates about nutrition, develops wellness programs, and hosts workshops.

Keep following my journey

Education

High School

Bachelor
Nutrition Sciences
University of North Florida

Graduate
Nutrition Sciences
Georgia State University

Doctorate
Medical Informatics
Duke University

Certification/License
Dietetics/Dietitian

Certification/License
Management Information Systems, General

Career

Director of Health Informatics

I serve as an internal consultant on initiatives that utilize technology or data analytics.

Career Roadmap

My work combines:

Medicine

Food

Helping People

Day to Day

Lots of phone calls! I work at home or in our corporate offices, seeing a technology solution we've worked on for months actually help these folks do their jobs better or makes a task easier for them, or improves our care for our patients. I also get to visit our accounts and work with them on projects. It could be visiting a hospital kitchen where we run the food service operations. We'll shadow the employees as they test out a new technology, such as a new app we've developed.

Advice for Getting Started

Here's the first step for high school students

Do your research early in high school to see what scholarships you can get. The best gift you can give yourself is not just an education - it's an education with as little student loan debt as possible. Having funding for school is the difference between pursuing the field of study in college you really want to pursue, or having to choose a major just because it will take less time / money.