🌱 Kitchen Monk™ Chief Flourishing Guardian
Meryl Fury, MS, RN
Public Health Nurse · Food as Medicine Leader · Children’s Nutrition Advocate · Plant-Based Nutrition Educator · Health Equity Champion
Kitchen Monk™ proudly recognizes Meryl Fury, MS, RN as our Chief Flourishing Guardian, in celebration of her decades of public-health nursing leadership and her work advancing nutrition education, child health, Food as Medicine, plant-based community support, and health equity.
🌱 LEADERSHIP ANNOUNCEMENT · SEPTEMBER 2026
Congratulations, Meryl: President & CEO of Plant Based Support
Plant Based Support has named Meryl Fury, MS, RN, its new President & CEO, and she also leads the Plant Based Nutrition Movement. It is another example of a nurse bringing compassion, education, collaboration, and systems-level thinking into the spaces where we need them most.
To Nathanael, Meryl is much more than a respected nurse leader. She is one of his closest nursing friends. When he was brand new in his current clinical role, she was one of the very few people who stepped forward to help. She gave her time. She trusted him. She encouraged him. She wanted another nurse to succeed.
Congratulations, my friend. Your greatest impact may still be ahead. 🌱💚
It is difficult for me to put into a few paragraphs how highly I regard Meryl Fury, MS, RN.
Meryl has my enormous, wholehearted, and unequivocal recommendation.
She represents something I care about deeply: what can happen when nursing moves beyond simply responding to disease and steps fully into prevention, education, advocacy, nutrition, community health, health equity, leadership, compassion, and transformation.
Meryl is a nurse.
A public-health leader.
An educator.
A transformational organizational leader.
A Food as Medicine advocate.
A champion for children and families.
A champion for historically under-resourced communities.
A champion for whole-food, plant-based nutrition.
A champion for health equity.
And within Kitchen Monk™, our CHIEF FLOURISHING GUARDIAN.
— Nathanael Elijah Smith, FNP-C, DipACLM, Founder, Kitchen Monk™
What Is a Flourishing Guardian?
A Flourishing Guardian does not merely talk about better health. A Flourishing Guardian protects, teaches, equips, encourages, and creates healthier possibilities for the generations that follow.
- Protects the child
- Teaches the family
- Supports the nurse
- Nourishes the community
- Advances health equity
- Makes healthy choices more accessible
- Translates evidence into everyday life
- Builds bridges and shares resources
- Listens before teaching
- Teaches without condemning
- Leads without diminishing others
- Plants seeds whose fruit someone else may harvest
Few people embody this calling as naturally as Meryl.
More Than Three Decades of Nursing and Public Health
Meryl brings more than 30 years of experience in nursing leadership, public health, community health, and nutrition education. A Registered Nurse with a Master’s degree in Nursing, she has worked extensively in public health and with underserved communities.
That history matters. Meryl did not arrive at health equity through theory alone. She understands that telling someone to “make healthier choices” means very little unless we also address education, access, affordability, culture, food systems, schools, families, and neighborhoods.
Health lives within environments. Food access, affordability, transportation, time, school meals, culture, social support, and healthcare access all shape whether health advice can be followed. Lifestyle medicine must never become “you’re sick because you made bad choices,” and it must never become a luxury service. It means giving people knowledge, resources, opportunity, community, compassion, and practical support.
What Meryl Shows Us About Nursing
Meryl’s career is one of the clearest real-world examples of Flourishing Nursing Forward™. A nurse can lead a nonprofit and become a CEO. A nurse can build national initiatives, work with schools, teach Food as Medicine, advocate for health equity, host a podcast, convene experts, and help change the food environment surrounding a generation of children.
This is not a call for nurses to leave the bedside. Bedside nursing is sacred work. It is a reminder that the scope of nursing’s contribution to human flourishing is enormous, and that it continues in homes, kitchens, schools, cafeterias, community centers, churches, and around dinner tables.
🌳 One Seed, Many Branches: Meryl’s Work
Official roles are listed as her organizations describe them. “Chief Flourishing Guardian” is a Kitchen Monk recognition, not a title from any of these organizations.
🤝 President & CEO, Plant Based Support
Plant Based Support announced Meryl as its President & CEO on September 2, 2026, effective July 20, 2026. The national nonprofit offers more than 20 online education and support sessions each month, plus community programs, teaching kitchens, and practical guidance. Why Kitchen Monk recommends Plant Based Support →
🌿 President & CEO, Plant Based Nutrition Movement
Meryl leads Plant Based Nutrition Movement (PBNM), a nonprofit advancing whole-food, plant-based nutrition education and community health, with a strong focus on children, families, and at-risk communities. Under her leadership, PBNM and Plant Based Support are entering a period of closer collaboration. Explore PBNM →
🌱 Founder, 6 Million SEEDS Child Nutrition Project
SEEDS stands for Students Educated in Environment, Diet, and Sustainability. The project brings whole plant foods and evidence-based nutrition education to students, teachers, classroom parents, and school food professionals, asking one of public health’s most important questions: what are we feeding our children? Plant 6 Million SEEDS →
🎙 Host, Growing a Healthy Child Podcast
Launched in January 2022, the podcast speaks to the adults who decide what children eat: parents, educators, and healthcare professionals. One nurse cannot care for every child, but one nurse can reach the adults who influence thousands of them.
🍲 Food for Life Instructor
Meryl is a Food for Life Instructor with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Hands-on classes turn information into confidence: people see food prepared, taste it, and realize, “I could actually do this.” Visit PCRM ↗
📚 Education, Evidence & Leadership
Meryl holds a Master’s degree in Nursing and certificates in Plant-Based Nutrition from the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies and eCornell, in project management from Villanova, and in plant-based cuisine from Rouxbe and Forks Over Knives. She has served on the Board of Directors and Medical Advisory Board of the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies and is a member of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine.
She speaks many languages at once: nursing, public health, implementation, nutrition science, culinary education, and, most importantly, the language of ordinary people trying to build healthier lives.
With Love and Acceptance
Meryl’s own plant-based journey began at age 15 and grew through years of nursing study, reflection, and personal transformation. Her aspiration to share the whole-food, plant-based message with love and acceptance resonates deeply with Kitchen Monk. Healthcare has enough shame, and nutrition has enough judgment. People need guides, teachers, encouragers, practical resources, and communities that meet them where they are.
For Our Flourishing Guardians
Children need heroes whose superpowers are compassion, wisdom, courage, service, nourishment, teaching, curiosity, and love. We want our Flourishing Guardians to grow up knowing that changing the world can look like helping a school put more nourishing food on a lunch tray, teaching a family one recipe, or becoming a nurse.
Continue Meryl’s Work
Meryl is busy doing the work, so the best way to honor her is to join it. Follow along, share her posts, and help her message reach more families.
Thank You, Meryl.
Thank you for planting seeds. Thank you for protecting children. Thank you for advocating for communities that deserve to be seen. Thank you for advancing Food as Medicine and bringing nursing leadership into the plant-based movement. Thank you for showing that health equity belongs at the center of lifestyle medicine. Thank you for teaching with love and acceptance. Thank you for being a guardian. And thank you for helping us imagine healthcare not merely as the treatment of disease, but as the cultivation of human flourishing.
🌱 Plant the seed. 🥕 Nourish the child. 🩺 Equip the nurse.
🍲 Transform the kitchen. 🤝 Strengthen the community.
🌎 Protect the future. 🌲 Cultivate flourishing.
With my deepest respect and highest recommendation,
Nathanael Elijah Smith, FNP-C, DipACLM
Founder, Kitchen Monk™
About this recognition. “Chief Flourishing Guardian” is an honorary recognition given by Kitchen Monk™. It is not a title conferred by Plant Based Support, Plant Based Nutrition Movement, PCRM, ACLM, the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies, or any other organization. This page expresses Kitchen Monk’s recommendation of Meryl and her work; it does not imply that Meryl or her organizations endorse Kitchen Monk. Roles and credentials are drawn from her organizations’ public biographies. Information last reviewed: September 2026.
