iThrive Appoints Saloni Kulkarni To Its Board, Now All Women
iThrive has appointed Saloni Kulkarni, its former head of client services, to its board of directors. The functional medicine company's board is now entirely women.
- Role: board director, iThrive
- Previously: head of client services at iThrive
- Joined: June 2021, as a functional nutritionist
- Education: a bachelor's in nutrition from SNDT Women's University and a master's in nutrition and dietetics from Symbiosis International University
- Focus in the new role: strengthening the company's functional nutrition practice, advancing the role of nutrition professionals, and supporting growth
- Board composition: now 100% women-led
How Saloni Kulkarni Got Here
Through the practice, not around it. She joined iThrive as a practising functional nutritionist in 2021, moved from working directly with clients into directing client services, and has now been appointed to the board. It is an unusually vertical path in a field where the senior commercial roles are rarely filled from the practitioner bench.
Kulkarni said her time at iThrive has been a process of learning, taking on different responsibilities and developing herself, and that her career as a functional nutritionist started there. Joining the board, she said, is both a big honour and a huge responsibility, and she wants to show that women in nutrition can build a successful career from practical skills through to leadership.
The Argument About The MBA
Mugdha Pradhan, founder and chief executive of iThrive, put the appointment against a pattern she says holds across the sector: that governance and administrative roles at large nutrition companies are usually filled by people from business schools, and usually by men, while nutritionists themselves go into hospitals or independent practice.
Pradhan said Kulkarni is a deep specialist in functional nutrition who has the skills and aptitude for governance and for helping steer a company's growth, and that she does it without an MBA. She said she has wanted iThrive to be a place where women get the kind of growth they would find in IT, NBFCs or consulting, because corporate progression was never really a possibility in nutrition as a career.
Why It Is Worth Noting
Because the claim is about a career ladder that has not existed. Promoting a practitioner into a governance seat says something about how a company values domain expertise against business qualifications, and an all-women board in a wellness company is a statement that is easier to make than to arrive at. Pradhan called the composition a milestone and said she hopes it encourages more women into leadership in nutrition and wellness.
More on the company at ithrive.health. More people.