Phaly Pichota
Chief Executive Officer and Cofounder, Cibus Health
Phaly has been focused on nutrition for the majority of her life, after experiencing severe malnutrition in her early childhood during the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. She knows what it feels like to starve and has firsthand experienced on the power and impact of food with her own health and recovery. She credits the medics at Khao-I-Dang refugee for saving her life and inspired her become a US Army Medic herself in her early career. With a 26+ years of combined military service, Phaly continues to serve as a Medical Service Corp Officer within the USAFR as a military healthcare executive. Today, Phaly is a passionate nutritionist, fascinated with technology innovation as a public health intervention and it’s capabilities to help people adopt healthy eating and steer behavior towards better health outcomes. When she is not obsessing on ways to innovate and improve health, you can find her in the kitchen – experimenting with ingredients and flavors – always trying to make her favorite dishes just a little bit “healthier”. She is constantly laughing, goofing around and enjoying some kind of outdoor activity with her husband and two little boys. Her interests are far and wide, ranging from topics like women in leadership, health and wellness and of course anything that has to do with food! Phaly has been known to travel miles and miles, scouring various grocery stores and farmer markets, searching for the best tomatoes around! Toys and books litter across her family room, along with cookbooks, nutrition research articles and mom-made paper airplanes. She is always open for a good chat about anything and everything and loves connecting, sharing and being inspired by everyone around her!
Phaly received a Master in Public Health (MPH) degree from the UC Berkeley, an Integrative Nutrition certificate from UC San Diego, a MBA from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and a BS in Accounting and MSIS from UMASS Boston.
Location: San Diego County, California, United States