Today we’d like to introduce you to Imani Powell.
Hi Imani, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I grew up in Louisiana, where access to real healthcare and holistic wellness is genuinely limited for a lot of people. When I relocated to San Diego and started traveling, I saw firsthand what it looks like when people actually have access to evidence-based wellness : clean food environments, intentional spaces, preventative care built into daily life. That gap never left me.
I started NewLife in 2017 as a holistic wellness brand. My background spans biology, psychology, naturopathic medicine training at Bastyr University, nine years as a certified personal trainer, sports nutrition, and now graduate-level clinical counseling psychology. My work began with holistic personal training, coaching, and speaking. But over time I kept noticing the same thing: people were doing the work on themselves, but the environments they were going back to every day were working against them.
That realization is what shifted everything for me. Wellness isn’t meant to be a service, it’s meant to be a lifestyle by design. The spaces where people live, work, and travel either support human health or quietly undermine it.
Today, through NewLife, I design functional wellness spaces and edible garden installations for residential homes, corporate properties, and travel destinations. I’ve brought this work into Dallas ISD schools, corporate offices, a faith-based shelter for homeless pregnant mothers, and fitness communities across DFW. The vision now extends globally! I’m actively building toward wellness property consulting for boutique hotels and homes, particularly across the U.S. and Africa, where wellness tourism is growing rapidly and the demand for practitioners who bring both clinical depth and cultural fluency is real.
My original mission, as a girl from Louisiana remains the same : I saw a wellness gap, so I decided to close it, one space at a time.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The biggest challenge is one that’s still ongoing. Wellness has exploded since COVID, and with that explosion came an overwhelming wave of self-proclaimed experts, online influencers, and content creators with no formal background in science, medicine, fitness, or nutrition.
I have a B.S. in Biology and Psychology, naturopathic medical training, 9 years as a certified holistic personal trainer, and I’m currently completing graduate-level clinical counseling psychology training. Maintaining credibility in a space that has been diluted overnight requires constant vigilance ; and a LOT of patient education to people.
The most pressing version of this challenge right now is AI. People are using AI to generate workout plans and meal plans without inputting the personal medical history, lifestyle factors, and daily behavioral context that any qualified practitioner would gather first. I recently had a client share an AI-generated training and nutrition plan with me that looked thorough on the surface. The problem was that AI had no knowledge of that client’s specific health conditions, movement patterns, stress load, or how their body had actually been responding over time. It was a generic output dressed up as personalized guidance and acting on it would have produced zero results at best, harm at worst.
AI does not yet possess the critical thinking capacity to progress alongside a human as they grow, adapt, and change. It works from data it’s been fed. A practitioner works from the full picture of a living person in real time. That distinction matters enormously in health.
What I will say is this: I am not against AI in wellness. I am currently in early conversations around an exclusive opportunity in AI development within the wellness space, working to ensure the technology is built with the clinical rigor and human judgment it requires to actually serve people well. If that intersection interests you, I am open to connecting with the right partners.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Through NewLife I bring clinical, evidence-based wellness into everyday settings. On the design side, I create functional home gym spaces engineered for real performance and recovery, and bespoke edible garden installations for residential properties, corporate campuses, and travel properties.
What sets NewLife apart is the depth behind the work. Every installation is grounded in biology, functional movement science, nutritional medicine, and behavioral psychology : not trends or aesthetics purely. A NewLife gym is designed around how the human body actually moves and recovers and personal lifestyle preference. A NewLife garden is designed around how food actually nourishes.
What do you like and dislike about the city?
I love the growth and opportunity in Dallas. Dallas remains culturally the South while having progressive advancements in opportunity and environmental developments.
Pricing:
- Garden Installations (Apartments & Homes) start as low as $750
- Gym Designs start as low as $1,800
Contact Info:
- Website: https://livenewlife.info
- Instagram: @imanipowell___
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/imanipowell
- Youtube: @imanipowell.livewell
