Meet Bev Hope of Well with Zest / Health and Wellness Blog in Fort Worth

Today we’d like to introduce you to Bev Hope.

Bev, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Looking back, my story starts with both of my parents, encouraging my creativity as a young child. My mother was constantly taking me to art museums. My father kept me supplied with Polaroid cameras and encouraged my interest in photography. They both encouraged me in the kitchen, supporting my efforts to cook up new recipes for the Pillsbury bake-off contests. They loved helping me with my writing and drama classes at school. They made sure I never missed an art contest. Creative expression was valued in our family and it gave me much joy. My dream of what to be when I grew up was to be an artist.

By the time I was in high school, the main message from my family was to find a career that would pay the bills. I entered Davidson College, a liberal arts college, knowing I would probably need a post-graduate degree to find a good paying job. When I was a freshman, I went to the career counseling office for aptitude testing and guidance. The assessments revealed I was both very creative and very analytical, so they pointed me towards a career that used both skills: advertising or journalism. From there, I laid out my plan to build a successful career that would be sure to provide me a solid living and financial security. I worked in communications for a couple of years after graduating from Davidson, then earned my MBA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After graduate school, I entered Corporate America and launched my business career.

I spent over three decades working in marketing and brand management, driving business growth, launching new products, and building brands in the world’s top consumer product companies including, Johnson & Johnson, Kellogg’s, GlaxoSmithKline, and Nestle. My marketing career was a great fit with my skills, but deep down inside, I often felt like a tiny cog in the big corporate wheel. Throughout my career, I always day-dreamed about how I would REALLY use my creativity someday, either in a side gig or when I retired. I knew I needed to express my creative side more fully to be really happy and to live the life I dreamed. I knew someday, I would have to do something creative in my career. But what? But when?

The big spark came when I was in job transition, re-inventing myself after being downsized and laid off for the third time from my Corporate America job. Consumer health had been the focus of my career, but health and wellness had also become very personal. Due to the stress from losing my job after moving to Texas and completely uprooting my family, I came down with Graves’ Disease/hyperthyroidism, an autoimmune condition that attacks your thyroid gland. Shocked and uninformed, I searched for support groups but was disappointed in how little information and support was readily available. I knew the top standards for patient support from working across many diseases throughout my career. Plus I had experienced the best patient support when my late husband was dying from lung cancer, and also when my teen age son was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. I realized that Graves’ Disease/ hyperthyroidism was one of those autoimmune conditions that was not as well funded and supported as many of the diseases which had significant research investment for drug development. Graves’ Disease was left behind as there had been no innovation or new treatment solutions developed in over 60 years. I saw a clear need for more patient-driven advocacy and leadership in Graves’ Disease/hyperthyroidism as well as other underserved autoimmune conditions.

One morning while I was meditating in the bathtub, my spark crystalized into a clear vision. I saw myself using my marketing expertise and experience to help people on the same health and wellness journey that I was on. I realized I could use my own healthcare knowledge and experience to help empower people to live well despite dealing with a chronic health condition. I knew I could better manage my own disease and feel better, too if I was helping other people. So, I decided my personal mission would be to help inspire and empower other “spoonies” like me to live their best life. I had been working with many leading bloggers and patient advocates across various diseases, so I figured the best way for me to start living my mission was to start with my own blog and go from there. I was inspired to name my blog Well with Zest, with zest being a play on having a little too much thyroid “zest” from my hyperthyroidism. The more I got into my blog plans, the bigger my mission became. Not only did I want to inspire other “spoonies” like me to live well, but I also wanted to build community, to increase autoimmune disease awareness and advocacy, and to help increase research funding to uncover and solve the underlying issues that are impacting the drastic rise in autoimmune diseases worldwide.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
It definitely has not always been a smooth ride for me. I’ve surfed turbulent waves of change throughout my life. I’ve experienced a lot of loss, losing my mother when I was just 20, losing my husband to lung cancer after ten years of marriage when our sons were young boys, losing both my father and brother to heart disease and losing my own healthy body to an autoimmune disease in my 50’s.

Throughout my life, I’ve learned to adapt to change, embrace change and to treat change as opportunity for growth. I laugh because sometimes it feels like I’m still being challenged to “up my resilience game” even though I feel like I’m the “Uber” master of resilience. But the obstacles keep coming and I keep choosing to view them as opportunities to learn and grow. I try my best to keep a positive mindset, give myself lots of positive pep talks and surround myself with positive people. I keep moving forward no matter what barriers are in the way.

What I’ve learned in a nutshell is that disruption helps us grow. I believe we actually need chaos and disruption in our lives to become the best version of ourselves. We need change to unlock creativity. While it’s messy and painful, disruption is essential to keep growing. As I said to my kids when we uprooted ourselves from our home in North Carolina and moved to Texas, “We’ve Got to Go…To Grow.”

Please tell us about Well with Zest / Health and Wellness Blog.
What I do is help inspire dreams and visions and then help turn them into reality to make a positive difference in people’s lives. What sets me apart is my passionate commitment to make a difference in the lives of people dealing with chronic health conditions. I bring depth of professional experiences and skills from 30 years in marketing, working across diverse therapeutic areas, combined with personal insights from my own family’s health journey. I have traveled wide and varied roads in life and that helps me understand and connect with people. I am most proud of my personal accomplishments raising my two sons as a single mom, managing chronic health conditions, plus navigating raising a son with learning differences and a son with Type 1 diabetes.

I have transitioned from working in Corporate America being an award-winning entrepreneur and Director of Marketing for Nuvothera, Inc. a Fort Worth-based biotech company with the mission of developing novel OTC products for chronic inflammation-based health conditions. In the last year, our start-up company has launched two breakthrough innovative consumer products which we sell online on our website and on Amazon. In my current role working in a start-up internet marketing company, I gain new insights about various autoimmune conditions we help support every day. Being a lean start-up, I am hands-on with all aspects of digital marketing which helps me stay current with the rapidly changing digital environment.

Outside of work, I serve as the Program Director for the Fort Worth Galloway Half Marathon and Marathon Training Program as I am a deep believer that moving our bodies is essential to wellness. In Fort Worth Galloway, we use a run-walk-run method pioneered by Olympian Jeff Galloway, to train for our long distance running goals that keeps us running happy and injury free. I also enjoy cooking and trying new recipes that are delicious and healthy as I am a firm believer that food is medicine—it’s foundational to living well with an autoimmune condition. I also enjoy reading, traveling and discovering fun ways to de-stress and add zest into my life. Creating joyful memories with family and friends is what matters most.

At this point in my life, my entrepreneur mission and my personal mission have become one in the same! I have evolved from “Working for the Man” in a Corporate America job to “Working for my Passion” as a Biotech Entrepreneur, Health and Wellness Advocate and Blogger, and Self-Employed Consultant. My blog work is invigorating, empowering and rewarding!. I get much joy and satisfaction from taking my own photographs, sharing my personal insights and tips and writing my own health and wellness articles that are evidenced-based and reviewed by a board-certified physician.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
If I could start over, I would have surrounded my family with more positive people sooner after my late husband died. I would have removed negative people from our lives sooner. I would have been more intentional about having a great mentor in my life. I would have been more realistic about ageism in the workplace. I would have proactively planned ahead for post Corporate America employment. Fear is what holds us back. But we are not aware of how much it is holding us back until we get challenged. We need mentors to help us face those fears and move past them sooner. It’s easy to get comfortable and play it safe until we are forced out of our comfort zone by external factors. I wish I had been more proactive to push myself out of my comfort zone and to face ageism head-on and to treat it an opportunity versus deny it. Ageism is real and anyone in Corporate America who is past age 50 needs to plan for downsizing, job layoffs, and career re-invention.

Looking back, my biggest lesson is don’t get too comfortable. It’s better to move towards disruption when things seem easy, safe and cozy. Keep moving and taking steps to move towards your dreams. Don’t give up on them. Every step you accomplish helps propel you forward and fuels you to get closer and closer to achieving your dreams. In a nutshell, anticipate change and create positive disruption in your life to keep growing and live your best life. Creating my blog, Well with Zest, is one of the ways I am bringing positive disruption to my life. I am motivated that it will not only help me but will also help others, especially those dealing with chronic conditions, live healthier and happier lives. I’m committed to doing my personal best to help others live their best, to help others live Well with Zest!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.wellwithzest.com (launching my blog in June)
• Email: bev@wellwithzest.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bevhope/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FortWorthGalloway/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/BevHope
• Yelp: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bevhope/
• Other: https://www.nuvothera.com (start-up company website)

Image Credit:
Bev Hope Photos at Fort Worth Museum Locations can be credited to Wesley Holmes

Getting in touch: VoyageDallas is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.