Meet Nina
Founder of Living Ayurveda Hawai‘i, Wild Woman Collective & Nina Cucina
Board-Certified Ayurvedic Practitioner • Clinical Herbalist • Chef
Cat Mom • Plant Lover • Taurus Baby • SOCIAL BUTTERFLY • enthusiastic hermit
A little about me
I grew up the daughter of restaurateurs on a tiny island off the coast of New Jersey. My mother planned every gathering. My father fed everyone who walked through the door. I didn't know it then, but I was absorbing both.
Creating spaces where people feel nourished and connected has been the through line of my life ever since.
The chapter that changed everything came in 2015 when my dear friend Christa Whittmier was diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer. I became one of her primary caretakers, helping her navigate an overwhelming world of Western medicine, naturopathy, Chinese medicine, and healing food. I cooked for her. I advocated for her. And I watched what happened when someone had real support and real nourishment alongside treatment.
What I witnessed cracked my dharmic path wide open. Not just the power of integrated care, but the urgency of prevention. When a woman is already in crisis, we are playing catch up. The root of her health is buried. The work is so much harder. I never wanted to wait that long to help someone.
That experience led me to Nina Cucina, my seasonal meal delivery service rooted in food as medicine, then to health coaching and eventually to Ayurveda, where everything finally clicked into place.
You can meet Christa and her incredible spirit in her documentary The Adventures of Super CW.
My Lineage of Study
I’ve trained and studied under master teachers in both Ayurveda and Lāʻau Lapaʻau, the traditional medicine of Hawai‘i. My work is deeply informed by these ancient & living systems of medicine, rooted in nature, seasonality, and ancestral wisdom.
Board-Certified Ayurvedic Practitioner (National Ayurvedic Medical Association)
Graduate of the California College of Ayurveda with Clinical Ayurvedic Specialist Certification
Trained Clinical Herbalist with extensive experience in custom herbal formulation
Ongoing student of Lāʻau Lapaʻau under the mentorship of Kumu Keoki Baclayon & Kumu Leinaʻala Bright
Ayurvedic Chef and Certified Detox Guide
Founder of Nina Cucina, offering seasonal, plant-based meals inspired by Ayurvedic principles
My practice is grounded in mentorship, formal study, and a decade of hands-on experience.The truest wisdom is both learned and lived, and I am honored to carry these lineages forward.
My Work Today
Today my work is about helping women come home to themselves through subtle but profound reconnection with their bodies, their cycles, and their inner wisdom.
We live in a culture that constantly pulls us outward. More information, more opinions, more noise. My work goes in the opposite direction. I guide women back to their own knowing, their own rhythm, their own inner medicine woman.
Through years of practice I've learned that real healing is a slow unfolding. A peeling back of layers. A deep remembering of what has always been true. Even after a powerful cleanse or breakthrough, the real medicine is in the integration, in the daily devotion to yourself, season after season.
And I've learned something else. The women who transformed most deeply were never doing it alone. They had rhythm, personalized support, and other women walking the same path alongside them. This confirmed what I have always known in my bones: I am someone who gathers people. Creating spaces where women feel nourished, seen, and genuinely connected has been my fractal since childhood. The Wild Woman Collective is simply the fullest expression of that.
That's why I created it. A year-long community where women do this work together, held by Ayurvedic wisdom, the rhythm of the seasons, and each other.
This is the heart of my work: walking alongside women as they remember who they are.
Life Outside the Practice
I am, at heart, equal parts social butterfly & enthusiastic hermit. I can pour myself into people and community for hours, and then I need complete silence and my cats for approximately forever.
When I carve out that time you'll find me sipping rose tea in the garden with my husband Mike and our kitties Panther, Boots, and Mimi, tending to lāʻau herbs, flowers, vegetables, and fruit trees, or wandering the freshwater streams and waterfalls of the Ko'olau mountains.
And you can always find me in the kitchen, blowing it up with a new food project, playing with local ingredients, letting the seasons and my cravings guide whatever ends up on the stove.
Soon there will be chickens joining our little ‘ohana. We are all very excited about this.