Featuring Dasha | Dietician, Health Scientist, Founder of CoreCoaches.io
When Dasha got a check in the mail from a Florida Corrections Facility, she wasn’t expecting it. Five years earlier, she had been scammed out of $15,000 while trying to launch her first business. The legal battle that followed cost time, money, and hope. But on that day, staring at the check, it all felt full circle.
Because by then, Dasha had already turned the pain into a purpose-driven business — three of them, in fact.
Born to Russian immigrant parents who arrived in the U.S. with just $50 and PhDs in cancer research, Dasha was raised to believe science and sacrifice were the path to success. She interned at Princeton, worked at Mass General Hospital observing facial reconstruction surgeries, and graduated with a Master’s in Nutritional Epidemiology from Tufts University. She was textbook “elite.”
But textbook training didn’t teach her how to actually help people.
“I went to the best nutrition school, became a registered dietitian, a CPT, and still — no one taught me how to actually change someone’s life through health,” she said.
In 2020, while the world shut down, Dasha doubled down. She launched a plant-based protein powder: top-9 allergen free, gut-safe, and scientifically formulated to be as effective as animal protein. It was built for the kind of clients she would one day serve: people with complex gut issues and anaphylactic reactions to nearly everything.
She pitched the product at Tufts' prestigious $100K innovation challenge — and won $18,000 plus $10K in legal fees, which she used to file a provisional patent.
She had the vision. She had the science. And now, she had validation.
Healing Isn’t Linear. Neither is Entrepreneurship.
After the pitch win, Dasha moved in with her parents. Not out of failure, but because her studio in Tampa couldn’t hold pallets of protein powder. “It was the classic entrepreneur story,” she laughs now. “I was sleeping in my childhood bedroom with boxes of product down the hall.”
But it was working. Slowly, she built an audience, people who had followed her for years as she posted free health tips daily on Instagram. She didn’t sell a thing for four years. No courses. No coaching. Just consistency. “I was bullied for it,” she admits. “But when I finally said, ‘Hey, I’m taking clients,’ I had a line out the door.”
