First-year grad student wins Schweitzer Fellowship to teach nutrition and culinary skills to Chicago kids
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When it comes to pursuing goals, Toi Johnson isn’t one to wait. The first-year master’s student in the coordinated nutrition and dietetics program, Navy veteran, single mother of two and vegan chef is already three fellowships deep into a career as a registered dietician that she hasn’t technically started yet.
After securing a maternal-child fellowship with KN professor Lisa Tussing-Humphreys ’09 PhD NUT and a second fellowship curating recipes for cancer patients with Dr. Andrew McLeod, Johnson was recently awarded Health & Medicine’s Chicago Area Schweitzer Fellowship for the 2026-2027 year.
Since 1996, the Schweitzer fellows program has awarded grants to students in a variety of medical fields for projects that improve the health and well-being of underserved Chicago communities. Johnson’s fellowship, which will run from May of 2026 to May of 2027, will allow her to launch her own nutrition education project for children well ahead of the timeline she’d originally set for herself.
“I wanted to start an organization where I teach kids how to shop, prep, cook, and store food, maybe one to three years into my dietetics career,” Johnson said. But on the encouragement of Tussing-Humphreys, Johnson found the Schweitzer program and determined she could start right away.
The project’s focus on children was a choice rooted in both pragmatism and passion. “Adults are set in their way,” Johnson said with a laugh. “And I think it’s easier working with kids because they are impressionable, and cooking is a life skill that they will build on as they grow up.”
“Toi’s passion for improving child nutrition and health is rooted in lived experience,” Tussing-Humphreys said.
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Her Schweitzer project was inspired by nutrition-related diseases in her community and her belief that children need nutrition and culinary education early in life. Toi’s personal experiences, combined with her training as a chef and her clinical nutrition science training at UIC, position her uniquely to serve some of Chicago’s most vulnerable youth.
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At the heart of Johnson’s philosophy is dismantling the idea that eating well is a luxury. Drawing on her degrees in culinary arts and hospitality, her career in kitchens and a decade of healthy vegan cooking at home, she challenges families to rethink their assumptions. Her goal is to reorient kids and their families in the grocery store, guiding them toward the produce section rather than the middle aisles, and to encourage weekly meal prep sessions.
“It’s this misnomer that it’s expensive to eat healthy, and I want to teach people a different way,” she said. “Everybody has four hours — give me four hours per week, and we could knock this out.”
Johnson plans to do more than send kids away with healthy recipes. It’s also important to influence cooking methods, ingredient choices and presentation to get families more comfortable preparing “real food,” which Johnson distinguishes from “healthy food.”
“I don’t like saying healthy food; any food could be unhealthy,” Johnson said. “I tell people, as a Black woman, I don’t eat swimming greens. You’re cooking all the nutrients out of them, and I still want to see color. Eat your colors. The plate has to be beautiful.”
Johnson’s personal schedule is proof of concept. Between full-time classes and fellowships, working, parenting a 15- and an 8-year-old and a Sunday meal prep routine she keeps under four hours, she practices exactly what she preaches.
“I want to be somebody to make life easy for you,” she said. “Not make life hard for you.”