Meet the Nutrition Business Advisors Team

From all different backgrounds and scattered across the United States, NBA works together seamlessly to meet our clients' needs.

Meet The Team

  • Thomas Aarts, Managing Director

    San Diego, CA

    Thomas Aarts is Managing Director of Nutrition Business Advisors (NBA), a company which provides advanced consulting, strategic advising, capital raising and full-service business development focused on the $194 billion Global Nutrition Industry.

    Tom sits on several boards, including Vitamin Angels, a non-profit whose mission is to provide vital nutrients to children and women in need. Tom is a graduate of Colgate University and completed his MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

    Mr. Aarts is a high-level management consultant with 22 years of experience working with C-suite executives across the nutrition industry. His experience lies in management consulting, M&A transactions, capital raising and strategic market research.

  • Edward Hauck, Partner

    Bethesda, MD

    Edward Hauck has held senior leadership roles in the natural products industry for over twenty years. He is currently a Principal at Nutrition Capital Network and a business consultant. Over his career, Ed has been a senior executive at multiple industry-leading organizations, including President of Healthy Directions, Chief Executive Officer of ProThera/Complementary Prescriptions, Chief Operating Officer at Stop Aging Now, and Executive Vice President at Great HealthWorks. Edward has led the successful sale process for three companies in the Natural Health industry that generated above-market multiples. He was the Co-Founder and Managing Director of a business incubator for Internet companies, Vector Development. Edward has an MBA from the JL Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University and BA in Business and Economics from Wittenberg University.

  • Izzy Davis, Senior Project Manager

    San Diego, CA

    Isabella Davis is an expert in consumer trends of the nutrition and wellness industry. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Nutritional Sciences from the University of California, Berkeley focusing on human physiology and metabolism. While science is her principal discipline, her position at Nutrition Advisors is a marriage of market research, marketing, and operations. Isabella also draws from her past as a social media influencer. In her earlier years, she created hundreds of videos on YouTube on plant-based eating. She worked with brands like Thrive Market and GT’s Kombucha when they were just starting to advertise on social media, before the term “influencer” was widely known. 20 million views later, her platform is now mostly retired so that she can focus on working with clients, helping them tell their story and develop their digital marketing strategies. She has been in the supplement and health food industry for nearly 10 years, at the age of 26. Recently, she earned her certificate in Disruptive Strategy from Harvard Business School. In her free time, she is a group fitness instructor and loves to cook.

  • Genesis Delgado, Executive Assistant

    Los Angeles, CA

    As Tom Aart's Executive Assistant, Genesis brings a wealth of experience, dedicating her career to providing exceptional administrative support to Medical Directors, Physicians, and High-Level Executives in the Aesthetics industry. With a deep passion for beauty, health, and wellness, she thrives in orchestrating seamless operations, specializing in meticulous calendar management and adept coordination of complex travel logistics. Beyond the professional realm, Genesis finds joy in pottery and traveling during her free time.

  • Beth Pecenka, Consultant

    Chicago, IL

    Beth is currently a Consultant at Nutrition Business Advisors LLC. She has had a solid background in the nutrition and supplement industry as Director of Marketing at Mercola Health Resources and as the Director of Corporate Strategy and Marketing at NOW Foods. While at NOW, she was responsible for leading the marketing team, developing the corporate strategy as well as managing the food category and practitioner brand.

    Before her time at NOW, Beth was a VP of Equity Research at EVEREN Securities, making stock recommendations within the nutritional supplement manufacturing sector as well as specialty retailing. Beth serves on the Board of Healthy & Natural Chicagoland and was previously on the Board of Hephzibah Children’s Association and The Association for Strategic Planning. Beth received an MBA from DePaul University and her BA from SUNY Buffalo in Economics and German.

  • Carla Ooyen, Market Research Consultant,

    Ooyen Research, Montana

    Carla Ooyen is an independent market research consultant focusing on the natural products industry, including natural and organic food and personal care, supplements, functional food, and pet products. She has also conducted research in the cannabis and hemp industries. Prior to founding Ooyen Research, LLC in 2014, Carla spent six years honing her market research skills with Nutrition Business Journal and New Hope Natural Media. Carla has worked with suppliers, manufacturers, retailers, investors, and everyone else involved in the value chain to determine market potential and future strategy based on quantitative and qualitative inputs.

    Carla holds an MBA from the University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business. Before becoming a market researcher, she still analyzed data and trends as an architectural engineer.

  • Genebyl Gicalde

    Genebyl Gicalde has spent 10 years supporting senior managerial and directorial teams, offering indispensable administrative assistance and optimizing their time management. She excels in collecting and breaking down data about consumers and competitors, turning them into informative reports and slides. Through rigorous online research, she keeps databases updated with the latest market findings delivering in-depth competitive analyses. Her strength lies in data analysis and designing efficient spreadsheets that streamline business processes.

  • Noah V.

    Noah has been personally and professionally involved in the probiotic/prebiotic, microbiome, genomic and personalized health space for the past seven years. Recently, leading strategic, product development, regulatory and R&D engagements with established category leading companies to emerging growth start-ups. In the microbiome space, projects have ranged from advising private-equity, VC, biotechs on microbiome investment/pipeline/industry trends in support of recent acquisitions, developing R&D strategy for emerging microbiome CPG beverages to collaborating with one of the leading global probiotic brands on brand strategy initiatives. Genomic and personalized health sector engagements have focused on industry intelligence, sales channel positioning, product development and scientific due diligence for DTC genetic or microbiome-based tests with clients ranging from leading companies to emerging growth start-ups.

  • Tim Avila

    Tim has 30 years of experience in bioactive ingredient discovery, validation, and marketing of consumer packaged nutrition products. He provides expertise in dietary supplements, natural and organic foods, and consumer products to global Fortune 500 companies like Cargill, Nestle, and Proctor & Gamble. In 2005, Tim founded Zero Worries Food Inc. and pioneered ZSWEET®, an all-natural, USDA Certified Organic zero-calorie tabletop sweetener that replaced caloric sweeteners and artificial substitutes. As a founding member of the screening committee at Nutrition Capital Network, Tim actively participates in nurturing and guiding emerging brands and companies. He is also a dedicated sponsor and board member of Naturally Los Angeles, Naturally San Diego, and the Naturally Network, a non-profit association fostering community support and access for participants in the natural products industry.