She’s still unpacking boxes in her office at The Ohio State University and her house on Bevelhymer Road, but Tracy Ingram has jumped right into her role as executive director of Healthy New Albany, Inc.
Her weeks are filled with meetings and decision-making – attending open forums with the New Albany community to discuss programming and finalizing placement of electrical outlets at the Center for Healthy New Albany, which is under construction, to name a few. The facility is a partnership with the city of New Albany, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and Nationwide Children’s Hospital.
The newly hired director – the position is partially funded through the nonprofit organization and partially through the OSU Wexner Medical Center – is a recent transplant to the New Albany area, but she has extensive experience in the field of health.
Originally from Indiana, Ingram has a bachelor’s degree in nutrition and chemistry from Indiana University.
“I was always really good in the sciences, but I grew up very close to my grandmother and grandfather, and my grandmother loved cooking,” Ingram says. “I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if I could mix the two?’ And then (I got) into college and (learned) about food science and nutrition and (I thought), ‘This would be awesome.’ It kind of captured my heart – being healthy and understanding how food plays a role in both sustaining health and preventing future illnesses.”
While in college, she met and married her husband, Brett. She started her career as a registered dietitian and eventually moved into the business side of health care.
She was a sales manager at Nabisco before returning to school at Indiana University Purdue University, earning her master’s in health care administration and becoming a health care economics instructor there. She began doing health care consulting shortly before Brett’s job in software brought him to central Ohio in 1998, and she continued that work until 2008, when she was offered a full-time position at OhioHealth.
All the while, the couple was raising their three sons – Luke, Clark and Caleb, now in their 20s. Tall and trim, Ingram has a bright smile and an easygoing manner. The bookshelf in her office at OSU holds a number of cookbooks, and she enjoys cooking on the weekends.
“I have 167 cookbooks. I love to convert recipes to be more healthful. I love that. That’s a great hobby of mine. I read cookbooks on a regular basis. Is that a goofy hobby?”
Her other hobbies include hiking, golfing and tennis. “I started playing tennis in the street of my neighborhood when I was really young, like 8 or 9. I used to ride my bike to the local club, and I started taking tennis lessons,” Ingram says.
She played through high school in Anderson, Ind. and her freshman year at IU, then picked it back up as an adult and was a tennis pro at Wedgewood Golf and Country Club in Powell.
The family lived in Dublin while Ingram worked at OhioHealth as a senior leadership specialist in the Department of Organizational Development. Her project creating and overseeing a nurse management training program reduced turnover from 23.5 percent to under 5 percent and improved productivity so much that she was honored with the 2013 Management Innovation Award from the American College of Healthcare Executives.
The award prompted Ingram to take stock of her career.
“It kind of spurred me to say, ‘I’m at this time in my life when I’m an empty-nester. I want a job that has purpose beyond myself,’” she says. “I really wanted to get my arms around something that would draw that kind of passion.”
A coworker at OhioHealth referred her for the Healthy New Albany director position, and Ingram was stunned at what a great fit it was for her background.
“It seemed to fit a lot of things that I do with my nutrition and the health administration background. It was a mixture of the two,” Ingram says. “I really felt like this job was made for me, and that’s a great blessing.”
In the weeks, months and years to come, Ingram will guide the efforts of the volunteer-driven organization. The New Albany community will have just as much say in programming at the center as it has in the group’s efforts to date.
November marked the first of several open forums to discuss programming at the center, with approximately 35 people in attendance, Ingram says. Upcoming dates for the forums, dubbed “Ideas, Inspiration and Input,” are Jan. 9, Jan. 23, Feb. 13 and Feb. 27. All forums are held from 10-11:30 a.m. at the Plain Township Fire Department, 9500 Johnstown Rd.
Ingram describes the center as a place where New Albany residents can go for a holistic plan for health.
“This is really taking health care as we know it and turning it on its head,” she says. “Instead of going to the doctor when you’re sick, you’re going to get a prescription for health – a prescription for exercise, a prescription for diet and nutrition – and we’re going to roll that into the community side (of the building) and that’s going to be part of the programming there, too.”
Health takes many forms, and the new center will touch on several aspects of it, including art, cooking and nutrition, exercise, and community, Ingram says.
“Health can be not just what you eat, not just how much you exercise, but it’s your network and whether you have a support group,” she says. “It’s how you handle resilience and stress and whether you’re doing the things that build up your spirit versus taking it down.”
Ingram is looking forward to the center’s opening, which is currently planned for Nov. 1. In the meantime, she’s getting to know New Albany and planning how best to pursue the goal that Healthy New Albany founder Phil Heit set: to make New Albany the healthiest city in the country.
“I feel like I’m a lifelong learner around health and nutrition,” Ingram says. “That’s why this project is so exciting. We’re taking the OSU research science and bringing it to a practical forum to help people improve their lives and become more healthy.”
Lisa Aurand is editor of Healthy New Albany Magazine. Feedback welcome at laurand@cityscenemediagroup.com.
