ELA
The Eating for Life Alliance is a non-profit organization providing educational resources on the treatment and prevention of eating disorders and body image disturbances to colleges nationwide.
Co-Founders
Dawn Hynes, MSW
Dawn Hynes is CEO and Co-Founder for Eating for Life Alliance, and a member of the Junior Board of the Eating Disorders Coalition. She holds a Master’s Degree in Social Work from Washington University in St. Louis. Dawn is a passionate advocate dedicated to making eating disorder treatment accessible to more people and providing practitioners with state of the art training and resources. For the past decade, Dawn has been active in eating disorder recovery work as an advocate, clinician, and volunteer. She has trained staff, developed clinical manuals, and worked with groups and individuals at Boston Children’s Hospital and Laurel Hill Inn’s Residential Treatment Program. As a volunteer, she has helped over 100 families in her community find resources and treatment referrals, created and distributed comprehensive eating disorder manuals to hundreds of organizations and individuals, and worked with a team of clinicians helping celebrities from NY and LA connect to treatment. Dawn also has an extensive background in domestic violence: her most recent position was that of Director of the Health Center Domestic Violence Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. In this field, she developed best practices and standards, created and delivered trainings for providers, and helped raise over one million dollars.
Whitney Ladd Post, MA
Whitney Ladd Post is President and Co-Founder for Eating for Life Alliance. She is a graduate from Brown University and holds a masters degree in counseling psychology from Leslie University. Over the past ten years, Whitney has run hundreds of groups helping women develop healthier relationships with their bodies. As a clinician, she has designed or implemented eating disorder treatment programs at the Cambridge Eating Disorder Center, Walden Behavioral Care, and Arbour Health Systems. As a consultant, she has provided wellness trainings, workshops, and individual coaching to National team athletes, as well as to area colleges, including Harvard University, Williams College, Boston University, and Wellesley College. She served for four years as the Director of the Women’s Sports Foundation’s GoGirlGo! Boston, an organization focused on improving the physical and emotional health of girls through physical activity and sports. During her tenure in this position, GoGirlGo! Boston raised over a million dollars in foundation and government funding, distributed over $500,000 in grants, helped over 8,000 girls become physically active, and provided educational materials to over 20,000 Boston girls. Based on her own experience as a four-time National team rower, World Champion, and alternate for the Sydney Olympics, she specializes in athletes and eating disorder recovery, and contributes to national publications on the topic.
