When she began working on her master’s degree in foods and nutrition, Catherine Fish thought her future lay with sports teams.

“I came to UGA because there was the incredible opportunity to do sports nutrition for top-tier collegiate athletic teams,” she said. “I worked in Dr. Rick Lewis’ lab and provided sports nutrition education and one-on-one counseling to UGA athletes.”

When she arrived at UGA from her undergraduate studies at Miami University in Ohio, Fish met fellow master’s student Matthew Robinson, who was a year ahead of her and had earned his bachelor’s degree in nutrition science in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences.

“I was originally a forestry major when I began my undergraduate degree,” Robinson said. “Then I realized I wasn’t interested in working in the paper industry or for the National Park Service. For a while, I was a journalism major. I wanted to be a news anchor. But I’ve always known deep down that I was interested in a career related to food.”

Although it took a couple of tries for Robinson to find his major, his ultimate goal was to work within the food industry.

“I always knew I had an interest in a corporate setting,” he said. “I knew I wasn’t interested in an academic research position.”

Robinson had the good fortune to land a position with the Lipton Tea Co. just as he finished his master’s thesis. Literally.

“I was defending my thesis and Dr. Mary Ann Johnson said she had received a call from a friend about an open position at Thomas J. Lipton. Was I interested?” Robinson recalled. “I was very interested. One of the toughest things about the food industry is getting a foot in the door.”

Robinson moved to New Jersey for his new position, investigating the health benefits of tea.

“I worked as a bench scientist looking at the antioxidant capacities of different teas and other natural compounds that are found in tea,” he explained. “Ultimately, our goal was to apply the research to a consumer benefit.”

 Back in Athens, Fish was completing her master’s degree and participating in the rotations that are a part of the dietetics internship program.

“Matthew contacted me about an internship with a public relations agency in New York,” Fish said. “I came up and interned and loved PR. I applied for a position with the firm and got it.”

At that time, Fish and Robinson were just friends, but after Fish moved to New York the two began to date. They celebrated their sixth wedding anniversary in October.

After working for the PR agency for a while, Fish made the leap to Whitehall-Robins Healthcare, working in the regulatory affairs department.

 “When I was working in PR I worked on product launches for vitamin supplements,” Fish said. “I found that I was always thinking, ‘If they had done things just a bit differently during the product development process, we could launch this product with additional health claims.’ In PR you’re always launching products, not developing them.”

Fish decided to switch to the regulatory department so she could provide more input into how products are developed. She now serves as a senior associate director of regulatory affairs for analgesic and topical products at Bayer Consumer Care.

“Regulatory has such a bad reputation,” she said. “But really it’s at the foundation of every new health-care product. It is exciting and challenging and draws on both my science background and PR skills.”

In her positions at Bayer, Fish has served as the internal spokesperson for One-A-Day® vitamins and develops regulatory strategy for Bayer® aspirin. She’s responsible for knowing the many regulations that must be followed when brands make a health claim. But that knowledge puts her in the meetings that are held to decide how a product will be developed or revised.

“We discuss how to communicate a product’s benefits; where to go with new products; what can be added to aspirin, for example, to help meet a need for our customers,” she explained.

To help gain a better understanding of the connection between science and business, Fish obtained her MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business.

After working for Thomas J. Lipton, Robinson moved on to Nabisco where he helped develop nutritional claims for products such as Triscuits and Planter’s peanuts.

“I joined Nabisco to make the connection between products and health benefits directly for the consumer,” he said. “For example, Triscuits was one of very few whole grain snack products. We were able to change the regulatory environment to make stronger claims regarding this point.”

While working for Nabisco, Robinson also obtained his culinary degree at the French Culinary Institute in New York City.

“Somebody once made the comment, ‘People don’t eat nutrients, they eat good food,” Robinson said. “The best nutrition science in the world is not going to help people eat better. The food has to taste good.”

After Nabisco, Robinson made a career move to his current position as an associate director of nutrition science at McNeil Nutritionals, a division of Johnson and Johnson.

Currently, he’s focusing on Viactiv®, LACTAID® and Splenda®.

“I make sure the things we say about our products match with the current state of the science,” he said. “I have two main areas of focus. First, I look to the future and where things are going from a health perspective. I use this information to help create new nutrition strategies for the brands. Second, I focus on helping the brand in the short term by monitoring the literature that’s coming out right now and seeing whether it has an impact on our current products.”

Since Fish works at a company that produces Bayer® aspirin and One-A-Day® vitamins and Robinson works at a competing company that produces Viactiv® and Tylenol®, talking about their work at home is complicated.

“We don’t talk about the products we’re working on at home,” Fish said. “But we’re fortunate that we both are managing people, so we can talk about those issues.”

What’s not quite as fortunate are the hours Fish and Robinson put in at their respective jobs and the uncertainty that comes with corporate positions.

“I can remember a seminar I attended in grad school and the speaker was Gil Leveille, who’s a leader in the food industry. He said, ‘If you want to be successful in a corporate setting you have to be flexible,’” Robinson recalled.

That philosophy has guided Robinson as he’s switched jobs, sometimes moving into positions that put him higher on the corporate ladder, but sometimes making lateral moves.

 While Robinson always knew he wanted a corporate position, Fish is aware that her decision not to work in a clinical setting may be viewed negatively by fellow registered dietitians.

“I know some people might view me as a sell-out because I went into industry to work with dietary supplements,” she said. “But really we are helping people here. For example, aspirin, which can reduce the risk of a recurrent heart attack or stroke, is terribly underused. If we can get the message out to doctors or nutrition counselors through our advertising that aspirin has these benefits, I’m helping millions of people at a time instead of one at a time in a clinical setting. If my work helps fill that gap, then I’m improving the health of a lot of people.”