Spirit
Faith is the foundation under everything I build, and it belongs at the top. Wholeness starts with reconnecting with God.
Clinician, founder, author, wife and mother
Building the places, programs and books that help people heal in body, mind and spirit.
I believe health is whole: the body, the mind, the work we do, the people we love and the God we answer to. This is who I am, what I've learned the hard way, and what I'm building because of it.
Who I am
I co-founded a medical practice before I had any medical training.
In 2004, my husband, Dr. David Akinpelu, and I opened Kinpel Medical, the practice that became RejuVe Medical Group. I was a dental assistant. I had left college years earlier to get married, and I had no degree at all.
Getting from there to here took three dental school rejections, each by about a tenth of a point. It took one phone call most people would have been too proud to make. And it took half a credit of gym class.
It also took everything that came before: a basement in Southeast D.C., a short stay in foster care, a father who came and got us, an attic full of primers I used to teach myself to read, and a family that refused to let me go.
I finished physician associate school in my forties, summa cum laude, and spent the next decade on 24-hour OB/GYN shifts. They made me a better clinician and a less healthy woman.
Then one morning, a colleague looked at my breakfast and said one sentence.
Everything I've built since grew out of what happened next.
What I'm still working on
The honest part
It's after midnight, and I'm still at the computer.
The house went to sleep hours ago. I'm building something: a system, a workflow, a page. Something I could pay someone else to do. Something I've decided, again, to do myself.
This is the part of me I'm least proud of, and it grows straight out of the part I'm most proud of.
In 59 years I've taught myself to sew, bake and cook, to formulate body products, to design recipes, to run the software behind a medical practice, and now to work alongside AI. Give me a problem and a quiet room, and I'll learn whatever it takes. I'm still the little girl teaching herself to read in her grandmother's attic.
But that little girl learned something else up there. If you want it done, do it yourself.
So I do. I tell myself it's about money: what if there isn't enough to pay someone? I tell myself it's about standards: what if they don't do it the way I see it in my head? The truth is harder. When someone hands me their very best, I struggle to accept that it might be 80% of what I pictured.
Selling is worse. I know what I offer works. Put me in front of the right person, and I can give them exactly what they came for. And still, the moment I have to ask, I feel like a used car salesman. That feeling followed me out of my past, and it hasn't fully let go.
Then there are people. I'm far more at home behind a screen, organizing ideas and building systems, than I am picking up the phone or walking into a room full of strangers. Ask me to make a call, and I'll find three more things to build first.
I have a reason. At least, I tell myself it's a reason.
I carry a big vision with a lot of moving parts, and I can feel the clock. So I've stayed hyper-focused, sometimes at the expense of relationships I should be building. It feels like a mission: put every piece in place, so that when the people who need this finally come looking, everything is ready and waiting for them.
Here's what I keep running into at midnight.
If I don't go out and find my people, they won't find me.
So this page is me stepping out from behind the computer. If something here speaks to you, write to me at [email protected].
The road so far
Timeline
- 1967
Born a month early in Southeast Washington, D.C. My mother is 18. My sister arrives eleven months later. Pictured: the two of us.
- 1972
My father, raising my sister and me himself, remarries, and we move to Landover, Maryland. By now I've taught myself to read from a teacher aunt's primers. Pictured: our family, dressed for church.
- 1974
At seven I can sew, taught by both of my grandmothers.
- 1982
At 15 I make my first wedding dress, for a friend from church.
- 1985
After nearly losing my way, and a family that wouldn't let me, I graduate from Elizabeth Seton High School.
- 1987
I leave college and marry. I'm already a dental assistant, the work I'll do for about 25 years.
- 1990
My firstborn son is born. At 23 I start an interior decorating business and bring him to client visits in his car seat.
- 1998
David and I get married.
- 2004
David and I co-found Kinpel Medical. He builds the name from the letters of Akinpelu, minus the first A and the last U. It becomes RejuVe Medical Group.
- 2008
I start Blaqpointe, the company that becomes Eden's Crown, while taking prerequisite courses at the College of Southern Maryland.
- 2010
Turned down by my first-choice school, I call to ask why. A policy I'd already read gets me an interview, and I start physician associate school in my forties.
- 2012
Physician associate degree, summa cum laude, University of Maryland Eastern Shore. Named the program's Most Outstanding Student and inducted into Phi Kappa Phi.
- 2013
Certified and licensed. My first job: hospitalist and surgical house staff at Northwest Hospital.
- 2014
I join the OB/GYN service at Prince George's Hospital Center. Ten years of 24-hour shifts begin.
- 2016
Clinical instructor at George Washington University. Named Preceptor of the Year.
- 2020
Mid-pandemic, on waterfront land in King George, a vision: reconnect, recover, restore, relax, rejuvenate.
- 2021
We open our second RejuVe office, in Virginia.
- 2022
We buy 6.4 acres on the Potomac River.
- 2023
March: a patient shows me my keto journey was meant for teaching. April: Little Ferry Inn opens. June: we form the FerryTales Foundation. December: Navigating Keto and its workbook and journal launch.
- 2024
We start Keto Delish Club. In November I leave hospital practice after ten years.
- 2025
October 27: I name PhatPharm.
- 2026
The PhatPharm AI app reaches the App Store, Fat Is the New Rx is published, and I start writing every Sunday.
What I believe
Blueprint for Wholeness: Body, Mind, Purpose, and Spirit.
Metabolic health takes more than the right food. It takes food, behavior, social reinforcement and education working together. That's why there's a book, an app, a clinic, a community and a retreat, all aimed at one target.
Purpose
Learning, meaningful work and a strong marriage shape how well people live, and they feed the mind. They belong in the same conversation as blood sugar.
Where I'm putting this to work: FerryTales Foundation, my books, teaching
Mind
People heal faster when they can truly rest. My people needed a place to recover and restore, so we opened one.
Where I'm putting this to work: Little Ferry Inn
Body
Metabolic health is the foundation the rest stands on. Food is the first prescription I write, and with supervision, some medications can come down.
Where I'm putting this to work: RejuVe Medical Group, PhatPharm, Navigating Keto, Keto Delish Club, Eden's Crown
Books
On the shelf
Navigating Keto: A Comprehensive Wellness Guide
Written for the patients I wanted to walk through a ketogenic journey, with 40 recipes at the back. Published in 2023 alongside its companion, the Keto Workbook & Journal.
Learn morePhatPharm: Fat Is the New Rx
An investigative clinical memoir and blueprint for metabolic reversal. It opens with that plate in the physicians' lounge.
Learn moreSunday letters
The long version, every Sunday at 7 AM
Weekly notes from building a life's work in medicine, business and faith, while raising a family. What worked, what didn't, and what I'm learning. No patient stories and no medical advice, just the journey as it happens.