Nia Bowers
Margaret Alice Jordan, better known as Meg Jordan, built a career that most people would need several different job titles to describe. She is a registered nurse, a medical anthropologist, a health journalist, an author, and an academic administrator. Born in 1950, Jordan spent decades moving between hospitals, newsrooms, and classrooms, and in 2026 she retired from full time teaching, closing out a career that helped shape the modern field of health and wellness coaching.
Jordan’s path started with nursing. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Metropolitan State University of Denver and a Bachelor of Science in Communications from the University of Illinois. That early pairing of nursing and communication turned out to be a good preview of the rest of her career, which would constantly mix hands on clinical work with public facing writing and teaching.
She later went back to school twice more. She completed a Master of Arts in Philosophy and Religion at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and she earned a Ph.D. in Medical Anthropology from Union Institute and University. That academic background gave her the tools to study health not just as a medical topic, but as something shaped by culture, belief, and community.
Working the Hospital Floor
Before Jordan became known as a writer and educator, she worked directly with patients. As a registered nurse, she spent time in cardiac rehabilitation and psychiatric nursing. She also helped set up a hospital based wellness center at Daniel Freeman Hospital in Los Angeles, and she later served as Director of Integrative Practice at the Health Medicine Center.
Her clinical work didn’t stop there. Jordan served as a trustee of ValleyCare Health System in Northern California, where she helped build wellness related healthcare programs. She was also appointed to the California Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports by Governor Pete Wilson, a role that placed her clinical background directly into public policy work around fitness and health.
A Long Run in Health Journalism
While she was building her clinical career, Jordan was also becoming a well known voice in health media. She served as founding editor in chief of American Fitness magazine, a publication tied to the Aerobics and Fitness Association of America, holding that role from 1983 all the way to 2015. That’s more than thirty years leading a single publication, a long stretch by any standard in magazine publishing.
She also appeared on national and regional television, working as a health commentator on the Today show, regional CNN programming, and KTVU TV. She hosted a radio and television program called Global Medicine Hunter, which looked at integrative and complementary health practices from around the world. In 1994, working under the name Peg Jordan, she hosted and directed a documentary called Gathering the Goddesses, which aired on PBS stations across the country.
Her writing reached even further. Jordan was a syndicated newspaper columnist, and her articles appeared in more than 1,200 newspapers and magazines. She also wrote health related content for iVillage.com, one of the earliest websites focused on health information for a general audience, back when online health media was still a new idea.
Building the Field of Health Coaching
Jordan’s biggest legacy may be the work she did to help create the modern profession of health and wellness coaching. She served on the board of the National Board for Health & Wellness Coaching, later becoming an emeritus board member. She also served as co president of the National Wellness Institute, becoming the first woman to lead the organization in its then four decade history.
She helped write the national rules that define the profession today. Jordan was a co author of the National Training and Education Standards for Health and Wellness Coaching, first published in 2015, and she took part in related research published in a peer reviewed study in 2016. Work like that doesn’t just describe a profession. It helps build the actual standards that future coaches are trained and tested against.
Her influence reached beyond the United States as well. Jordan received funding from the Aetna Foundation to support wellness coaching programs for people living in public housing and people experiencing homelessness. Her wellness coaching curriculum has also been picked up by schools and professional groups outside the country, including programs in India and China.
Turning That Work Into a Degree Program
In 2008, Jordan joined the faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where she became founding chair of the school’s Master of Arts program in Integrative Health Studies. She led that program for the next eighteen years, watching it grow to include new coursework in integrative health and wellness studies. In 2011, the program earned the National Wellness Institute’s Academic Excellence Award, a sign that the work she was building in the classroom matched the standards she had helped set for the profession as a whole.
She also worked as guest faculty with the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona and served as a lecturer for the Functional Medicine Coaching Academy, extending her teaching well beyond her home campus.
A Career Recognized Many Times Over
Jordan’s work has earned a long list of honors over the years. In 2018, she received the William B. Baun Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Wellness Institute. She also received the Healthy American Fitness Leader Award from the White House and the United States Jaycees, the Circle and Leadership Service Award from the National Wellness Institute, and an honorary award from the American Heart Association for her work in cardiac rehabilitation. She was also among the first people to earn the Certified Wellness Professional credential from the National Wellness Institute.
Stepping Back, Not Stepping Away
When Jordan retired from full time teaching in 2026, the California Institute of Integral Studies named her Professor Emeritus, a title that honors her nearly two decades leading the school’s integrative health program. Her academic and clinical career may be winding down, but the standards, the textbooks, and the coaching programs she helped build are still very much active today, carried forward by the thousands of health coaches trained under the very rules she helped write.