Staff Spotlight: Stephanie Gundel
Stephanie Gundel was born in Bellingham, Washington. She graduated from Seattle Pacific University with a degree in Nutrition/Dietetics and attended the University of Washington for her Dietetic Internship. She originally started at the UW as a clinical dietitian at Harborview Medical Center before working at Virginia Mason and Swedish, and then ending up back at Harborview.
She has worked as a research dietitian in the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine at Harborview Medical Center for the last 13 years, enrolling ICU patients in research studies focused mostly on prevention, early treatment and long term outcomes of Acute Lung Injury and Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome. She is a co-author on 15 publications.
“I love the whole Harborview environment,” says Gundel. “It is an energetic and diverse place that provides quality care to people in difficult circumstances.”
Outside of work, she recently finished her 17th year coaching the gymnastics team at Ballard High School, where her team won the competitive Metro League Championship for the first time in 19 years.
She is also an avid distance runner who has run over 20 ultramarathons (50k or longer) and prefers trails to road. She has run the CCC 100k in the Alps (Italy, Switzerland and France), the Cascade Crest and Javelina 100 mile races, rim-to-rim-to-rim across the Grand Canyon; fastpacked (backpacking and trail running) the Annapurna Circuit Trek in Nepal, and done the Mount Rainier 93-mile Wonderland Trail (twice). Last August she was the first female finisher and 8th overall in the Bigfoot 100k (supposedly 62.1 miles, but more like 68, around Mount St. Helens).
“I’m not especially diverse," she says. "I basically have two hobbies (coaching and running), that I happily devote a lot of time to."
In 2019, Gundel ran over 3,000 miles.
"I have worked with Stephanie for nearly 10 years," said Dr. Terri Hough. "She is an amazing research coordinator and manager. Stephanie is incredibly bright, quick at spotting and solving problems, and great at juggling multiple tasks. She has a dry sense of humor, loves traveling and sunshine, and inspires everyone in our community by her dedication to coaching gymnastics and her trail running accomplishments. Clinical research is an endurance sport—not surprising that she is great at both!"
Read more about Gundel's running and gymnastics coaching in “State gymnastics: Ballard coach Stephanie Gundel could run to the state meet” in the Seattle Times.