Meet the Team

Kathryn (Kate) Ackerman, MD, MPH, FACSM is the co-founder and Director of the Women's Health, Sports & Performance (WHSP) Institute and the Biennial International Female Athlete Conference, a physician scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital, and an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She is triple board-certified in Internal Medicine; Sports Medicine; and Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism.

A former US national team rower, Dr. Ackerman is the Chief Medical Officer of USRowing; co-chairs the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee Women's Health Task Force; is a member of the World Rowing Medical Commission, the Women's Tennis Association Women's Health Taskforce, and National Women's Soccer League Health Advisory Council. She is a Deputy Editor of the British Journal of Sports Medicine and a member of the National Leadership Council for the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance, a $220M initiative to improve health and performance globally.

Her research focuses on female athlete health and the various aspects of Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (REDs). She has authored/co-authored over 175 articles and book chapters related to sports medicine, endocrinology, rowing, bone metabolism, and female athletes, including position statements with the International Olympic Committee.

Ackerman earned her BA from Cornell University, MD from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health, and completed her residency in internal medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. She completed her sports medicine fellowship at Boston Children's Hospital, endocrinology fellowship at Brigham and Women's Hospital, as well as further research training in the Neuroendocrine Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Emilie Burgess Horvath is a board-certified specialist in sports dietetics with expertise in sports nutrition, REDs and low energy availability, and eating disorders in athletes. Emilie currently serves as a sports performance and eating disorder dietitian at Laura Moretti Nutrition and is a Senior Product Success Manager at Teamworks.

Emilie has served as a contract Sports Dietitian for US Women's Rugby, US Track & Field, and US Equestrian. From 2023–2024, she served as the first full-time Athletics Sports Dietitian for 34 varsity teams at Brown University.

Prior to Brown, Emilie worked in clinical, sports medicine, universities, and eating disorder settings including the University of Washington Athletics, Female Athlete Program at Boston Children's Hospital, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Recreation, the Cambridge Eating Disorder Center, St. Elizabeth's Medical Center, and Home Base, a Boston Red Sox and Massachusetts General Hospital program.

Emilie earned her BS in Dietetics from University of Connecticut, where she competed as a Division I tennis player. She later completed her Masters in Nutrition and Food Science and her dietetic internship at West Virginia University. Emilie also completed a sports nutrition fellowship at the University of Washington through the Gatorade Sports Nutrition Immersion Program (SNIP).

Grace Saville serves as Strategic Research Manager at the Women's Health, Sports & Performance Institute, where she also works as a research assistant in the Neuroendocrine Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital. Prior to joining WHSP, she was a Clinical Research Assistant in the Division of Sports Medicine and the Wu Tsai Female Athlete Program at Boston Children's Hospital.

Grace has been involved with the Female Athlete Conference in a variety of roles, from Logistics and Communications Chair, to Co-Chair, to her current role as Co-Chair and Treasurer.

She received her bachelor's degree from Georgetown University, where she majored in Biology of Global Health and minored in physics and mathematics.