How This Cover Model Built a Healthy-Living Empire

Welcome to Second Life, a podcast spotlighting successful women who've made major career changes—and fearlessly mastered the pivot. Hosted by Hillary Kerr, co-founder and chief content officer at Who What Wear, each episode will give you a direct line to women who are game changers in their fields. Subscribe to Second Life on Apple Podcasts, and stay tuned.

If you’ve ever tried to get a "picky eater” to eat—your child or not—you know just how challenging, nay frustrating, it can be. Even after attending the Institute of Culinary Education, or ICE, in New York, Catherine McCord faced this dilemma after having her first son, Kenya. "I quickly realized that I could make a four-star meal, and I had no idea what to feed this small child,” she tells Hillary Kerr in the latest episode of Second Life. As she searched for resources to guide her, she realized just how few there were and how many other parents were struggling with the same challenges. Eventually, McCord created a blog to share recipes with family and friends, the beginnings of what would become the wildly popular healthy eating destination Weelicious.

Since the site’s launch, McCord has also authored three books—the latest, Smoothie Project, came out just last December—and has amassed over 275K devout Instagram followers who look to her as their trusted culinary resource at mealtime. Most recently, she’s used her food-as-fun approach to concept her latest venture: the family-friendly, food-delivery service One Potato. By encouraging children to help prepare the food and creating DIY-style recipes allowing kids to choose their own dinner adventure, the subscription box is going even further to alleviate the pain points many parents face at mealtime.

With such a culinary-heavy résumé, one might forget that McCord had a vastly different first life—a high-profile one at that—as a model. Her modeling career began at the age of 13, but when Patrick Demarchelier and Calvin Klein discovered her walking down the street in Miami (seriously), her career took off. She went on to star in a 60-page Calvin Klein campaign in Vanity Fair and walk countless runways, including the first Victoria’s Secret shows. Eventually, she even began hosting TV shows like MTV’s Loveline. What she didn’t know at the time was how well her modeling career was equipping her for a future as an entrepreneur.

Head to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen to subscribe to Second Life and for the full download on how McCord went from modeling to building a healthy-living empire. To shop her cookbooks and for some iconic looks from her modeling days, keep scrolling.

Up next, find out how Alison Roman became a best-selling cookbook author and home cookery guru.