About Us

Marianne was one of the fortunate people, many years ago, who received direct help from Susan Peirce Thompson with her own food addiction before Bright Line Eating existed in its current form. As her journey progressed, she kept telling Susan how much she enjoyed connecting with and helping other food addicts. When Bright Line Eating was just getting started, Susan invited Marianne to become part of the team. She then retired from a long and successful career at Cornell University to pursue, as she says, the career here at BLE she was always meant to fulfill.

Together with Linden Morris Delrio, Marianne provides live 1:1 coaching to Bright Line Eaters on the weekly Boot Camp coaching calls. Through these calls, she is able to help those learning BLE way of eating and living by sharing both her knowledge of the program and her experience with her own recovery.

In addition to working with those in the Boot Camp, Marianne also works closely with Lynn Coulston in the BLE continuity program known as Bright Lifers. Her role in the Lifer community is multi-faceted. She finds her outreach role there to be continually fulfilling. Boot Campers and Bright Lifers often have special needs best addressed by personal connections beyond participating in the coaching calls and engaging in the Online Support Community. Marianne fulfills these needs by placing outreach phone calls to struggling members, serving as a temporary food commitment buddy, working out customized food plans with individuals, and following up on questions submitted by Bright Lifers. She’s an active member of the Bright Lifers group and co-facilitates the monthly Bright Lifers’ Roundtable, as well as the Maintenance Monday calls. She can also be heard frequently on the daily Accountability Calls.

Marianne currently resides in Ithaca, New York, where she’s lived since 1981. In 2016, she started spending winters in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, initially to be closer to her elderly mother. She now admits she is a confirmed snowbird and rarely misses the crisp, snowy days of the upstate New York winters! One of the greatest joys in her life is singing, which she sometimes enjoys with her adult son Joe, who is a fabulous banjo player. She also plays guitar and a little bass, banjo, and ukulele. During the summer, her passions are enhanced by waking up to the transcendent sunrise over Cayuga Lake.

Sometimes, Marianne thinks she’s the luckiest person on the Bright Line Eating team because she’s the one who gets to call, Skype, and email people in need to help them with their BLE program. She has personal interactions with people she’s never met, and typically by the end of the conversations, she feels like she’s made a new friend. These connections make her heart sing. She loves the people in the BLE tribe so much she can hardly stand it!