No headline

Dr. Brooke Kalanick tries to embody small-town Montana values when she treats patients in New York City.

A functional medicine practitioner, naturopathic doctor, and hormone expert, Kalanick graduated from Columbia Falls High School in 1993.

She was born in raised in Montana and came to Columbia Falls as an eighth-grader. When she graduated high school, she attended pharmacy school and later Bastyr University in Seattle. Her own interests and health inspired her to specialize in helping women - especially women in fitness - manage hormone disorders and optimize their well-being. Kalanick sees patients, writes, and does a weekly podcast. She’s lived in New York for about 11 years, and her husband Joe Larson is a stand-up comedian.

They have two young daughters, and Kalanick noted that raising kids in New York City is very different than her upbringing in Montana.

“It’s like being on a different planet,” she said. In her graduating class at Columbia Falls, there were about 150 students. Her 5-year-old daughter’s school, by comparison, has over 400 students just in kindergarten.

There are huge downsides to living in such an urban area, but there are advantages, too. The school has an active Parent-Teachers Association, and the Metropolitan Opera recently visited her daughter’s class and wrote operas with the tots.

“When I was (in Columbia Falls), I wanted to be in a bigger place,” Kalanick remarked. “But I feel fortunate to have had that American small town experience.”

She also misses Glacier National Park and the outdoor recreation opportunities in the Flathead Valley. “We have to seek that stuff out now,” she noted. “It’s just a completely different lifestyle.”

The busy nature of the Big Apple motivates and inspires her, though, and she feels privileged to have art museums and other activities at her fingertips.

Her advice to new graduates summarizes her experience.

“If you have a dream, follow it. I would encourage people to have experiences and live different places,” she said.

But she also urged anyone who grew up in a small town to use their “unique perspectives” and values.

As a Montanan, she finds that her approachable and friendly nature is especially important as a doctor who regularly works with women.

And she’s glad to have grown up in Columbia Falls with good, kind, well-behaved people.

“There wasn’t a lot of trouble to get in. If you did something, everyone found out,” she laughed.