Dr. Brandy Zachary of Functional Medicine Academy Earns Four Stevie® Awards in the 24th Annual American Business Awards® — The First Woman Recognized for Entrepreneurial Excellence in America’s Most Prestigious General Business Competition

SHERIDAN, Wyo., April 23, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Dr. Brandy Zachary, DC, IFMCP — known as Dr. Z — founder and CEO of TDZ Functional Medicine Academy (TDZ-FMA), has been named the inaugural Gold Stevie® Award winner for Best Female Entrepreneur in The 24th Annual American Business Awards® (ABA). The category is new in 2026, making Dr. Z the first person to hold this title in the competition’s 24-year history. TDZ-FMA is a functional medicine education and clinical platform whose programs are accredited for MDs, DOs, PAs, NPs, RNs, PharmDs, dentists, chiropractors, psychologists, registered dietitians, and more across more than eight national credentialing bodies.

TDZ-FMA also earned three Silver Stevie® Awards in the same competition:

🏆 GOLD — Best Female Entrepreneur (inaugural winner — new category, 2026)🥈 SILVER — Pioneer of Functional Medicine’s First Complete Clinical Ecosystem — Health Products & Services🥈 SILVER — Maverick of the Year — Business Service Industries🥈 SILVER — Company of the Year — Health Products & Services

The American Business Awards are the only national, all-encompassing business awards program in the United States, judged by more than 230 independent professionals worldwide. Winners are determined solely by average score — no selection committee, no sponsorships. Unlike gender-specific competitions, the ABA is the same program where IBM, AT&T, Cisco, Adobe, Dell Technologies, and Salesforce compete. Dr. Z’s Gold makes her the first woman recognized for entrepreneurial excellence within America’s most prestigious general business competition — establishing the standard against which every future nominee in this category will be measured.

What Independent Judges Said
The following comments were submitted by members of the independent 230+ person judging panel and are published verbatim with permission of the American Business Awards:

“Most ‘Mavericks’ in these awards are just CEOs who launched a cool app. This woman is different. She was living in a garage on $900 a month, couldn’t even read because of a brain injury, and had every reason to stay on disability. Instead, she built a $12M business out of pure spite for a medical system that failed her. With a 98% retention rate and 2,000% growth with zero outside investors, that’s not luck — that’s a founder who knows exactly what her customers need because she lived their pain. She’s the real deal.”
— 2026 American Business Awards Judge — Maverick of the Year Category

“A standout submission. What really separates it is that it’s not just education or a single product — it’s a full ecosystem built with clear intention and strong execution. The growth, retention, and adoption of the tools speak for themselves, and doing this without outside funding makes it even more impressive. This feels like something that’s genuinely reshaping its space, not just participating in it.”
— 2026 American Business Awards Judge — Health Products & Services Category

Built From the Inside of the Problem — and a Laptop
Dr. Z didn’t build Functional Medicine Academy from a corner office. She built it in spite of a medical system that failed her — repeatedly.

A traumatic brain injury from a car accident. Years of rebuilding. A seven-figure business. And then waking up sick, losing it all, and landing on Social Security disability as a single mother with $927 a month. No diagnosis. No answers. A conventional medical system with nothing to offer.

So she did what no one suggested: she reactivated her license, ordered her own labs, combed through PubMed, and searched for practitioners around the world until she figured out what was wrong with herself. Then she started a practice. Then she started FMA — quietly, as a side project in California, before building it in earnest from a laptop in Playa del Carmen, Mexico.

No investors. No safety net. No permission from anyone. Just a founder who knew exactly what her patients needed because she had lived it first.

Today, TDZ-FMA operates with a team of 52 across 10 countries, an active mentorship program supporting 450 practitioners, and thousands more trained through its online programs. FMA has achieved 2,095% growth with a 98% practitioner retention rate — entirely without outside investment. In 2024, TDZ-FMA received the ClickFunnels Two Comma Club Award, recognizing businesses that generate over $1 million through a single digital sales funnel — a milestone reached by fewer than 1% of online businesses. TDZ-FMA is also among the verified candidates for the 2026 Inc. 5000, the most rigorous ranking of fastest-growing private companies in America, with results expected in late June.

“Most of the time you just have your head down, working hard to try to make people’s lives better so they don’t have to suffer the same way you did. You look up just often enough to make sure they’re succeeding — and when they’re not getting something, you pivot and adapt to make it better for them. To occasionally look up and win an award like this… it’s surprising. It’s a feeling I don’t really know how to describe. I’m very grateful, and it motivates me to go out there and try even harder to make a bigger impact.”
— Dr. Brandy Zachary, DC, IFMCP — Founder & CEO, TDZ Functional Medicine Academy

An Ecosystem Built to Solve Every Problem Practitioners Actually Have
What the judges recognized as functional medicine’s first complete clinical ecosystem wasn’t designed on a whiteboard. It was built problem by problem — every time a practitioner hit a wall, TDZ-FMA built the solution. The result is an end-to-end platform with no equivalent in the field.

The Dr. Z Functional Medicine LabDX — Clinical Software
The Dr. Z Functional Medicine LabDX is the only software of its kind worldwide. It integrates over 65 lab reports — blood, stool, urine, and more, including GI MAP, GI Effects, IBS Smart, DUTCH, genomics, OATs, urinalysis, and others — into a single platform, delivering clinical analysis that spans traditional markers and optimal ranges, evidence-based health interventions, and supplementation recommendations including specific brands and dosages. Its Care Plan Builder reduces what previously required three hours of charting and case documentation to under three minutes, without artificial intelligence. The system ingests patient-specific intake data, even across 15-page intake forms with multiple lab reports, and produces an accurate, scientifically sound, sequenced care plan tailored to the individual patient. For practitioners managing complex caseloads, this is a categorical change in how functional medicine care gets delivered.

Clinical Credentialing — 8+ Certifications Across Licensed Healthcare Disciplines
TDZ-FMA’s curriculum spans more than 8 certifications including Continuing Medical Education (CME) and Continuing Education (CE) credits, all supported by a medical advisory board and a multidisciplinary clinical team with expertise spanning functional medicine, clinical nutrition, hormone health, gastroenterology, and beyond. TDZ-FMA holds accreditation from more than eight national credentialing bodies — including ACCME (physicians), ANCC (nurses), ACPE (pharmacists), AAPA (physician associates), ADA CERP (dentists), APA (psychologists), NUHS (chiropractors), and CDRA (registered dietitians), among others. This breadth means TDZ-FMA programs are recognized across virtually every licensed healthcare profession — a distinction held by very few continuing education platforms in any specialty.

The Dr. Z Way — 35+ Practitioner Business Tools
The Dr. Z Way is a proprietary toolkit — not AI — currently hosting over 35 tools that function as a personal coaching system for practitioners. It writes webinars. It creates office policies. It drafts a practice’s mission, vision, and values. It prepares practitioners for networking events. It generates offers and sales funnels. It provides state-specific legal and financial guidance for each practitioner’s license type — covering what they are permitted to prescribe, whether they can recommend supplementation, how they may interpret and use lab results, whether telehealth is permitted, what they may legally call themselves, and the key questions they should bring to any meeting with their attorney or accountant. The Dr. Z Way is available to the public at $998 per month and provided free to all active TDZ-FMA mentorship clients.

Six Amazon Bestselling Books — Including Four Clinical Lab Textbooks
Long before building TDZ-FMA’s clinical ecosystem, Dr. Z authored How to Read a Client from Across the Room, published by McGraw-Hill New York and a Bronze Axiom Award winner in sales. The Character Code System — the world’s first visual personality profiling system — remains a working part of TDZ-FMA’s daily operations, informing the branding, marketing, sales, and client fulfillment strategies behind the company’s 2,095% growth and 98% retention rate. She has since published Middle-Aged Mama in a Muumuu, a marketing and business playbook for practitioners, and four clinical lab textbooks of 500+ pages each, all Amazon bestsellers. Several of the lab textbooks are required reading in other practitioner training programs outside TDZ-FMA — a mark of clinical authority that extends well beyond Dr. Z’s own ecosystem. Full titles are listed in the Notes to Editors section below.

TDZ Health Coach Staffing — White-Label Clinical Staff, Without the Overhead
TDZ Health Coach Staffing solves one of the most expensive problems in functional medicine practice growth: the cost of scaling without burning out.

The model is built so that patients fund it — not practitioners. The health coach handles one monthly visit, weekly open office hours, unlimited portal-based question answering throughout the month, and two to three weekly patient outreaches. That structure cuts practitioner fulfillment workload by 60–70%, while keeping the practitioner positioned as the lead clinical strategist directing every case.

The result is essentially white-labeled clinical staff — trained, managed, and ready to deploy — that allows practitioners to scale their patient load without adding administrative burden, hiring overhead, or the operational complexity that kills most solo practices before they reach their potential. It’s never been done this way in functional medicine. And it’s only available through TDZ-FMA.

SearchFunctionalMedicine.com — The Practitioner Directory Built for the Internet Age
SearchFunctionalMedicine.com is a find-a-practitioner platform unlike any existing directory in functional medicine. Where most databases offer a simple name-and-location listing, SearchFunctionalMedicine.com actively supports practitioners’ online presence — providing SEO-optimized backlinks to their websites, up to 2,000-word practitioner bios, and the ability to list certifications and training from any institution. Patients can filter by geographic area, in-person or virtual availability, languages spoken, insurance acceptance, and populations served. Uniquely, practitioners can integrate their live Google reviews directly into their profile — a capability that has never existed in a functional medicine directory. When TDZ-FMA’s forthcoming consumer platform DiagnoseThis launches, it will drive patient education and direct those seeking practitioners directly to SearchFunctionalMedicine.com.

The Dr. Z Ads — Professional Media Buying at a Price That Doesn’t Punish You for Being Independent
Most media buying agencies charge $5,000 or more for the same service. The Dr. Z Ads offers it to TDZ-FMA practitioners for $500 — optionally, with no pressure.

The functional medicine space has no shortage of predatory vendors who know practitioners are motivated, often bootstrapped, and willing to invest in their practices. The Dr. Z Ads was built as a direct counter to that. The team behind it understands what it actually takes to build a practice from scratch, keep it lean, and grow it sustainably — because they’ve done it.

The service is hands-on: someone is actively managing and placing the ads, not just handing over a course and walking away. Practitioners also continue learning the strategy behind what’s being done, so they’re building knowledge alongside results. For independent practitioners competing for patients against well-funded health systems and corporate clinics, it levels a playing field that was never level to begin with.

Functional Medicine 2.0 Podcast — Already Reframing the Conversation
The Functional Medicine 2.0 Podcast is live and growing rapidly, built around a simple premise: functional medicine needs to evolve from memorization to decision-making, from data collection to patient transformation, and from lone-wolf practitioners to CEO clinicians running team-based practices. The podcast delivers the mindset, clinical frameworks, and business thinking that TDZ-FMA’s training is built on — and serves as a direct pipeline for practitioners ready to go deeper into the ecosystem.

DiagnoseThis Podcast — Coming Soon
Dr. Z’s forthcoming DiagnoseThis podcast goes where most health content doesn’t. It shares stories she thought she’d take to the grave — including the full account of how a conventional medical system failed her, set her life on a different course, and ultimately became the origin of everything TDZ-FMA has built. The podcast is designed to educate the public, end medical gaslighting, and direct patients toward better healthcare experiences — whether with their traditional physician, an alternative provider, or a functional medicine practitioner. Launch is expected within weeks.

TDZ-FMA supports practitioners at every stage — from those entering functional medicine for the first time to established clinicians scaling multi-practitioner operations. Beyond clinical training, TDZ-FMA provides business building curriculum, legal resources specific to healthcare practice, and twice-yearly live mastermind events at premier venues. The next mastermind takes place at the Paradisus 5-star resort in Playa del Carmen, Mexico — the same city where Dr. Z herself built much of what TDZ-FMA has become.

About TDZ Functional Medicine Academy
TDZ Functional Medicine Academy (TDZ-FMA) is a functional medicine education and clinical platform whose accredited programs are recognized for MDs, DOs, PAs, NPs, RNs, PharmDs, dentists, chiropractors, psychologists, registered dietitians, and more. Supported by a medical advisory board and a multidisciplinary clinical team, TDZ-FMA’s ecosystem includes The Dr. Z Functional Medicine LabDX (clinical software integrating 65+ lab providers with a Care Plan Builder), The Dr. Z Way (35+ practitioner business and clinical tools), SearchFunctionalMedicine.com (the field’s most advanced practitioner directory), The Dr. Z Ads (practitioner media buying), TDZ Health Coach Staffing, 8+ certification programs including CMEs and CEs, and the Functional Medicine 2.0 Podcast. Its forthcoming DiagnoseThis podcast and consumer platform will extend TDZ-FMA’s ecosystem directly to patients. TDZ-FMA operates with a team of 52 across 10 countries, maintains a 98% practitioner retention rate, and has achieved 2,095% growth with zero outside investment. Learn more at www.TheDrZ.com.

About Dr. Brandy Zachary, DC, IFMCP
Dr. Brandy Zachary — known as Dr. Z — is a Doctor of Chiropractic and Institute for Functional Medicine Certified Practitioner (IFMCP) who built a $12 million health education company from a laptop, on Social Security disability, as a single mother, after a medical system failed her repeatedly. Working first from Playa del Carmen, Mexico and now from St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, she built Functional Medicine Academy into a platform accredited for MDs, DOs, PAs, NPs, RNs, PharmDs, dentists, chiropractors, psychologists, registered dietitians, and more across more than eight national credentialing bodies — backed by a medical advisory board, a multidisciplinary clinical team, and a staff of 52 across 10 countries, all without outside investors. She built it as a chiropractor in a field dominated by MDs — the wrong license, the wrong gender, the wrong age, the wrong size, wrong by every conventional measure. Life left her no choice but to dig deeper, learn more, and show up anyway.

She is the author of six Amazon bestselling books including How to Read a Client from Across the Room (published by McGraw-Hill New York, Bronze Axiom Award winner in sales), Middle-Aged Mama in a Muumuu (a marketing and business playbook for practitioners), and four clinical lab textbooks of 500+ pages each — several of which are required reading in other practitioner training programs outside TDZ-FMA.

She is a 2024 ClickFunnels Two Comma Club Award recipient, a verified Inc. 5000 candidate for 2026, and the inaugural Gold Stevie® Award winner for Best Female Entrepreneur in the 24th Annual American Business Awards — the first woman recognized for entrepreneurial excellence in America’s most prestigious general business competition.

She is the founder of TDZ Functional Medicine Academy, The Dr. Z Functional Medicine LabDX, The Dr. Z Way, SearchFunctionalMedicine.com, TDZ Health Coach Staffing, and The Dr. Z Ads, and host of the Functional Medicine 2.0 and DiagnoseThis podcasts.

You can listen to the Functional Medicine 2.0 podcast here:
YouTube
Spotify
Apple Podcast

About the American Business Awards
The American Business Awards® are the only national, all-encompassing business awards program in the United States, now in their 24th year — the same competition where Fortune 500 giants like Amazon, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Verizon, IBM, AT&T, Cisco, Adobe, Dell Technologies, and Salesforce have earned multiple Gold wins. Winners are determined by the average scores of more than 230 independent judges worldwide. More information is available at www.StevieAwards.com.

Media Contact
Name: Ashley Reade
Organization: TDZ Functional Medicine Academy
Email: Ashley@TheDrZ.com
Phone: 1-307-291-9885
Website: www.TheDrZ.com

Gold and Silver Stevie® Award logos available upon request.
High-resolution photography of Dr. Z available upon request.

Notes to Editors
Dr. Z’s Clinical Lab Textbook Series (all Amazon bestsellers):
Part 1: A Practitioner’s Guide to Mastering Functional Medicine Lab Values: Foundations of Health Testing — Base-Level Blood Labs, Cardiometabolic & Nutrition
Part 2: A Practitioner’s Guide to Mastering Functional Medicine Lab Values — Gut & Digestion Insights: Advanced Testing for Gastrointestinal Health
Part 3: A Practitioner’s Guide to Mastering Functional Medicine Lab Values – Hormonal Health & Balance: Panels for Reproductive, Adrenal, and Thyroid Function
Part 4: A Practitioner’s Guide to Mastering Functional Medicine Lab Values – Metabolic Health & Toxin Testing: Autoimmunity, Toxins, and Advanced Metabolic Markers

All four volumes are available on Amazon. High-resolution cover images available upon request.

Contact: Ashley Reade | Ashley@TheDrZ.com | 1-307-291-9885
www.TheDrZ.com

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SOURCE The Dr Z Functional Medicine Academy, LLC