The landscape of nutrition and dietetic education in Australia is changing in response to evolving workforce needs, student expectations, and transformations across health and food systems. A growing misalignment exists between traditional clinically oriented curricula and the diverse professional pathways now available to graduates. Understanding how students entering the profession conceptualise future roles provides insight into how current education models align with workforce realities and professional needs. This study explored first-year nutrition and dietetics students’ perceptions of professional identity, anticipated career pathways, and the capabilities required for their careers. Qualitative focus group discussions were conducted with 48 students across three Australian tertiary programs (undergraduate nutrition, undergraduate dietetics, and postgraduate master of dietetics specialising in sports nutrition) during their first month of study. Inductive thematic analysis was undertaken, with two researchers independently coding transcripts in NVivo. Themes were refined collaboratively. Students perceived capabilities were mapped against the Nutrition Society of Australia Core Competencies for Nutrition Science1 and Dietitians Australia National Competency Standards2. Students entered their programs with a strong desire to help others, underpinned by personal experiences and a passion for food and nutrition. Career aspirations extended beyond traditional clinical settings to include sports nutrition, private practice, and entrepreneurship. Despite this enthusiasm, students demonstrated limited awareness of the breadth of professional practice and workforce expectations. Capability mapping showed strong recognition of communication, nutrition knowledge, evidence-based practice, empathy and client-centred care. In contrast, leadership, advocacy, governance, cultural capability, research generation, and systems-level practice were rarely identified. Career aspirations were heavily concentrated on individual service delivery roles, with comparatively little recognition of opportunities within food systems, policy, sustainability, or population health. Students commence nutrition and dietetics degrees with nascent professional identities that are already shaping how they understand the profession, their future careers and their place within it. Yet these identities focus on narrow, highly visible models of practice, despite the increasingly diverse opportunities available across contemporary nutrition and dietetics workforces. Professional identity formation should be recognised as a core educational outcome, rather than an incidental by-product of training. Findings support concept-based learning and specialist streams that foster adaptability across practice settings, alongside broader placement experiences, embedded employability and credentialing pathways, and co-designed career development activities. These recommendations align with priorities identified in the Australia and New Zealand Council of Deans Nutrition and Dietetics futures paper3, including systems thinking, digital capacity, person-centred care, and flexible career preparation. Importantly, the findings challenge traditional perceptions of nutrition and dietetics as primarily clinical professions. The profession must move beyond preparing graduates for existing roles and instead educate future leaders, advocates, innovators, and systems thinkers capable of shaping the future of nutrition and dietetics.