Janey Lee Grace
Alcohol is the last unexamined health risk inside most corporate wellbeing programmes. Organisations spend on mental health, sleep, nutrition and resilience, then host events where drinking is the default social contract. The gap between stated wellbeing strategy and actual workplace culture is where engagement, absence and performance quietly suffer.
Janey Lee Grace is a broadcaster, author and qualified coach who helps organisations rethink workplace alcohol culture as a core wellbeing and performance issue.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Janey Lee Grace
- She brings a national-broadcast voice to a workplace wellbeing topic most internal teams avoid raising: how alcohol shows up in meetings, client entertainment, conferences and team rituals.
- Her coaching method is built around grey area drinkers, the majority of working adults who are not clinically dependent but whose drinking quietly affects sleep, mood, decision-making and presenteeism.
- The Sober Club gives her a live evidence base of what actually shifts behaviour at scale, drawn from a community of members and an accredited coach training programme, not theory alone.
- She is credible to a senior audience: 25+ years on BBC Radio 2’s Steve Wright in the Afternoon, a TEDx talk on sobriety, and the Amazon No. 1 bestseller Imperfectly Natural Woman.
- She speaks about alcohol culture without moralising, which is the practical reason internal sponsors trust her in front of mixed audiences.
Biography highlights
- Co-presenter for more than two decades on BBC Radio 2’s Steve Wright in the Afternoon
- Founder of The Sober Club, an online community and coaching business focused on alcohol-free living
- Host of the Alcohol Free Life podcast, 450+ episodes, ranked by the publisher in the top 5% globally
- TEDx speaker, Sobriety Rocks: Who Knew!, TEDxNorwichED, 2019
- Author of Happy Healthy Sober, the Amazon No. 1 bestseller Imperfectly Natural Woman, and the memoir From Wham to Woo
- Founder of the Janey Loves Platinum Awards, an annual awards programme for the natural and wellbeing sector, in its tenth year
Biography
Most workplaces are quietly built around alcohol. It anchors networking events, end-of-quarter celebrations, client dinners and the social glue between teams. Wellbeing programmes rarely touch it, because the topic feels personal and the social cost of raising it feels too high. That gap is the territory Janey Lee Grace works in.
Her route into the subject is unusually credible. She spent more than two decades as a co-presenter on BBC Radio 2’s Steve Wright in the Afternoon, one of the most listened-to shows in the UK, and built a parallel career as an author of bestselling books on natural health, including the Amazon No. 1 Imperfectly Natural Woman. In January 2018 she stopped drinking. The Sober Club, the coaching practice, the Alcohol Free Life podcast and the TEDx talk Sobriety Rocks: Who Knew! followed.
What she offers organisations is not a personal story dressed up as a talk. It is a practical argument grounded in the concept of grey area drinking, the working population who are not dependent but whose drinking shapes how they sleep, recover, present and decide. She is a qualified Grey Area Drinking Coach, an NLP Practitioner and an EFT practitioner, and she trains other coaches through an accredited programme. The Sober Club gives her a continuous read on what shifts behaviour for working adults outside a clinical setting.
The point for a senior audience is not abstinence. It is to make alcohol a legible part of a wellbeing strategy: visible in policy, visible in event design, visible in how leaders model the social contract of work. That is a conversation most organisations have not had, and she is one of the few public figures equipped to start it without the room going defensive.
Key speaking topics
- Workplace alcohol culture and wellbeing strategy
- Grey area drinking and performance at work
- Sobriety, sober-curious living and behaviour change
- Mental health and the social contract of work
- Natural health and holistic wellbeing
- Personal reinvention and second-act careers
Ideal for
- HR, wellbeing and culture leads designing post-pandemic wellbeing programmes
- DEI and employee resource group sponsors looking at inclusion of non-drinkers and recovering drinkers
- Internal communications and events teams rethinking the role of alcohol at company events
- Professional services and finance leaders where client entertainment culture is a live issue
Audience outcomes
- A language for discussing alcohol at work that does not moralise or alienate drinkers
- The grey area drinking framework as a way to think about wellbeing risk in the working population
- Specific prompts for redesigning company events, client entertainment and team rituals
- A clearer view of how alcohol intersects with sleep, mood, presenteeism and decision quality
- Permission, for leaders who want it, to model a different default