Julie Montagu
Burnout shows up in attrition numbers long before it shows up in engagement surveys. Senior teams know wellbeing has moved from perk to operating risk, but most internal programmes still default to vouchers, apps and webinars that nobody finishes. The harder question is what a credible, sustainable practice of self-care actually looks like inside a high-pressure career, and who can speak to it without sounding like a wellness brochure.
Julie Montagu is a wellness author and yoga teacher who helps corporate audiences build practical self-care habits that hold up under real workload, drawing on four published books and a working teaching practice from her base at Mapperton Estate.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Julie Montagu
- Four published wellness books with a major UK trade publisher, including Recharge: A Year of Self-Care to Focus on You (Little, Brown, 2018), give her wellbeing material a structured, tested foundation rather than a personal-anecdote frame.
- She runs a live teaching practice through Whole Self Yoga, including 200-hour teacher training, so the content she delivers to a corporate room is the same content she teaches week to week, not a keynote-only construct.
- Her cross-cultural vantage point, American by upbringing, English Countess by marriage, makes her an unusual host and after-dinner choice for events that need warmth and storytelling alongside subject expertise.
- She is an experienced broadcast voice, with royal and heritage commentary credits across BBC and CNN coverage of the Sussex wedding, the Platinum Jubilee, the Queen’s funeral and the Coronation, which translates directly into stage presence and live-event composure.
- Her academic work on American heiresses of the British Gilded Age, completed as an MA with Distinction at the University of Buckingham, gives her a serious second register for heritage, leadership history and women-in-power conversations.
Biography highlights
- Author of Superfoods, Eat Real Food, Superfoods Superfast and Recharge: A Year of Self-Care to Focus on You, published by Little, Brown / Piatkus.
- Author of Secrets of an English Country House: A Year at Mapperton, published in 2024.
- Founder of Whole Self Yoga, including a 200-hour yoga teacher training programme.
- MA with Distinction in English Country House Studies, University of Buckingham, 2021.
- Royal and heritage commentator for BBC and CNN across the Sussex wedding, Platinum Jubilee, Queen Elizabeth II’s state funeral and the Coronation of King Charles III.
- Television credits including Bravo’s Ladies of London and Smithsonian Channel’s An American Aristocrat’s Guide to Great Estates.
- Co-custodian of Mapperton Estate in Dorset alongside Luke Montagu, 12th Earl of Sandwich.
Biography
Most corporate wellbeing programmes are built by people who have never had to keep one going through a 70-hour week. Julie Montagu is not one of them. She trained and qualified as a yoga teacher and nutrition educator while raising four children, wrote four books with Little, Brown on plant-forward eating and structured self-care, and built Whole Self Yoga, a teaching practice that includes a 200-hour teacher training programme.
Recharge, published in 2018, is the title that travels best into corporate rooms. It is built as a month-by-month framework rather than a lifestyle manifesto, which is why it lands with audiences who have heard the wellbeing pitch many times and want something they can actually use on Monday.
The second register is heritage. Montagu lives at Mapperton Estate in Dorset, the seat of the Earls of Sandwich, and completed an MA with Distinction at the University of Buckingham on American heiresses of the British Gilded Age. That work fed Secrets of an English Country House: A Year at Mapperton, published in 2024, and a steady run of royal commentary for BBC and CNN across the Sussex wedding, the Platinum Jubilee, the Queen’s funeral and the Coronation.
The result is a speaker who can hold a corporate wellbeing keynote with real depth, then host the dinner that follows it with the kind of cross-cultural ease most subject-matter experts cannot offer. For organisations that want both substance and presence, that combination is what makes the booking commercial.
Key speaking topics
- Self-care and wellbeing for high-pressure careers
- Yoga, nutrition and sustainable energy management
- Resilience and burnout prevention
- Female leadership and personal reinvention
- British heritage, country houses and royal traditions
- Corporate event hosting and after-dinner speaking
Ideal for
- Corporate wellbeing days and HR-led leadership offsites
- Women’s leadership networks and ERG events
- Executive retreats where wellbeing is the headline rather than a side track
- Awards dinners, hosted panels and after-dinner engagements requiring a heritage or transatlantic register
Audience outcomes
- A clear, month-by-month structure for self-care that survives a real working calendar
- Practical anchors on nutrition, movement and recovery that do not require a lifestyle overhaul
- A more honest read on what burnout looks like before it becomes attrition
- An hour with a speaker who can carry both the substance of wellbeing content and the warmth of a strong host