About
Julia Espey
A former NASA researcher, a business executive, a classical painter, and an award-winning author.
Author
However credible and colourful Julia’s credentials, her calling to be an author and speaker arose not from her professional pursuits but from the very personal experience of finding herself as a single mom when her son was young. As he grew into a little boy, she was struck with the realization that as a single mother she had to be both mother and father … and she had no idea how to be a father! So Julia turned to what she knew best from her years as a NASA researcher—research. She began researching fathering by asking dads to share with her their parenting wisdom. Her burning question for each of them was: “What’s the most important lesson—mind-set, idea, or values—that you taught your children?”
Her first book, If I Were Your Daddy, This is What You’d Learn, comprises the answers from thirty-five highly successful men, committed fathers all. Representing the most comprehensive father/mentor guide ever written, it is geared to both new and seasoned dads, single moms, parent educators, and others seeking perspectives on raising children. Julia’s mentor, Jack Canfield, best known for co-creating the Chicken Soup for the Soul® series, contributes the book’s foreword.
Book publishing is but one wing of Julia’s organization, Transformational Education LLC, whose charter embraces the belief that One Great Idea Can Change a Life™. Tapping into a wellspring of insight through her research (book and otherwise), Julia shares with parents how, through the power of thought, feeling, and the spoken word, to give their children life skills beyond the academic. Her goal is nothing less than to inspire, empower, and assist parents globally in their quest to practice conscious parenting, through print, audio, and online-format books, conference keynotes and other speaking engagements, media appearances, and personal consulting. She remains uniquely qualified and poised to accomplish this, her latest vision. History indicates that it most certainly will not be her last. Now residing in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Julia has remarried and is raising her son with husband Lance.
A Rocket Scientist
Younger than most of her classmates, Julia entered Georgia Tech in Atlanta and graduated five years later with honors in aerospace engineering. She spent the next decade working as a NASA flight test engineer, assuming added responsibility for a complex, multimillion-dollar project to improve the aviation industry. Julia contributed as well to the development of the space shuttle and other advanced vehicles for Space as well serving as a flight test engineer for many years. In 1995, she took early retirement from NASA and travelled the world extensively, living in Bermuda for a time and eventually settling in New York City.
Vice President, Health and Wellness Company
In 2004, while studying painting full-time and raising a toddler solo in New York City, Julia sought to attract greater financial abundance. She joined Arbonne International, an international health and wellness company, and despite having had no prior sales or network marketing experience, she rose to the company’s upper echelon in record time, becoming a vice president after eight months. In her first two years with the company she built and trained a national sales organization of thousands of independent consultants, with net sales over $1.5 million. This led to Julia becoming a Certified Life Coach. Identified as a dynamic leader by decision-makers outside Arbonne as well as within, she created a consultancy practice from which she shared her expertise in improving employee and customer satisfaction—and, by extension, the bottom line—by adding to the training toolbox the strategic use of thought, feeling, and the spoken word. This work, albeit with adults in business settings, forms the bedrock of the conscious parenting movement to which she is currently giving rise.
A Classical Painter
Writing is only Julia’s latest creative venue. While living in New York City in 1998, she discovered a hidden gift: her innate and exceptional talent for painting. She went on to study classical fine art with some of the country’s most distinguished talents such as Jacob Collins, Nelson Shanks, and Michael Aviano through private studies, and the Water Street Atelier (now the Grand Central Academy of Art) and the Arts Student League. Julia’s paintings have been critically acclaimed as “remarkable” and possessing an “intangible quality of depth and feeling.” Her art is selectively shown and sold at some of the country’s most prominent galleries and sought by sophisticated collectors nationwide.
