julia stewart

Julia is a coach, coach trainer, and seminar leader, who uses her creativity and humor to expand people’s thinking and inspire them to work brilliantly.    She’s a former “Visionary Coach” for the world's largest coach training company, the Lead Certifier for the Thomas Leonard Coaching School, an Expert Life Coach for Fitness Magazine and a guest instructor for the University of Houston’s Executive Coaching Institute.  

Julia is passionate about the power of coaching to transform the world and is committed to helping coaches forge positive change with the help of powerful evidence-based coaching skills. She has a BA from Washington University in St. Louis , an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and is a graduate of Coach U. 

She has been coaching for over twenty years and is a founding member of the International Association of coaching (IAC), a member of the International Coach Federation (ICF), a Founding Fellow of the Institute of Coaching Professional Association (ICPA),  an IAC Master Masteries Coach and a Center for Credentialing and Education (CCE) Board Certified Coach. She holds multiple positive psychology and neuroscience certificates, including the Certificate in Positive Psychology from Tal Ben Shahar, who brought positive psychology studies to Harvard University.

Julia founded School of Coaching Mastery in 2007.  Her flagship program is the Certified Positive Psychology Coach Progam, which was the first positive psychology coach training program worldwide to meet the requirements to train coaches for all three ICF certification levels.  

In 2015, Julia registered the Certified Positive Psychology Coach® certification mark with USPTO. In 2016, she co-founded, along with David McQuarrie, CPPC, the Association of Positive Psychology Coaches. In 2019, Julia incorporated that organization into the International Association of Positive Psychology Coaches and transferred ownership of the certification mark to the IAPPC. She launched this website in 2020 and in 2022, opened up CPPC certification to all who qualify.

Currently, Julia is working on her PhD in the science and philosophy of coaching at Ubiquity University. 

You can read Julia's articles on coaching in the Thrive Blog and the Coaching Blog.  Julia currently lives in suburban St. Louis, Missouri, where she stays fit by walking her dogs,  and by doing Yoga and Zumba. When she's not having fun with friends and family, she's learning everything she can about human behavior and how she can help coaches and clients enjoy well-being and meaningful success.