A few of the stages I have been on:
~ Corporate Wellness Speaker ~
Sonya Stattmann
Why Hire a Corporate Wellness Speaker?
A healthy team is a high-performing team! As an HR manager or team leader, you are busy trying to navigate the day-to-day challenges of your job. Whether you are dealing with conflict in the workplace, employee retention & engagement, or managing the rapid changes in your industry & organization, keeping your team well can exponentially improve your efforts.
As a corporate wellness speaker & trainer, I equip your team with tools & strategies for managing stress, dealing with conflict, improving mental health and more. My events, workshops & training are engaging & practical for today’s high-performing teams. Let’s talk about how I can support you and your organization today.
Watch Sonya in Action
Corporate Wellness Speaker Clips
In this 3-minute Speaking Reel, I share a little bit about the topics I offer & my experience. This is an overview of my corporate wellness work.
In this 5-minute video on 3 ways to cool conflict, I share practical strategies for dealing with conflict in and out of the workplace.
In this 12-minute TEDx talk, I share some of the things I have learned over the years about women’s empowerment – what it means and how we can look at it differently.
My Bio & Professional Background
The journey to corporate wellness speaker…
The official short bio: Sonya Stattmann has spent the last 24 years as an entrepreneur, trainer, coach, and speaker focused on individual & organizational transformation. She has worked hands-on with thousands of leaders & high achievers around the world. She offers resilience-based tools for stress management, mental wellness, goal achievement, and more. Her training & workshops are inspirational, educational & transformational. Sonya is a full-time corporate wellness speaker & stress management coach. She has a TEDx talk called Moving Beyond #Empowerment and has hosted 3 public podcasts, publishing more than 260 episodes.
My bottom line: My mission is to help individuals & organizations expand their capacity for handling adversity, stress & change. This is what it means to be resilient. I offer accessible tools for reducing stress, improving mental health & building resilient workplaces & communities. High-stress environments & toxic workplaces are no longer sustainable for success. We must equip teams with resilience-based tools to navigate today’s changing environment. As a corporate wellness speaker & stress management coach, I offer tools that are practical, effective & evidence-based.
~ Corporate Wellness Speaker – Professional Background ~
Psychology & human behavior was ALWAYS my jam.
From the youngest age I can remember, I was interested in people: what made them tick & what was underneath the surface. I read my first self-development book at 9 and took college-level psychology courses in high school. At University, I majored in psychology for years before I took a deep dive into business. I took a university class that changed my life: Stress Reduction through Dancy Therapy. Since then, I have spent my whole life studying psychology, human behavior, neuroscience, stress management & mental health.
Then I took a deep dive into business, branding & marketing.
In college, I realized I didn’t want to be a psychologist or a teacher and fell in love with business, branding & marketing. I graduated from the University of North Texas with a degree in Journalism, Advertising, and Marketing in 1998. I had a knack for getting to the roots of a business and pulling out its mission & message. I landed my first “real” job at a big branding agency in 1999 and after only a few months had a stack of awards. In 2000, at the age of 25, I decided to leave the big agency to start a business of my own. I have been an entrepreneur ever since and have spent most of my career helping other businesses & leaders work better.
I have been professionally coaching, training & speaking to organizations & leaders since 2000.
Speaking is not just a new path for me, it is something I have been doing since I began my career. In 2000, I started speaking to male-dominated industries about how to tap into emotions, spark motivation & market to women. Since then I have done more than a thousand events, trainings & workshops, both in-person and virtual. I began “coaching” businesses and leaders before coaching was an industry. I have practiced and tested topics over and over again and watched how the topics I teach transform individuals, teams & businesses. Every event I offer is evidence-based and time-tested.
I have always had an entrepreneurial spirit & a trailblazing attitude.
I have had multiple businesses over the years and each one was trailblazing new paths. In 2000 I helped shift the marketing world by highlighting the power of marketing to women. In 2007, I started a business called The Feminine Way, teaching businesses how to use emotional intelligence in their operations and the power of emotions in their marketing. In 2008, I created the first co-working space in Austin, Texas, and the first work/life balance center in the world where we offered business education, wellness services, yoga, and childcare. I taught about emotional intelligence & work/life balance before it was a popular trend.
I went virtual long before the pandemic, speaking to groups and organizations virtually since 2015.
I still speak in person, but I do more virtual events every year. I started a steady stream of virtual events in 2015 while living in Australia and working with companies all over the world. Long before the pandemic, I had to navigate how to work with remote teams, spark interest, and keep people engaged virtually. My experience paid off – now I am well ahead of the virtual curve.
I started podcasting in 2016 & have hosted 3 podcasts with 240 episodes under my belt.
I have a strong voice plus 24 years of hands-on experience to share. As it turned out, podcasting was my medium. I fell in love with podcasting in 2016 and over the last 8 years have created three podcasts with more than 240 episodes. My longest-running podcast, Women in the Business Arena, was in the top 2% of all business podcasts. I did a one-season show called The Feminine Lens and started a podcast in September of 2022, called Reclaiming Ourselves.
I landed a TEDx talk in 2017 & it helped me deal with one of the hardest experiences in my life.
In 2017 I applied to be on the TEDx stage. After being selected over hundreds of applications and after multiple interviews, I was accepted to do a talk on women’s empowerment. On the day of my first meeting with the TEDx team, my mother abruptly passed away. My talk took a turn over the next few months to include my mother’s story. My experience on the TEDx stage helped me navigate my grief and deal with my mother’s death gracefully. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and I am thankful for that amazing opportunity.
I have worked with thousands of leaders from almost every industry from tech to wellness.
My broad and extensive background has informed & elevated my content. Having worked with so many industries, I have seen the common denominators that transform individuals into leaders and organizations into success stories. I will let you in on the secret: the success of both individuals and organizations starts with building resilience.
My work as a coach strengthened my role as a speaker.
Coaching leaders over the last 24 years has given me decades of practice in personal & organizational transformation. My hands-on work with individuals & teams informs every speaking event, workshop & training course. I have had the opportunity to learn, test & refine tools and theories, and I have seen the impact of these tools on my clients’ lives. On stage, my events are more than a presentation of ideas, they are the results of long-term study.
I am a certified trauma-informed trainer and it couldn’t be more relevant to the work I do now.
To shift some of our biggest workplace issues right now, we need to understand how they correlate & are affected by stress & trauma. Having reactions & emotions are normal. As humans, our biology is wired to react when we perceive harm, shock, or surprise. A normal reaction creates flight, fight, or freeze “momentarily” and re-balances shortly after impact. But in today’s world, we are bombarded by consistent stress & trauma, and most people are not equipped with the tools and education to navigate it effectively. Integrating both stress & trauma and finding resiliency, requires psychological and physical safety. Understanding trauma is an important part of dealing with burnout, mental health challenges & having effective leaders. Being trauma-informed means I provide solutions that build psychological safety, mitigate harm, and offer education & resources to empower all people.
my personal story
From chaos & struggle to recovery & resilience
Some of my interest in stress management & mental health comes from my life story. I grew up in extreme amounts of stress, chaos & instability. I met life’s challenges with high performance, always determined to beat my circumstances. I hit burnout at a young age but then kept going.
I took a class at University that changed my life forever, and for the first time, realized I was living in a constant stress response. This sparked my interest in stress management & mental health.
I spent decades on a personal journey to recovery, experiencing more chaos before I finally found freedom. My personal journey informed my professional journey, and over the years I was able to test and refine my work.
I learned to effectively manage my stress and to become resilient, and I have paved the way for others to do the same.
My life was hard, but I am blessed to have found my life’s work.
>> Deep Dive into my personal story here.
