Judy Piatkus is known as an entrepreneur, publisher, and business adviser as well as a pioneer and speaker in the realm of personal development. With a portfolio career that includes a variety of business activities, today Judy acts as a senior adviser, leadership coach, mentor, and facilitator. Her first full-length book, Ahead of her Time, a memoir about her life and the founding of one of the UKs most successful independent publishing houses, was published in April 2021.

Publishing

Judy Piatkus founded Piatkus Books from the bedroom of her home in Loughton, Essex in 1979. The company began as publishers of hardback fiction for the library market, before building a range of general non-fiction titles. Piatkus became renowned for being pioneers in the area of personal growth, and throughout the 1980s and 1990s Piatkus explored a wide range of subjects such as reflexology, aromatherapy, tai chi, mindfulness and meditation, reincarnation, and other topics that were relatively unfamiliar in the UK at that time. Judy Piatkus was regarded as a risk-taker within the publishing industry, unafraid of taking risks and trying out new ideas.
By the end of the 1990s Piatkus was established as a market leader in their field of interest. Returning to their roots in fiction, Piatkus moved to develop a hugely successful range of commercial mass-market paperback fiction titles from authors such as Nora Roberts, J. D. Robb, Julia Quinn (of Bridgerton fame), Linda Howard and many other global bestselling authors. The publishing house soon generated a substantial backlist, enabling a successful exit sale in 2007 to Little Brown, before the 2008 financial collapse which Judy Piatkus and her team had foreseen (by commissioning a book on the subject). Little Brown continue to develop the Piatkus imprint.

Leadership and Entrepreneurship

After the sale of Piatkus Books, Judy Piatkus continued her interest in leadership, acting as a coach and mentor for organisations. With 28 years of owning and managing Piatkus Books independently and achieving a reputation for its forward-thinking company culture, Judy has a wealth of experience in creative leadership. Many Piatkus corporate policies, such as offering flexi-working time in the 1980s and inviting staff to develop new skills which would benefit both themselves and the organisation during the 1990s, were ahead of their time and attracted a lot of people to work at the company.
Judy is a regular contributor to events on entrepreneurship, conscious leadership and management, and women’s issues. Most recently she has been a judge and mentor at the London Business School and has previously spoken on panels organised by Regent University, Hult Business School and Henley Business School.

In May 2023 Judy was invited to give the keynote speech at the BizBookAwards event.

Self-Development and ConsciousCafé

During the late 1990s, Judy studied for three years to qualify as a psychodynamic psychotherapist and worked in the NHS achieving 450 hours of counselling, alongside her publishing career. After the sale of Piatkus Books she achieved an MA in Creative Leadership, her first university degree. In 2003 Judy was included on a list of ’50 Movers and Shakers who define how well we live’ in The Times and in 2009 she was referred to in The Times as ‘one of the world’s leading thinkers’.

In 2011, Judy founded the global non-profit organisation ConsciousCafé which connects people around the world with regular local groups and events that focus on conscious conversations, raising self-awareness and exploring new ideas and current issues. ConsciousCafé now runs local groups across five countries, and has held events with remarkable speakers from around the world,  experts such as Richard Barrett, Lynne McTaggart,  Jessica Adams, Malcolm Stern, Nicholas Haines and Christa Mackinnon. Judy continues to head the organisation today, and is focussed on bringing enlightening conversation and companionship to the growing conscious community. ConsciousCafé was awarded Kindred Spirit Editor’s Pick in 2018 for their work in bringing people together to raise consciousness.

Author

In April 2021, Judy published her first book Ahead of her Time, a memoir of her time in publishing. Throughout the book Judy describes her learning experience as an entrepreneur, what it really means to run a company, the many triumphs and the pitfalls, what worked and what didn’t, how the company learned to reinvent itself through lean times and how it felt to finally strike gold.

Ahead of her Time won Most Empowering Book of 2020 from Soul and Spirit, and in 2022 the award for Best Business Journey Book at the UK Business Book Awards.