When you book Katie, you book a speaker who takes her work as seriously as you take yours.
View Katie’s speaker resources below, and email Katie directly at katie@katiemcdonaldspeaking.com if you need anything else for your event with her
Katie McDonald is a speaker, coach and author. She specializes in working with high achieving women who take care of business at the expense of taking care of themselves.
Since she was 6 years old, she’s had a relentless and unnerving obsession with daily planners, ultimately publishing the b.nourished planner when we all needed it most-in 2020.
She is trusted by Harvard University, Fidelity Investments, Facebook, Women Presidents’ Organization, Stanley Black & Decker and many more, Katie has been featured in HuffPost, Dwell, Apartment Therapy.
Her Audible Originals course: Self-Care Strategies: Nourish to Flourish launched in March 2026. She survived an IRA bombing in London, the San Francisco earthquake, the rescue of a ferry sinking in the Baltic, and an emergency crash landing in Tokyo. But it was a Zen meditation retreat that finally took her down.
Over two decades ago, the demands of Katie McDonald’s corporate career occupied her every waking moment. She was left feeling depleted and depressed—suffering from spiraling mental and physical health crises that threatened her life.
Left with no choice but to transform her body-mind relationship, Katie abandoned her corporate job and finally started applying her knowledge of self-care, alternative health, and plant-based nutrition.
Since then, Katie has been on a revitalizing journey of lifelong self-care.
Fully recovered from years of self-neglect, Katie now helps fellow doers embrace self-care so they can do more and be more while leading healthier, more intentional, and more nourished lives.
Katie leads with tough love to inspire, empower, and challenge audiences. She dispels the destructive myth that self-care is an obstacle to productivity and teaches that self-care is, in fact, a tool to create a more powerful and impactful legacy.
On paper, Katie McDonald had it all. She was an international sales rockstar who outhustled the competition and crushed her goals in the U.S., Europe, and Canada.
But Katie’s relentless drive for productivity came at the expense of everything that mattered: her relationships, her time, her health, her emotional wellbeing. The demands of her corporate career occupied her every waking moment.
Then, one day, she missed one meeting. One.
Her mental health was already so precarious, that’s all it took to push her over the edge.
Katie had no choice. Facing spiraling mental and physical health crises that threatened her life, the have-it-all-together image Katie had spent years building was quickly crumbling.
She had to take action for herself—immediately.
Katie left her corporate career behind…and life started to get better. Slowly but surely, she started making meaningful investments in herself and her own mental health.
As Katie replaced destructive habits with healthier ones, she began to heal. And after years of trying and failing to become a mother, she conceived her son Sage only once she was able to parent herself. By loosening her grip on perfectionism, she made wise and grounded choices that showed respect for her mind and body. That shift changed everything.
Katie started to think intentionally about every decision she made—and for the first time in her adult life, Katie started actively implementing everything she had ever learned about self-care, but never practiced.
Today, self-care is at the very center of everything Katie McDonald does.
Fully recovered from years of self-neglect, Katie now helps fellow doers embrace self-care so they can do more and be more while leading healthier, more intentional, and more nourished lives.
A professional speaker and self-care strategist, Katie leads with tough love to inspire, empower, and challenge audiences. Katie dispels the destructive myth that self-care is an obstacle to productivity and teaches that self-care is, in fact, a tool to create a more powerful and impactful legacy.
Let's Be Real
You've heard the term "self-care." You probably even know a little bit about it. You know you should prioritize it more. You add it to your offensively long to-do list, reassuring yourself that you will get to it, only to have it cascade to the very bottom again.
You know you should make healthy decisions. That your mental and physical health are important.
But when it comes to self-care, most of us are asleep.
Lulled into complacency by the deluded promise that tomorrow will be different. That is, until a massive personal tragedy or crisis wakes us up and scares the hell out of us.
Katie McDonald believes it doesn't have to be that way.
The Wake-Up Call
If you're ready to stop sleepwalking (and you are), this speech will hit you like a sound-barrier-shattering alarm clock with a busted snooze button.
You'll learn how to liberate yourself from destructive, self-sacrificing habits by being deLIBERATE in your self-care. This speech will challenge you to take action in your own life—immediately—and give you the tools you need to do it.
What if you stopped apologizing and started advocating for yourself?
Aren't you curious what life would be like when you are truly nourished by your habits and mindset? When you walk out of this speech, you'll emerge refreshed, alive with purpose and a contagious passion to show up for yourself the way you show up for everyone else.
What Attendees Will Learn:
Perfect for:
Industries that love this keynote:
The Reality Check
You love to get things done. It's who you are and how you roll. But sometimes you wonder if it's all doable.
Meeting after meeting, deal after deal, deadline after deadline. Tasks topple your bulging inbox and demand more and more from you. It might feel like you have to choose between taking care of business and taking care of yourself.
Maybe you're starting to come undone in service to getting things done.
Katie McDonald learned the hard way that it doesn't have to be that way. Circling the drain, Katie's addiction to doing took her to hell. She returned scorched and emboldened to share with her tribe of doers what she learned along the way.
What This Keynote Delivers
This engaging keynote empowers audiences with time-tested strategies to reclaim the ME in tiME management and shift from human doing to human being.
Attendees learn:
Katie doesn't speak from theory. She speaks from the ashes of her own burnout and rebuild. She knows what it's like to circle the drain. To be so addicted to doing that you lose yourself completely.
This Keynote is:
The Problem Your Audience Is Facing
They're drowning. Meeting after meeting, deal after deal, deadline after deadline. Tasks topple their bulging inbox demanding more and more. They wonder if it's all even doable.
They might feel like they have to choose between taking care of business and taking care of themselves. Maybe they're starting to come undone in service to getting things done.
Frenzy has become familiar. An old friend. The electric current of their life that they tell themselves is enthusiasm, motivation, drive. The pacing, the racing. But it's ineffective time management masquerading as productivity.
They're plowing ahead as if to cross some imaginary finish line that only moves further away with any progress.
What This Keynote Delivers
Through de-LIBERATE, Katie helps audiences trade chaos for intention. This keynote dismantles reactivity and teaches a practical system for aligning calendars, commitments, and self-respect.
Attendees learn:
Her talk was more than a keynote; it was a reset. It prepared everyone to look inward before turning outward. That's the effect Katie has: she grounds people so they can rise higher.
Tania A. Doub, Mindful Quadrant