Caroline Adams Miller

Early life

Caroline Miller who was born September 15, 1961 developed an eating disorder while in 9th grade at the National Cathedral School for Girls in Washington, D.C. She overheard some friends purging in a school bathroom after a meal, and they said that they often did it and it wasn't addictive. For the next eight years, she suffered from bulimia.

Miller attended Harvard University, but also wrote during the summers with newspapers like The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. None of her family, including her husband, was aware of her eating disorder. In February 1984, she decided it was time to seek help and began to attend a free 12-step program for compulsive eaters in Baltimore, MD. She eventually overcame her disorder.

Writing

Miller chronicled her fight with bulimia in the memoir My Name is Caroline. She recounted that "It wasn't easy to go public about it, because bulimia still has that shame stigma attached to it." An excerpt of the book was the cover story of the March 1987 issue of the Washingtonian and was in Family Circle in 1988.

She has written several other books, including Feeding the Soul and Bright Words for Dark Days. She was the primary and lead author of Creating Your Best Life: The Ultimate Life List Guide which has sold over 100,000 copies and had multiple reprints in several languages.

Caroline’s newest book, Getting Grit (SoundsTrue 2017), discusses why this character strength is so important to a flourishing life, who has it, and how to cultivate, amplify, and teach it.

Professional Coach

Caroline Adams Miller is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard University, a graduate of CoachU, and a Professional Certified Coach through the International Coach Federation. In May 2006, she graduated from the ground-breaking Masters in Applied Positive Psychology program at the University of Pennsylvania. The MAPP program is the first masters program in the world that offers in-depth study of the science of well-being, which Caroline uses in her coaching practice to help clients, companies, audiences and students set and achieve their goals to maximize well-being and self-efficacy. The MAPP program is led by renowned psychologist, Dr. Martin Seligman, and Caroline was one of the first coaches to be selected for this unique education.

Caroline’s coach training has been enhanced through her continuing study of motivation and excellence in life endeavors. She enrolled in and graduated from the Corporate Athlete program at the Human Performance Institute in Orlando, Florida in 2004, and continues to add education in fields related to coaching excellence, sports psychology and motivational theories.

Ms. Miller regularly mentors other coaches and other professionals about how to apply Positive Psychology to their work, and speaks widely about this topic to a variety of audiences around the world. She was an adjunct lecturer in Positive Psychology in the Executive and Professional Coaching program in the School of Management at the University of Texas-Dallas for seven years and currently is a lecturer in the Executive Education program at the Wharton Business School. She is a fixture in national and international media on the topics of success, happiness and grit.

Ms. Miller’s published books include My Name is Caroline (Doubleday, Gurze, iUniverse), Feeding the Soul (Bantam, Gurze, iUniverse), Bright Words for Dark Days (Bantam) and Creating Your Best Life: The Ultimate Life List Guide (Sterling 2009). Creating Your Best Life has sold out of both its hardback and paperback print runs repeatedly, and has been translated into multiple foreign languages, as have her other books. Due to its decades of popularity, My Name is Caroline was re-released in 2014 with an updated foreword and introduction about the impact it has had on a generation of eating disordered sufferers, and how it paved the way for a new approach to recovery among treatment professionals.

Caroline was among the first people to discuss her recovery from bulimia on television (https://www.youtube.com/user/camcoaching/videos) and in the media, and was even featured in a 1990 episode from the show To Tell the Truth, where the "real Caroline Miller" was asked to stand in front of an audience and celebrity judges (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iq9lzWAc7wM).

Caroline was the first Applied Positive Psychology expert on satellite radio, and appeared on XM Radio's Channel 155 between 2007 and 2009 with her "Positive Tip of the Day." She was honored by the Good News Network as one of their first Good News Ambassadors in 2012 for her "strong voice in the emerging positive psychology field," (http://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/gnn-names-first-ever-qgood-news-ambassadorsq/) and received the 2013 Mentoring Award (http://hotmommasproject.com/2013/11/major-category-winner-mentoring-caroline-adams-miller/) from the George Washington University Business School for her decades of role modeling goal-setting and success for others through her books, her pioneering recovery from bulimia, and her work in Positive Psychology.

Caroline is one of the first Positive Psychology professionals to join the advisory board of Happify, an online platform that uses fun, science-based activities and games to help others lead happier and more fulfilling lives. She oversaw the creation of the evidence-based goals and grit tracks on the website, and often consults with organizations to bring this type of knowledge to the public in new ways.