Michele Stanten, a walking coach and ACE-certified fitness instructor, has been motivating people to be more active for over 25 years.

Michele launched mywalkingcoach.com to help people lead healthier, happier lives. She believes that walking can be the first step (pun intended) to making exercise a habit, which can have positive effects on all areas of your life. Michele also wants to dispel beliefs that walking is only for the very unfit or very overweight. Walking can be a vigorous–yet joint-friendly–workout. She’s on a mission to show the world the many different ways to walk and the powerful benefits it can have.

As the former Fitness Director of Prevention magazine, Michele created a marathon walking program and coached thousands of readers to walk full and half marathons across the country. She has also created training programs for leading brands and organizations, including Harvard Health Publishing, Silver Sneakers, Tivity Health, Avon, Weight Watchers, and the American Council on Exercise (ACE). Michele has walked many distance events including a 3-day 60-mile walk, full marathon, and many half marathons, and she now works with events to make them walker-friendly.

Michele is the author of Walk Off Weight and Walk Your Way to Better Health, and she is co-author of The Walking Solution. She has produced and appeared in more than a dozen exercise videos and created numerous audio workouts.

Michele is a member of  Verywell Fit’s Wellness Board, and she is part of the Every Body Walks Collaborative, which includes organizations such as Kaiser Permanente, the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), and America Walks. Its mission is to get more Americans walking and to improve walking conditions throughout the country. The Collaborative’s work also supports the U.S. Surgeon General’s proposed Call to Action on walking that’s expected to be released this summer. She is also a past member of the Board of Directors for ACE.

Michele has presented on walking at the ACSM Health & Fitness Summit, National Recreation and Park Association’s annual conference, National Walking Summit, and the ACE Symposium. She has written for a variety of publications, including Real Simple, Prevention, Self, More, and Shape magazines. Her numerous media appearances include The Today Show, Good Morning America, The Biggest Loser, CNN, USA Today, and NPR.