ALEXANDRA STODDARD

Alexandra Stoddard is a philosopher of contemporary living, interior designer, and author of many best-selling books, including Choosing Happiness: Keys to a Joyful Life, in a fourteenth printing, Time Alive: Celebrate Your Life Everyday, and the forthcoming Happiness for Two: 75 Secrets for Finding More Joy Together. Things I Want My Daughters to Know: A Small Book About the Big Issues in Life, was introduced at the National Book Festival in Washington, DC, and is currently in its ninth printing.

Stoddard's unique insights reveal the small but significant things that can be done to change one’s mind, heart, and environment for the better. Her mantra is “Happiness is the first principle of life. Love & Live Happy.” Observers say Stoddard has hit a nerve in the public psyche with her positive message of enthusiasm leading to the active joy of living fully every moment.

Stoddard’s original theme of living beautifully and spiritually every day has resulted in appearances on Oprah, The Today Show, the Christopher Lowell Show, as former host of the Home & Garden television series Homes Across America, and profiles in major magazines and newspapers worldwide.

Stoddard’s writing, seminars, and illustrated talks contain a positive personal philosophy of ways to live a beautiful and happy life, laced with grace, wit, and daily rituals, the first to write about ritualizing every day, with celebrations and ceremonies at home – elevating interior design to the art of living beautifully moment to moment. Alexandra speaks regularly at a variety of events, fundraisers, and seminars, most often in the United States and Canada.

When she was 16 years old, her aunt, Elizabeth Johns, a renowned international social worker, took her around the world, exposing her to architecture, design, and beauty; also sorrow and suffering. This eye-opening tour gave depth to her future design and literary career and enlarged her understanding of human nature and our universal search for meaning and purpose in our lives.

In 1963 she went to work for the doyenne of American interior design, Eleanor McMillen Brown, becoming her special assistant and close friend. Twenty-nine years ago, after her mentor retired, Stoddard started her own international design firm, Alexandra Stoddard Incorporated, with Mrs. Brown’s blessing.

Stoddard lives in New York City, and in Stonington Village, Connecticut, with her husband Peter Megargee Brown, also an author. She has two daughters, Alexandra B. Stoddard, (mother of twins Nicholas and Anna and Lily), and Brooke Stoddard; both journalists. She is the founder and President of Design & Art Society, Ltd., and a Dame of the American Society of the Order of St. John, designated by Queen Elizabeth II.