MEET MIREILLE GUILIANO
Internationally best-selling author Mireille Guiliano (Meer-ray Julie-ano) is a long-time spokesperson for Champagne Veuve Clicquot and for more than 20 years has been a senior executive at the world’s leading luxury goods company, LVMH, including as president and CEO of Clicquot, Inc., the US firm she helped found in 1984 and was its first employee.
Her book, French Women Don’t Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure, in which she recommends bread, Champagne, chocolate and romance as key ingredients to a balanced diet and lifestyle, captured the imagination of an overweight world tired of yo-yo diets and became a runaway best seller around the globe in 2005. In less than six months, well over 1 million copies of the book were printed, and sales drove it to the top of the best seller charts in many countries, including the USA. A cultural phenomenon that inspired cartoons in the New Yorker and a host of imitations, it has been translated into 37 languages, and continues to be read widely. She followed up this book in fall 2006 with French Women for All Seasons: A Year of Secrets, Recipes and Pleasure, devoted to l’art de vivre (the art of living). French Women Don’t Get Fat enabled readers to enjoy a healthier relationship with food while French Women for All Seasons enables readers to enjoy a healthier relationship with life. In both, through her personal stories and illustrations, she espouses living life to the fullest by embracing quality, sensitivity, seasonality and pleasure while maintaining a healthy equilibrium.
One of the few women who have reached the top echelon of the wine and spirits as well as luxury goods industry, Mireille is credited with growing Champagne Veuve Clicquot’s top image and overseeing a remarkable pattern of double digit growth in the USA year after year after year. She wrote the initial marketing plan, and under her leadership, Veuve Clicquot’s market share in America grew from less than one percent to more than 23%. Her casebook strategic approach to positioning and growing ultra-premium brands is often cited and followed in the industry.
Mireille has been called a champion of women in business, belongs to the Committee of 200 and works with groups promoting business opportunities and education for women. She frequently presents nationally and internationally on business topics, especially related to the luxury goods sector, as well as on wine and gastronomy.
A sought-after guest on radio and television in the USA and abroad, Mireille has appeared on Oprah, The Today Show, CBS’ The Early Show, NBC’s Dateline, CNN, among many national broadcasts, and has been profiled in The New York Times, USA Today,TIME, Newsweek, The Robb Report, Business Week, More, Travel & Leisure, Food & Wine and dozens of other publications. For years she has also contributed articles on food, wine, travel and lifestyle to a wide range of publications, including Town & Country and The Quarterly Review of Wines.
A native of France, she grew up amidst cooks, chefs and restaurateurs in provincial France and was educated in Paris, where she studied French and English literature at the Sorbonne and languages at the Institut Supérieur d’Interprétariat et de Traduction. Mireille holds the French equivalent of a master’s degree in English and German and a certification as a translator/interpreter. She also has a command of Italian and several other languages. She first arrived in America as an exchange student in Boston and came back for good early in her professional career. She currently resides in Manhattan with her husband, Edward, president and CEO of New York Institute of Technology, and makes frequent trips to their homes in Paris and Provence for business and pleasure . . . always pleasure.
Mireille is passionate about food and wine and cites breakfast, lunch and dinner as her favorite pastimes. The sound of corks popping truly is music to her ears.
Browse Mireille’s Calendar.
View the Slideshow