From the Diary of Natalia Edelmann, MBA, CPA, CMA

For the woman who has built the career and now wants to live differently: what wellness is when it stops being one more thing to achieve, and the rooms built for finding out.

It was about two years after she had finished her MBA and her CPA, CMA, studying and working at the same time. There were signals she “could no longer ignore”, and she lists them: “the hip pain, the constant headaches, the weight gain, the unhealthy relationships, both personal and with myself.” She had lost, she says, “the joy, that spark”. The question she put to herself was a plain one: “How could I have so much, and feel so misaligned?”

What she did next she describes as if she were watching someone else. “Like an out of body experience, I watched myself go into my boss’ office and ask for a sabbatical.” He gave her six months. Most people, she says, called it “career suicide”. She calls it “the biggest growth spurt”.

Hers is not a rare shape of story. When Deloitte surveyed 7,500 working women across 15 countries for its Women @ Work 2025 report, only around half described their mental health as good, and four in ten said they felt able to switch off from work.

Natalia Edelmann says the same thing in a sentence: “We’re not good at stopping and checking in with what we want until something happens to force you to slow down or stop completely.” She is the owner of LUXE Club Retreats, home of the Legacy Leader Collective, an invite-only community she founded for career-driven women. Through retreats, lunches, dinners and a monthly online gathering, she brings together, in her words, “the woman who has achieved great success in her career, and is now wanting to live life differently”. Her argument is that wellness is a way of living, made of choices, and that it looks different for every woman who makes them.

Leader in Spotlight: Read Adam Dowd Feature in Executives Diary

Six Months and One Question

The sabbatical began with a question. “I asked myself ‘What do you want?’” she says, and she calls it “a difficult question”.

“On the outside, I was the epitome of success, and yet, when I looked in the mirror, I no longer recognised myself.”

Natalia Edelmann, Owner, LUXE Club Retreats

She had not given herself anything like it before. “Taking that time to retreat, to escape, to reset on my own… that was unlike anything I had ever done, or allowed myself to do.” She rented a car to drive solo in a foreign country and went, in her phrase, “retreat hopping, seeking deeper connection and alignment”.

“I came back to life on that trip, even though I had no idea what I was doing,” she says. “I was being led to spaces that expanded my whole state of being.” What followed, in her account, came from that energy: the businesses she has created, the consulting with clients “around their business and life”, the community, and the events and retreats “that go beyond the traditional agenda”.

From her corporate years she names one person, Roberto Morais. He gave her, she says, “so many opportunities, positioning me with the right people, expanding my scope within the business, and supporting work/life balance”, particularly while she was working and studying at the same time. He also helped her refine her communication skills: “writing in facts, keeping the message clear and concise, protecting your word above all else.”

What she found in those six months has since become an argument about what wellness is.

Doing and Being

Ask Natalia what she notices about high-achieving women and she gives three things. The first: “High-achieving women are so caught up in the doing, they forget about the being.” Her gloss on being is one line: “Who you are when no one is looking.” It shows, she says, in what a woman says yes and no to, the boundaries and belief systems she sets and the way she manages her time. “Being busy does not mean you’re being productive,” she says. Her question is “do you own your time or does your time own you?”

The second is about balance. High-achieving women, she says, don’t believe in work-life balance because they picture one fixed way of living, “when actually it’s YOUR way of living. It looks different for everyone.” And most don’t stop to work out what theirs is until something makes them. She lists the loss of a loved one, “the health diagnosis you didn’t see coming”, “the business that takes over”.

The third brings in the numbers. Women who know their numbers, go on retreats and are selective about who is in their trusted circle “experience life differently”, she says. “Knowing your numbers isn’t just about tracking your incomings and outgoings, it’s about knowing what you want in your heart of hearts, staying focused on the pathway there, and being brave enough to make it happen.”

“Vision is the destination, strategy is the pathway there, and you are the key to making it happen.”

Natalia, Owner, LUXE Club Retreats

Her definition sits close to the one she cites from the Global Wellness Institute, which describes wellness as “the active pursuit of activities, choices, and lifestyles” that lead to holistic health. Natalia’s version turns on the same word, choices.

She describes a woman at the peak of her corporate career, deciding whether to stay or go, “feeling her body contracting and in high-stress, succumbing to isolation while putting on her best face during social events”. The turn, as Natalia tells it, came when the woman understood what Natalia calls her blueprints, “her Human Design, her Gene Keys, her Destiny Matrix, her Astrology Chart”, and saw “her gifts and her shadows for the first time”. “It was like her very own operating manual.” She looked at her life as it was, at what she liked and what she didn’t, and at the choices that had led her there. “She was no longer pushing.” Today, Natalia says, that woman “has a business that fits into her life, and not the other way around, she goes on the retreat, she makes herself the priority”. Natalia’s own summary of that story: “It was never about achieving or pushing, it was about choosing to experience life differently through the choices that match your destination.”

Choices like those, she says, are easier to see from a distance. “It’s the retreats and in-person events that pull you away from your day to day.”

A Table in the South of Spain

On 1 October 2025, Natalia invited a select group of women to join her around a table. They were, she says, women “with integrity, influence, and ambition”, the women she chooses to live alongside and not only work alongside. The setting was a private space at La Reserva Golf Club in the south of Spain, and she says it was the first time an all-women’s event had been held there.

“The food was exquisite and the company and conversations elevated the room in a way I could only imagine,” she says. One woman arrived tired and left exhilarated. Three of the women who attended have joined forces to run a retreat in 2026. Three others have gone on to build a business.

Natalia’s explanation is about who was at the table. “These examples are what happens when you bring women together who are focused on collaboration not competition,” she says. “They lead with love and with a business mindset.” The women who have come into the Legacy Leader Collective since have hosted, too, and in her words “have started to operate at a different frequency with greater balance defined by them”.

The table in Spain was one kind of room, and she designs several.

How a Room Gets Designed

The Collective’s year runs on four formats, and Natalia hosts at least one of each. There are the retreats. There are Lunch Circles, a few hours together over lunch. There are Luminary Exchanges, a casual evening or dinner that brings thought leaders together around what is top of mind. And there are Legacy Lounges, held online every month, “so we have an opportunity to come together to build relationships, whether with someone in the community or a new face”.

When she designs one, she starts with the calendar. “I think of the seasons, where would be lovely to take some time out and how busy is it for people.” Time is the first thing she hears about, she says, “because the type of women in my world, we love to fill our calendars”.

Then she thinks about the women who will be in the room, what has been coming up in conversation, and the themes of Wellness 360™*, whose 12 life elements include Finances 360 and Water 360. The format comes last. If the subject fits a few hours over lunch, it becomes a Lunch Circle. If it suits an evening, it becomes a Luminary Exchange.

The test of the design is what the women say on the way out.

What the Women Say

In April, a Legacy Leader Lunch Circle took up the Finances 360 element. After lunch, Jana Alonso Bartlett led the group through practical exercises in which, Natalia says, “we tuned into the vision we are creating and the cost of that vision to reverse engineer our path to live it in reality”. Her summary of the afternoon: “There wasn’t one woman who didn’t walk away with greater sense of direction and awareness.”

Jana is also the person Natalia names as shaping her work since she left corporate life. “Jana has a way of teaching that is real and lands in a way that you never knew you needed,” she says. “Manifestation isn’t just about vision boards and meditations, it takes congruent action and it takes a very clear picture of what you want. It takes you, who you need to be (your state of being) as you navigate towards what you want.”

At an event in London for International Women’s Day, Natalia recalls, one woman said, “I feel like I’m home.” Another asked how she had brought so many remarkable women together in one room.

“The magic is in the curated space and the women within it. There are no egos and there is no competition.”

Natalia, Owner, LUXE Club Retreats

The smallest example may be the most telling. At a Legacy Lounge on Water 360, an hour online about water “as hydration, emotions, and flow”, one woman said at the end that she had looked at the hour in her calendar and weighed it against doing something “more productive”. She was glad she had made the time. It was, she said, “far more insightful and what I didn’t know I needed”. Natalia says she comes for that one hour every month.

Where Natalia Is Now

Natalia is the owner of LUXE Club Retreats and the founder of the Legacy Leader Collective. LUXE Club Retreats is the winner of the Luxury Lifestyle Awards in the category “Best Luxury Wellness & Retreat Travel Planner in Spain for 2026”, and Natalia is a best-selling author.

What she wants from the next twelve months is recognition “for what wellness actually is”, among “professional, career driven women” who are “craving greater community, connection, and meaning through lived experiences”. The Collective is invite-only, so the way in is a conversation. She would like women who recognise themselves in this piece to connect with her on LinkedIn, or to book a conversation with her.

Outside work she does what she asks of others. “As much as I love hosting retreats, going on retreats are a way of living for me,” she says. She plays golf, which she started years ago with her dad, and calls it “such a great teacher”. And she moves. “Everywhere I go, I’m stretching or creating my own dance floor,” she says. “The body is incredible and is sending you signals always.”

Asked what comes next, she answers in three words, “Less is more”, and then spells it out: “Living life to the fullest while having a select group of people in my life who enrich conversations, who inspire laughter, kindness and joy, who are making a difference being in their brilliance and ultimate self.”

The line she wants to be remembered by is three words long as well: Experience Life Differently. The other one she offers is a traveller’s saying, which she keeps in quotation marks. “You travel not to escape life, but so that life does not escape you.”

*Wellness 360™ was created by the International Association of Wellness Professionals, where Natalia Edelmann is certified as a Holistic Wellness and Holistic Life Coach.

Five Lines from Natalia’s Diary

“It’s about making sure you are owning your time, rather than your time owning you.”
“It is the choices we make moment by moment that compound to create our reality and destiny.”
“When life is happening for you, you lean in most to what you’re resisting.”
“These are women who work hard and want to enjoy life too.”
“be like a goldfish… Forget the bad shots 5 minutes after it happens. Just remember the good ones”