our host
& executive producer
Yuliana Kim-Grant is an author, whose first novel “A Shred of Tales” was published in 2011. The stress of that year from all of the traveling required for the novel’s release, made the depression that had been persistent no longer possible to ignore. She entered the hospital at the end of 2012 where she sought treatment for her depression. Upon her release, she found herself slowly rebuilding a new life, a new direction personally and professionally. She completed her first 200 hour yoga teacher training and shortly after she began to teach yoga in NYC. Her personal experience with her own chronic illness made her curious to dig deeper into the ways yoga can be beneficial for anyone facing challenges. She started a Yoga Therapeutics Training, finally getting certified as an IAYT Yoga Therapist in 2019. She currently works with private clients as a Yoga Therapist in NYC. She completed a second novel and created a new platform to empower women through her Phoenix Tales Podcast.
why phoenix tales?
Phoenix Tales was a project that evolved slowly over time into a podcast. During Covid, Yuliana’s marketing team suggested she do Instagram Live shows where she could answer questions posed to her by her followers. After only 3 such IG live shows, she knew she hated talking about herself, but she could see the value of the format to interview others. In her private life, she has known many women who had overcome challenges, who turned these moments as an opportunity to reshape the course of their lives personally or professionally. Her personal experience of her nervous breakdown and hospitalization, which felt like a death and rebirth of sorts helped shape her perspective in creating Phoenix Tales. Originally Phoenix Tales was on Instagram Live with her interviewing 10 extraordinary women with wildly different stories. She found the interview format was a good fit for her own natural curiosity she has always had about other people and her own understanding of how to craft a narrative in telling stories. Nearly a year from the inception of her idea to interview other women, Phoenix Tales Podcast released its first episode. She quickly saw the potential for this platform to become a space where women felt empowered in their own experience and, more importantly, to feel empowered in the telling of those stories. With each new interviewee, a community is being created of many Phoenixes. She hopes each listener feels themselves a part of this growing community of women with grace and grit.