Background and career
Andy Puddicombe (born 23 September 1972) is a British author, public speaker and a teacher of meditation and mindfulness. He, alongside Richard Pierson, is the co-founder of Headspace, a digital health company that provides guided meditation training and mindfulness for its users. Puddicombe is a former Buddhist monk with a degree in Circus Arts.
Puddicombe was born in London but grew up in Bristol, UK. He attended Wellsway Comprehensive School in Keynsham, studied Sports Science at De Montfort University, and obtained a Foundation Degree in Circus Arts.
In 1994, Puddicombe gave up his studies in sports science and travelled to Asia to train as a Buddhist monk. He has attributed this in part to an effort to cope with the trauma of bereavement. His meditation training took him to India, Nepal, Myanmar, Thailand, Australia and Russia; culminating in full ordination at a Tibetan monastery in India, in the Himalayas. Having completed a one-year cloistered retreat in Scotland, he returned to Russia, where he taught meditation in Moscow for four years before reaching the end of his monastic commitment. In 2004 Puddicombe returned to the UK where he studied Circus Arts in London while simultaneously building his own private meditation practice in the city, wanting to make "meditation and mindfulness accessible, relevant and beneficial to as many people as possible".
Puddicombe set up a private meditation practice in 2006, and spent the next four years working as a mindfulness consultant, while adapting the language and techniques he had previously learned. During this time he met his future business partner and co-founder of Headspace, Rich Pierson. Puddicombe has often attributed the success of Headspace to Pierson's involvement.
Headspace launched in 2010, originally as an events company in London. Its first online meditations were uploaded to its website before January 2012, when the first Headspace app was launched. Puddicombe stepped back from the board in 2022 and left the company with his co-founder Rich Pierson.
Puddicombe has written three books, all published by Hodder & Stoughton, Hachette.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
