On my way to meet Evy Poumpouras, 47, the elite agent turned self-help guru, I am, frankly, a little nervous. She sounds like the most badass person, let alone woman, I’ve ever encountered. A former US Secret Service operative who guarded three serving US presidents – Bill Clinton, George Bush Jr and Barack Obama – she’s also worked undercover posing as a sex-trafficking victim and coaxed confessions out of child abusers. I thought I was pretty tough, but she is basically granite.
![[Evy on duty protecting President Obama, 2012]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/12/16/93086735-0-image-a-114_1734019560213.jpg)
She speaks Greek, French, Italian and Spanish and learned Arabic to work in the Service’s elite polygraph unit, where she interrogated criminals, terrorists and terrorist sympathisers. She won the Secret Service’s highest honour, the Valor Award, for rescuing civilians from the wreckage of 9/11. She says she can spot a liar just by zeroing in on someone’s body language (telltale signs include hair twirling, picking off imaginary lint and smoothing wrinkles on clothing).
. She has also successfully made the transition from White House bodyguard to life coach, writing a self-help book, Becoming Bulletproof, which teaches softies to toughen up in the face of everyone from colleagues to killers. She is also delivering an online course on BBC Maestro, a paid-for subscription service where, for £120 a year, you can listen to anything from Trinny Woodall informing you about what she’s learnt from the business world, to Isabel Allende on how to make storytelling magical or Brian Cox giving an acting masterclass.
