Art of aging: App engages your mind while you walk

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- If you're making a New Year's resolution to exercise your body more or challenge your mind, a Center City entrepreneur has created an app that can help you do both simultaneously.

Diana Liberto is what you would call a later-in-life entrepreneur. She is now the CEO of a startup called WalkMyMind.

"It's a walking app, but it's also combined with a listening and learning," Liberto said.

As the free app tracks your steps, minutes and miles, it engages your mind, with podcasts, what she calls "walkcasts," on a hodgepodge of topics from wine and food connoisseurs, money experts, book authors and thinkers.

Liberto came up with the idea while struggling with a quick succession of family tragedies.

"I was working, but then I'd come home and sit on the couch and I didn't move at all," Liberto said.

She finally paid a personal trainer to take her for a walk and found it so healing she wanted to create a platform that would encourage others to get up and move.

"You can't sit. If you sit you're going to atrophy - especially if you're older. You have to keep moving. You have to," Liberto said.

She started WalkMyMind in 2015 while still working as in-house counsel for Walmart. But this year, she took her business venture full time.

And she sold a stake in the company to the Philadelphia based health and wellness company Global Fit, connecting the app to employers and insurance companies.

"When we engage the physical aspects of their well-being and their mind, we're seeing higher levels of productivity, engagement and enthusiasm for their workplace," said President and CEO of GlobalFit Tony Frick.

For Liberto, a New Jersey farmer's daughter who went from cocktail waitress to successful lawyer, the app is writing her next chapter in life

"I like a challenge," she said.

In the future she hopes to organize group walks with live speakers, and maybe even book group walks.

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