GET CERTIFIED

Become a certified

Equity-Centered Coach or

Equity-Centered Leader

At The Institute for Equity-Centered Coaching®️

we use coaching as a tool to create equity.

Equity-Centered Coaching ®️ is an science-based approach to coaching and leadership that seeks to create healthy environments for learning, growth, work, creativity and life.

“This program felt like a masters-level training and immersion in equity-centered leadership and coaching. It's hands-on, it's reflective, it's mind-blowing and no matter how much you think you know about leading, coaching, or DEI work before you begin, you will learn so much about yourself and can't help but leave a much-improved human."

April Force Pardoe

Certified Equity-Centered Coach

Why Certification?

Our certification curriculum is one of the best you'll find, and is the only coach or leader certification program that takes an applied approach to its curriculum: Equity-Centered Practice.

That means you're engaged in a participatory program, learning and practicing the skills that will help you become a more effective coach and leader who is able to:

  • improve client and student outcomes and experiences

  • increase team effectiveness, retention of best team members, improve the workplace culture and brand trust

  • create emotionally and psychologically safe experiences for growth, learning, work, relationships, and life

Whether you are a CEO of a non-profit, a 10th grade history teacher, or a general life and business coaching, Equity-Centered Practice will strengthen your leadership skills, communication skills, coaching and facilitation skills, and all of your professional relationships.

Certified students will be included in our certified practitioner directory and will be awarded with our signature certification badge to be displayed on your website and personal profiles.

Your future clients, team employers and team members

are saying...

I want to work with highly trained coach, who sees the fullness of my identity and can hold safe, and challenging space for me to grow.

I want to work at a company that values me as an individual, who wants me to make meaningful contributions in the workplace.

I want to hire someone who understands my values, my community, and the impact I want to create in the world.

"I got all kinds of skills as a coach and as a facilitator, but I didn’t fully understand how much the program would help me as an entrepreneur and as a business owner."

Chris Wallace Caldwell

Certified Equity-Centered Coach & Leader

“This program has had a positive impact on nearly every area of my business, from mission and clarity to client care to sales. The trauma-informed and culturally responsive coaching skills and equity-centered culture plan benefit my clients every single day. I lead with more confidence knowing that decisions I make are rooted in my values and an equity-centered perspective.”

Laura Simms

Certified Equity-Centered Coach

Becoming a Certified Equity-Centered Coach or Leader will deepen your practice, no matter what niche, by building your competence in four key areas:

ADVANCED COACHING SKILLS

Coaching psychology, facilitation, and several tools and approaches to coaching.

TRAUMA INFORMED COACHING

All students in our programs participate in one full unit of Trauma-Informed Practice training, as well as ongoing practice throughout our coaching track.

CULTURAL RESPONSIVENESS

Our curriculum focuses on developing your ability to support and develop clients and team members holding diverse & intersectional identities.

EQUITY, ANTI-OPPRESSION

& LIBERATORY LEADERSHIP

Become a leader that protects equity and liberation of others while embodying those principles in their own lives.

Our goal is to provide excellent training, and ongoing professional development to all of our certified coaches so that our coaches become the most highly skilled coaches and facilitators in the industry. Together we will raise the standards and put pressure on others to step up their practice.

The Institute for Equity Centered Coaching is the only place I've seen that is centering this (justice and equity) work and saying it is possible to do transformational work from an equity informed place."

Tyla Fowler

Pursuing Equity-Centered Certification

Curriculum

All students begin with Foundations, a 12-week curriculum that focuses on increasing your ability to navigate conversations, and dilemmas in coaching and leadership that involve themes related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-oppression.

These are foundational skills for anyone working with other humans. Especially in highly charged social or political climates.

  • Sprint 1: J.E.D.I. Basics

All students begin with Foundations, a 12-week curriculum that focuses on increasing your ability to navigate conversations, and dilemmas in coaching and leadership that involve themes related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-oppression.

These are foundational skills for anyone working with other humans. Especially in highly charged social or political climates.

  • Identity & Power 

  • Othering & belonging

  • Oppression & Marginalization

  • The JEDI Landscapte

  • Applied Values (2 sessions) 

  • Sprint 2: Equity-Centered Practice

In this sprint you'll take the concepts and insights from JEDI basics and turn them into practices and tools that you'll use to make equity-centered decisions, and improve the emotional and psychologically safety of the communities and workplaces you build and/or participate in. We'll cover:

  • Guiding Principles and community agreements

  • Emotional and Psychological Safety 

  • Building team/community culture

  • Intro to Equity-Centered Leadership

  • Intro to Equity-Centered Coaching 

Next, you will pursue the Coaching Track, Leadership Track, or both.

Equity-Centered Leadership Track

Core Competancies

  • Value-Based Practice

Values serve as guiding principles that are both identified and institutionalized.

  • Trauma-Informed Approach

Leaders will learn to minimize harm, recognize signs of trauma, and coach around it sensitively.

  • Cultural Responsiveness

The ability to hold space for identity themes, asking about or clarifying cultural/historical/generational contexts, and affirming others’ experiences.

  • Creating Intentional Spaces

Fostering explicit inclusion and emotional/psychological safety, while establishing community agreements and expectations and clear pathways for conflict resolution.

  • Equity-Centered Engagement

The ability to engage in discussions and analyze dilemmas related to injustice, oppression, inequity, power, and influence.

  • Reflexivity

The ability to critique one's own leadership, critically examine personal biases and influences, and communicate and contextualize these insights.

  • Shared Power

Understanding that managing outcomes, rather than people, is a potent strategy for liberatory leadership. Transparency regarding the origins of decisions builds trust and respect within teams and communities, particularly by intentionally involving historically marginalized voices in problem-solving and decision-making processes. Equitable practices are upheld in hiring, separation, and performance evaluations.

Equity-Centered Coaching Track

Core Competancies

  • Creating Intentional Space

The ability to foster explicit inclusion, emotional and psychological safety, and establishing internal agreements and expectations

  • Trauma-Informed Approach

Leaders will learn to minimize harm, recognize signs of trauma, and coach around it sensitively.

  • Cultural Responsiveness

Being comfortable with identity themes, discussing cultural/historical/generational contexts, and affirming clients' own experiences.

  • Operating on a Consent-Based Approach

Coaches prioritize obtaining consent to participate and integrate consent throughout active coaching sessions.

  • Reflexivity

The ability to critique one's practice, examine personal biases and influences, and communicate and adapt coaching approaches accordingly.

  • A Client-Centered Approach

The ability to co-create the coaching experience, prioritize client goals and agenda, and align coaching strategies with client values.

  • Coaching Praxis

Emphasizing clear direction, utilizing coaching tools effectively, and applying coaching theory with intentionality. Students will study a minimum of five coaching theories in addition to Equity-Centered Practice.

"One of the certifications - if not the certification - that I am most proud of in my 20 years of working"

Melanie Gonzalez

Certified Equity-Centered Leader

Coach

Certification

Certified Equity-Centered Coaches will specialize in developing advanced coaching skills that will prepare them to serve a diverse range of clients who bring a myriad of personal, cultural, and racial contexts into coaching sessions.

They will learn the importance of self-determination and consent and learn how to navigate between the roles of coach, facilitator, space holder, guide, mentor, advocate, consultant, and critical friend.

Dual Certification

Interested in both?

Students in the dual track will complete the requirements in both the coach and leader tracks.

These courses may be completed simultaneously or in succession (10+ months)

Leader

Certification

Certified Equity-Centered Coaches will specialize in developing advanced coaching skills that will prepare them to serve a diverse range of clients who bring a myriad of personal, cultural, and racial contexts into coaching sessions.

They will learn the importance of self-determination and consent and learn how to navigate between the roles of coach, facilitator, space holder, guide, mentor, advocate, consultant, and critical friend.

"I went into the dual certification to make myself better prepared to serve the WOC community as a life coach. What I didn’t realize was the internal transformations I received en route. As a WOC - being able to identify my power, and my privilege and then continue to apply the work to unpack my internalized oppression and survivor's guilt is something I will be forever grateful for."

Crystal Agyei

Certified Equity-Centered Coach & Leader

A message from our Founder

When I became certified as a coach in 2014 there was no mention of the ways race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, or internalized oppression impacted the progress that clients might experience in a coaching relationship. At the time, I was six years into my career as a diversity, equity, and inclusion educator and had completed my Masters in Psychology and was a few semesters into my Ph.D program studying the factors that improved young adult outcomes in schools.

From my vantage point, two things were clear.

  • Good coaching is an effective tool for all kinds of personal growth; and

  • Any work that is done with other humans must happen with a trauma-informed, equity-centered lens in order to be most effective.

After all, if the biggest predictors of life outcomes are race and zip code (which, unfortunately, they are), then any attempt to help someone improve their life that does not take into consideration the ideological, institutional, interpersonal, and intrapersonal effects of structural oppression, and supremacy culture is simply incomplete

It was then, that I realized, that if I could take what I was learning about coaching psychology, personal development, business, leadership, and diversity, equity and inclusion, and bring this education to the coaching industry, we'd be able to impact millions.

And we have. We have trained thousands of coaches & leaders across many sectors of business and have influenced some of the biggest brands in the coaching industry including Brooke Castillo & the Life Coach School, team overall, Hay House Publishers, Sunny Lenarduzzi, Mike Michalowicz (author of Profit First), and more.

And now, I am inviting you to join us in the effort.

In community,

~ trudi lebrón

"These are really thoughtful, caring and kind people doing great work in the world... I'm really glad that I took the time, invested the time, and I would do it again if I hadn't done it already."

Caryn Gillen

Certified Equity-Centered Coach

Meet the Faculty

Trudi Lebron, MS

  • Founder, The Institute for Equity-Centered Coaching 

  • Author, The Antiracist Business Book

Charmagne Glass-Tripp

  • Director of Programming

  • Leadership Track Faculty

Latoya "Dr. Boz" Bosworth, PhD

  • Coaching Faculty

  • Founder, Got H.E.R.S. Life Coaching

Crystal Agyei, M.D., MBA

  • Coaching Faculty

  • Certified Equity-Centered Coach & Leader

  • Founder, Missing Piece Coaching

Chris Wallace Caldwell

  • Coaching Faculty

  • Certified Equity-Centered Coach & Leader

  • Founder, Catalysis, llc

Neelam Kassam, CPA

  • Coaching Faculty

  • Certified Equity-Centered Coach & Leader

  • Founder, Prestige Consulting

"Learning from the Institute of Equity-Centered Coaching has been transformational, but using that word 'transformational'. doesn't quite capture the transforming that has taken place for me."

Karen Roswell

Certified Equity-Centered Coach

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is this program for?

Certification is for leaders, professionals, and coaches who want to improve or create healthy communities and workplace cultures that are committed to equity and inclusion.

Our curriculum is designed to fill the gaps in coaching and leadership education by prioritizing emotional and psychological safety, the ethics of holding power and influence, and integrating principles of equity, inclusion, self-determination, and anti-oppression.

How much time should I plan to dedicate to this program?

Class will take place over Zoom once per week. Each call is 90-minutes and there may be up to an additional 90-minutes of audio/video materials and assignments each week.

What can I expect in class?

During weekly zoom calls, an equity-centered faculty member will guide you through the curriculum with your cohort of up to 16 other like-minded leaders and coaches.

These calls are curated to be diverse spaces with leaders from all walks of life. And they are inclusive spaces, where all participants are safe to learn, contribute, and challenge ourselves.

We will use a number of facilitation, teaching, and coaching tools including breakout rooms, affinity groups, self-reflection, and written prompts.

There is never an obligation to disclose or share in the group.

What if I don't want to be certified?

We have made the Foundations curriculum available separately from the certification program because we believe that these concepts should be available to anyone who wants to take steps toward more equitable leadership practices. Learn more about Foundations.

If you change your mind later, and want to attain certification, that will be available to you.

What is your payment & refund policy?

There are no refunds for this program once you are full enrolled.

If, for some reason, you are unable to participate fully please contact us to discuss options for pro-rated program credit.

What if I have other questions?

You can reach out to [email protected]

with any questions you have. Our email inbox is monitored Monday-Friday and we'll respond within one business day.

"I definitely got way more than I expected. I didn't know that there would be so many practical tools..."

Joan Chan, M.D.

Certified Equity-Centered Coach

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