Coaching has proven to be a transformative resource for our Fellows, providing dedicated space to reflect, set meaningful goals, and build strategies for both career and personal development. Fellows have explored topics such as:
- Leadership and professional transitions
- Wellbeing and intentional goal-setting
- Public speaking and storytelling
- Collaborative research and networks
- Career strategy and navigating new spaces
“The most valuable takeaway from my coaching experience was gaining the clarity and confidence to navigate a particularly uncertain period in my career. With [my coach’s] guidance, I was able to successfully transition into a new job.”
AFHE SENIOR FELLOW
Who is it available for?
Coaching is available to Current and Senior Fellows who are exploring new career paths, seeking professional guidance or looking to refresh or enhance their campaign and narrative skills.
Group coaching
Group coaching offers an opportunity to bond with peers, share insights, and explore solutions together. It is open to fellows with shared interests who self-organize in a group of 6-10. Once your group is formed, please reach out for further details.
“The coaching has helped me to align my personal development goals with my career goals which enable me to have a deeper focus.”
AFHE SENIOR FELLOW
What to expect
The number and duration of coaching sessions will be tailored to your goals and determined in collaboration with your coach, up to a maximum limit. This could involve just a few sessions for a quick resolution or more sessions if you’re working on a more complex challenge. You can opt for executive coaching, receive assistance in clarifying your vision and career goals, explore strategies to address burnout and focus on wellness, or refresh your knowledge around community organizing and teambuilding. Coaching sessions will be customized to meet your specific needs. It’s important to note that coaching is not therapy and should not be viewed as a substitute for it when therapy is needed.
How to apply
Please complete this form to express your interest in receiving career coaching. We will indicate if there are no more spaces available for the year.
Meet the Career Coaches
Obenewa Amponsah
Obenewa views coaching as a solutions-focused conversation designed to help an individual or team identify or clarify goals and objectives; to create strategies to achieve them; and to develop methods to overcome any obstacles they may encounter along the way. She sees coaching as an opportunity to go deeper, to explore different aspects of yourself and your team with a neutral party, who, through questions you may not have thought of, can help you see things from a new perspective, to identify new avenues and new options.
Dr. Jummy Okoya
Jummy is an experienced educator, trainer and researcher within the public and private sectors for more than two decades. She decided to pursue coaching due to her experience and background in human resources and program management, which involved helping people with career decisions and supporting them on their professional and academic journey. She uses her varied experience in HR, positive psychology, and business consultancy to make her clients consider multiple perspectives on any situation at hand and give them thinking space to reach their own answers.
Dr. Joedrecka Brown Speights
Joedrecka specializes in healthcare coaching which helps healthcare leaders, workers and clinicians partner in a creative process that’s thought provoking and inspirational, moving them to maximize their potential. She is a professor and chair in the Rural Medical Education Program at the Florida State University College of Medicine, a fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians, and fellowship trained in maternal-child health. Her interests include promotion of health equity through community-engaged research, clinical care, advocacy and education.
Meet the Campaign and Narrative Coaches
Abel Cano
Abel in on a mission to ignite transformational breakthroughs that empower leaders at all levels to drive social change. He trains leaders in the craft of public narrative, a storytelling-based leadership practice, mindful leadership, and community organizing to catalyze change on a global scale.
Kate Hilton
Kate teaches people to build individual and organizational capability to address the adaptive, human-side of change. Her approach involves centering on the people experiencing a problem, activating them to be the authors of the solutions, and equipping them to use adaptive leadership methods to achieve results.
Rawan Zeine
Rawan’s coaching is rooted in the integration of head, heart, and hand—the balance of strategic thinking, deep motivation, and purposeful action by listening with intention and asking questions to see different perspectives, creating space for clarity, insight, and the emergence of focused, meaningful paths forward.
Coming Soon (coaches that will be available later in this cycle)
Dr. Nosa Orabaton
Nosa Orobaton is the former Principal Officer, Health, Africa Regional Office at the Gates Foundation. In this role and previously as Senior Advisor, he was responsible for leading the work on research capacity building in Africa’s universities and research institutions, and in enabling the scale-up of proven MNCH innovations via country primary health care systems and levers in Northern Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa. He is a medical doctor with specialization in public health and health systems management and has worked in clinical medicine and public health for 40 years.
Stefán Stefánsson
Stefán is an international development leader with over two decades of experience in global partnerships, fundraising innovation, and social impact strategy. He currently serves as Senior Advisor on Disability Inclusion at UNICEF, where he leads global efforts to scale inclusive programming through transformative financing models, high-level partnerships, and institutional change.