My story · Leslie Avant-Brown
One calling, still unfolding.
For more than a decade, my work has followed one question: what would coaching look like if it were built for us? For the young people the system overlooked. For the community members who were already coaching their neighbors without a title. For the leaders of color who hold everyone up and are rarely held themselves.
Each season of my work answered that question a little more fully. I learned that our communities do not need to be fixed. We need room to heal, tools that honor our culture and history, and people who believe our wisdom is already inside us.
The Healing Centered Life Coaching Institute is the newest layer of that dream. It brings everything I do into one place: the coaching, the changemaking, the healing, and the teaching. For the first time, the work and the calling are the same shape.
“We cannot grow past what we have not been given room to heal.”
Where it beganCoaching young people
As a capacity builder and leadership development expert, I began my coaching career as an internal Director of Coaching. Partnering with Beyond Emancipation, I built the first-ever coaching model for transition age foster and probation youth and the staff who support them. The model was so innovative that the International Coaching Federation (ICF) recognized it with a 2016 International Prism Award Honorable Mention. This prestigious global award celebrates organizations that build top-tier coaching cultures to drive meaningful impact, and Beyond Emancipation was honored alongside multinational finalists including Google, Coca-Cola, and GlaxoSmithKline.
Building capacityTraining community coaches
I helped Leadership that Works expand its ICF-accredited community coaching certification program, the first of its kind, offering cohorts in Battle Creek, MI; Brooklyn, NY; and Oakland, CA, and training more than 100 community coaches. That work began my long-standing relationship with the City of Oakland, California, Department of Violence Prevention, formerly Oakland Unite, where, in partnership with Bright Research Group, I have trained more than 60 front-line coaches supporting gun violence prevention throughout the Bay Area.
Naming the modelHealing Centered Coaching®
Inspired by the work of Dr. Shawn Ginwright, and grounded in research and the evidence I saw coaching leaders in the US, India, the UK, and beyond, I developed Healing Centered Coaching® to help leaders shift from surviving to thriving, encouraging clients to pause, ground, align, and act. Today I help leaders, teams, and organizations around the world move from trauma informed coaching to healing centered coaching that honors the whole person.
Building a firmBlooming Willow Coaching
I founded my first firm, a coaching capacity building firm, with a team of 15 coaches, committed to changemakers. Together we served more than 500 organizations and 4,500 clients. Through the firm, I also had the opportunity to train more than 300 coaches in Healing Centered Coaching®, the model I created and hold the trademark for, supporting them on their path to becoming ICF-credentialed coaches.
NowThe Institute
Everything before this prepared me for what comes next. I created the Institute as an intentional next season of growth, one that brings my coaching, teaching, and healing work together so I can serve more holistically. It is the official training and certification center for Healing Centered Life Coaching™, where the Healing Centered Coaching® model is taught, practiced, and passed on, and where I serve as lead faculty and principal practitioner. Here I walk alongside entrepreneurs, innovators, and leaders of color who want coaching that tends to the whole person, with healing at the center of their growth.
Coach
A private, culturally grounded space for leaders to slow down, tell the truth, and choose what comes next.
Changemaker
Reimagining who coaching is for, and making sure leaders of color are the ones shaping it.
Healer
Holding space for the whole person, body, mind, and spirit, so growth is something that lasts.
Educator
Training and certifying coaches of color, and equipping organizations to bring healing centered coaching inside.
Teaching staff · Founder and lead faculty
Leslie Avant-Brown, MPA, MCC
Leslie is a Master Certified Coach, the International Coaching Federation's highest credential, and the creator of the Healing Centered Coaching® model. Before becoming a coach, she built a career in leadership development, evaluation, and capacity building, and she teaches every live class in the Institute's certification programs.
Her CCRW Coaching Model, created for foster and probation youth transitioning out of state care, earned an ICF Prism Award Honorable Mention. She has developed coaching models that help young survivors of sexual exploitation lead advocacy movements, created a city-wide coaching framework for the City of Oakland's Department of Violence Prevention to support gun violence prevention staff, and founded an ICF-accredited coach certification program. Today she coaches high-achieving changemakers, who often work in isolation, toward clarity, alignment, and purpose, drawing on deep experience in executive leadership, education, nonprofits, and youth work.
Leslie holds a Master of Public Administration from the University of Michigan. She is a Silver Star member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., and she loves laughing and spending time with her wife, family, and friends.
Joining Leslie: Practice Studio co-facilitators and Mentor Circle coaches, all credentialed Healing Centered Coaches who hold ICF's Mentor Coach Specialization. Names are announced before each cohort begins.
Start with a conversation.
Tell me what you are looking for: coaching, a circle or training, certification, mentoring, or a partnership for your team. You will hear back within two business days.
Considering a certification program? Read the Certification Program Policies.