Advanced Certification in Feminist Coaching
You may be a feminist.
You may be a coach.
(Or a therapist, counselor, or licensed mental health professional who works with people socialized as women.)
BUT I’M HERE TO TELL YOU THAT DOESN’T MEAN YOU ARE ABLE TO DELIVER TRULY INTERSECTIONAL FEMINIST COACHING.
Intersectional feminist coaching is an entirely different method of coaching from traditional life coaching systems.
It’s a lens through which you understand the world and how women move through it, relate to it, are shaped by it, and shape it in turn.
It’s a holistic social, political, historical, and intellectual lens on coaching tools, the coaching industry, personal change, and social progress.
Applications are approved on a rolling basis. Scholarships available.
And you can’t truly understand what is happening in women’s brains and how to help them change their lives without it.
(I said what I said.)
I was pushed to think harder than ever before. To challenge my assumptions more courageously. To coach myself harder and with more compassion than ever before (and therefore equip myself to do the same for my clients). To investigate again and again what was important to ME, and be better able to articulate to myself WHY. I made myself available for this work over and over again, even when it got hard.
As a result, today, I am creating bodies of work that feel like a more coherent expression of my deepest values than ever before. And as a result, my business has become so much more joyful, and every dollar I earn more soulful.
Thank you Kara! And thank you to Past Me for investing in ME.
Almost every woman in the world grows up in a patriarchal society.
Almost every woman in the world grows up in a white supremacist society, or a society impacted by white supremacism exported by “first world” countries.
Almost every woman in the world grows up exposed to sizeism, ableism, and a host of other intersecting structures of oppression and marginalization.
These powerful cultural narratives shape our brains from infancy on.
So when you try to help a woman with basic life coaching or therapeutic tools?
You’re bringing a butter knife to a sword fight.
YOU CAN’T TRULY HELP YOUR CLIENTS EMPOWER THEMSELVES UNLESS YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT IS MAKING THEM FEEL DISEMPOWERED.
And when it comes to women, it’s not just evolutionary biology or cognitive psychology or their family histories at play.
It’s what they believe they are allowed.
It’s what they believe they can accomplish.
It’s what they believe they are worth.
And if you’re coaching a woman of color, or a fat woman, or a woman living with a disability, or an LGBTQ+ woman, or a woman who lives across more than two marginalized identities?
And you don’t understand the history, theory, and impacts of the social forces that have shaped their experiences, minds and lives?
You’re doing them a disservice. And you’re doing yourself one too.
No matter how many intersecting identities you live in or forms of marginalization you’ve experienced, there are others you don’t know about first-hand. This certification will teach you about your blind spots, and will deepen your experience of yourself as a multi-faceted coach and human being as well.
This isn’t a luxury, or a bonus
It's a necessity.
THIS IS ESSENTIAL INFORMATION
WHEN IT COMES TO COACHING WOMEN EFFECTIVELY.
Whether you consider yourself a feminist through and through…
Or the word ‘feminist’ conjures up images of burning bras and hating men…
Actually doesn’t matter.
(I know, not what you expected me to say!)
Because if your clients have absorbed social messaging about women, then their brains have been impacted by it. Full stop.
And that means if you want to coach them effectively, then you have to understand these impacts so you can help undo them.
And strangely, whether you identify as a feminist or not doesn’t have anything to do with having this skill set.
Because even understanding political theory doesn’t mean you know how to apply it to create a consensual, collaborative, and transformative coaching container that helps your clients rewire their brains at the deepest level.
I understand coaching in a way that I was unable to before this program. I can recognize patterns in my clients with their thinking, what they fear and where they’re holding back and now I know why. This deeper understanding of the patriarchy and internalized oppression has made me one thousand times more effective. Prior to ACFC, it felt like I was coaching on the surface and now I can recognize the deeper cause of their issues.
I loved being immersed in a community of diverse women with all the various intersectionalities. Loved it. The open and honest conversations were like medicine for my soul. I witnessed truth, struggle, confusion and many exciting brain exploding moments.
And this is the only place to learn it.
Welcome to the Advanced Certification in Feminist Coaching.
BECAUSE THE REVOLUTION STARTS WITHIN.
The Advanced Certification in Feminist Coaching is the only certification that combines the most powerful cognitive change tools in the coaching business with an intersectional feminist analysis. You simply cannot learn this work at this level anywhere else.
This four-month program includes an education in feminist theory and feminist coaching principles, a coaching practicum, and a certification project.*
This advanced certification is intended for coaches and licensed mental health professionals.
The curriculum focuses on the gender-based socialization that women receive, but certification is open for coaches and licensed mental health professionals of any gender who coach clients of any gender.
- Understand the social, historical, and ideological forces that shape the way that women think about themselves and the world.
- Have mastery of feminist coaching tools in areas like body image, sex, eating + exercise, social relationships, family + parenting, romantic relationships + dating, money, work, self-confidence and self-care.
- Feel confident coaching any woman, of any background or identity, on any topic.
- Know how to approach coaching from a collaborative, consent-based perspective that maximizes your clients' agency and empowerment.
- Develop capacity to expand your own body of work in deeper and more feminist-informed directions.
ADVANCED FEMINIST COACHING CURRICULUM
You will learn from Kara’s in-depth feminist coaching curriculum. No one else is teaching this work at this level anywhere else in the world. She literally wrote the textbook!
WEEKLY CALLS
You will attend weekly certification program calls with Kara and certified feminist coach instructors. Calls with Kara will take place every other week on Tuesdays at 1 p.m. EST beginning January 2, 2024. Calls with your certified feminist coach instructor will take place on a weekly basis beginning the week of January 8, 2024. You will be placed in a small group based on your availability.
COACHING OBSERVATION
You will learn from your peers and small group coaches by giving and receiving peer feedback.
CERTIFICATION PROJECT
You will complete a certification project. The idea and the final project will be reviewed and you will be given feedback.
CLUTCH MEMBERSHIP
You will have full access to the Clutch and all of the materials it contains for four months.
WRITTEN COACHING (OPTIONAL)
You will have the option to practice written coaching by answering commonly asked questions in our Clutch Ask the Coaches feature.
This investment includes a 4 month Clutch membership, all course materials, coaching, feedback, and a private Slack group with Kara and the ACFC Master Coaches.
Partial grants are available on a need-basis from the Feminist Mindset Revolution Fund. This edition of the Feminist Mindset Revolution Fund Honors Katherine Johnson.
Katherine Johnson began working as a “human computer” at NACA (NASA) in 1953. She is best known for having calculated trajectories for Alan Shepard, the first man in space, as well as John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth. Glenn asked engineers to, “Get the girl” — referring to Johnson, to personally check the electronic computer’s results. Katherine remembers the astronauts saying, “If she says they’re good, then I’m ready to go.” Johnson also calculated the trajectory for Apollo 11’s flight to the moon in 1969. She did all this while raising 3 daughters alongside her husband. She retired in 1986, after 33 years at Langley. In 2015, at the age of 97, Johnson received a Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama honoring her accomplishments in paving the way for gender and racial equality as a black woman in STEM. She was played by actress Taraji P. Henson in the 2016 movie “Hidden Figures” which told the story of Katherine and the team of female African-American mathematicians who served a vital role in NASA during the early years of the U.S. space program. Katherine died in 2020 at the age of 101.
Scholarship applications are approved on a rolling basis.
Feminism started as a social movement. But movements are created, organized, and executed by human beings with human minds.
WE CAN’T BUILD A NEW WORLD UNTIL WE CAN DREAM IT.
And we can’t dream it until our minds are free.
Your job as a coach is to help your clients free their minds.
And to do that, you have to educate and free your own.
All the rest will follow.
Scholarship applications are approved on a rolling basis.
