Designing with Transparency & Integrity with Jane Finette
What led you to start TCFS (The Coaching Fellowship)?
“I wish I could say it was with lots of forethought and completely mission driven and it was my life’s work. All of these things are true now, but six years ago the idea had never crossed my mind. In 2012 my life changed when I was fortunate to get access to leadership development & coaching while working at Mozilla. It was the first time in my life I’d received that kind of training and it completely cracked my world open. It helped me realize that a lot of my professional decisions & when I was most on fire was when I was honouring my values. I was most unhappy when I was incongruent to my values. I was like wow, I wish I’d had this knowledge twenty years ago!
So I trained as a coach, and started a coaching practice. I wanted to give back to young women. Back in the day coaching was a thing when you’d already made it, but I was asking, where’s the coach when you’re 25?! So I put out a little blog post saying I would have 2–3 pro-bono spots for young women in social impact. 41 women applied in 5 days. I was like oh crap — now I have to choose?!
So I went back to the coaches I trained with, and asked them if they would like to offer pro-bono coaches and 16 of them said yes. We were able to give every single applicant a spot. I thought I’d done my good deed, but over the course of the next few months both, young women & coaches kept asking me when I was going to run a program. After a lot of fighting I gave in. I decided to run just one program with 50 spots. 700 women applied. So that was it, it became a thing.
Fast forward to today, we just launched our 16th program and we have put over a thousand women through our coaching fellowship, from over 60 countries with 170+ pro-bono coaches supporting our work.
Why mentorship & coaching, and why young women?
“My core belief is that the younger you are when you get access to coaching, the more you can get access to yourself and start to understand what is driving you. Then you can be more on purpose, more aligned with your values, make more impact, and be happier.
We’ve recently completed a two year long study with the University of Southern California on our program’s effectiveness and now proven that it increases confidence and leadership capabilities of the women participants. In the words of Melinda Gates, “…if you really want to accelerate change, empowering women is the best thing you can do!”
I’m not anti-men, but women just haven’t had the same opportunities, and young women still do not. I knew from my own personal experience that coaching can unlock the potential of young women. Women are more willing to lead when they are involved in something they believe in.
When a woman can fundamentally understand what is driving her and her for the sake of what is clear — well, you better get the hell out of her way! She will go above and beyond. There’s this concept of the gender confidence gap — I don’t think there is one. I think the people who are not confident are just in the wrong job. When you are in the right role, and purpose is showing up, you are more willing to dive in and take risks, because it matters, it’s greater than you and a pay check.”
What have you learned along the way about creating a community focused on and for women?
“Women are relational. As women, we are in support of one another, deeply connected & we really want to give, given an opportunity. When I started the fellowship, I didn’t have a snappy name — and I would say it’s about the coaching, but it’s also about fellowship. I wish fellowship wasn’t such a male word. That reciprocal way of give and take, women do so naturally. Given an opportunity to give back, to share, to be in relationship.
Our coaches give all of their time completely pro bono — 95% of them are women. They have donated nearly $5M worth of coaching hours. When we ask our coaches why they volunteer, they say, “I get back way more than I give.” Women are willing to, when it’s something that really matters, deeply engage and support you.
Transparency and integrity matter too. Charles Schwab ran a study years ago and realized that when women had untapped income, they were always putting it into a savings account instead of investing it. Why? Because all of the investment companies out there one, are marketing it in a language that makes women feel stupid, and two, that there was no transparency into where the money was bring invested. They were not transparent, and giving investors the choice of what companies their hard earned cash was going to support.
I think a massive part of designing for women is just being a human. Talking to and designing for humans doesn’t seem like it should be so hard, but I guess it is!”
How do you wish some of your learnings would translate into other products, services or communities?
“We are 51% women in America — and everyone thinks they’re designing for both and women, but we are clearly not. How do we assess if something is working, and how do we make change? I don’t think we really understand this part well, we are not studying it enough. I think there’s a massive need for more research and proof which demonstrates how products are falling short, and therefore exposing missing exciting possibilities to create impact and win more customers.
We have built The Coaching Fellowship based on personalization, transparency, connection and collaboration, and have been very successful. I do think it’s part of our secret sauce and would love more organizations to lead with these core attributes.”
About Jane Finette
As President and Founder of The Coaching Fellowship, Jane and her team work to nurture and bring together some of the world’s most extraordinary emerging young women leaders in social change across sixty countries to build their leadership capacity and magnify their impact.
Author’s Note:
“At the beginning of this conversation with Jane, I told her that I’d send her a copy of our chat to approve before it’s published. “Oh, there’s no need for that,” she replied, part of designing for women is transparency & integrity. There’s nothing off the record.” That brought a huge smile to my face. Thank you to Jane, for sharing her thoughts with us!”