Hilary Beard

As a result of executive coaching with me, Black leaders, visionaries, creatives and game changers experience greater energy, show up more authentically, blow the lights out of their results, and take great care of themselves. I help high achievers break barriers by creating sustainable work/life balance that centers their health, unleashes their gifts, and transforms their spirituality into a Force for good. 

How I approach my work

The International Coaching Federation defines coaching as "partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential." In this way, coaching offers clients meaningful tools and a powerful relationship within which to become their best self, conceive an inspiring vision, and lead in empowering ways.

But though traditional executive coaching can create impressive results, its methods don’t address Black people’s holistic needs. Coaches who lack cultural competence can unknowingly harm Black human beings. Indeed most Black women and men need both race-specific support and psychological safety traditional coaching does not offer. Precious few coaches have cultivated the self awareness to work across racial/cultural difference, understand how racialized dynamics often play out in the workplace, somatically condition their body to withstand racialized stress, and possess the cultural awareness and humility to effectively coach Black human beings.  

For instance, mainstream techniques do not address:

• the stress, burnout, invisibility, marginalization or exclusion Black leaders often experience in predominately White spaces;

• physical, emotional and spiritual exhaustion caused by overwork, expectations you’ll be twice as good, racial aggression, anti-Blackness and misogynoir;

• the ways 360-degree feedback and performance reviews can convey racial aggressions, anti-Blackness and misogynoir;

• heartbreak, frustration and anger from being over-supervised, or having your tone, affect or work product questioned, devalued, undermined or even policed;

• the lack of mentors, supporters, sponsors and unbiased high-quality performance reviews or 360 feedback;

• racial complexities of organizational politics in workplaces historically created for college-educated White men;

• coworkers and supervisors who want Black men and women to either be more (or less) authentic, less (or more) “aggressive” and or to take up less (or more) space;

• inconsistent, untrustworthy or nonexistent allyship and the painful experience of going from “pet” to “threat”;

• loneliness, isolation and or spiritual disconnection;

• self-doubt, anxiety, depression and or imposter syndrome;

• additional traumas Black women and men experience outside the office.    

That’s a long list of topics for an executive coach to be unable to support you on when you’re trying to share your gifts and talents with the world, excel at work, increase your income, advance your career and achieve your goals and dreams.

When executive coaches focus solely on Black people’s professional performance but don’t tend to our spiritual, mental and emotional wellbeing, that lack of support can cause us to lose trust, and feel isolated and even unsafe. Because our core issues go unaddressed, we risk running on adrenaline, cortisol and other stress hormones that help energize us to handle our work/life demands but that can also cause undesirable mental and physical health outcomes, including chronic diseases.

What’s more, as so many companies backtrack on DEIB after previously committing to rectify historical wrongs, encouraging employees to share their authentic selves and promising to improve employees’ sense of belonging, the stress created by this betrayal can take a silent toll upon our souls. Black women and men need psychologically safe spaces where we are understood, appreciated, championed, take off our armor, discharge racial stress and anxiety, reflect on our personal and professional experiences and process how structural, institutional and interpersonal prejudice and discrimination impact us. Indeed, many Black and Brown change makers are no longer willing to sacrifice our health and wellness upon the altar of traditional "success". Delivering amazing and sustainable results requires centering our wellbeing. We want a thought partner to help us be our best selves and to be coached not merely to survive systems that don't work for us, but to thrive in our lives. We want to deploy our gifts and talents to create groundbreaking innovations and breakthrough performance that both delivers results and shapes a more humane and sustainable world.  

Here’s how I help

Drawing upon 13 years of Corporate experience in sales, marketing and management with Fortune 100 companies, writing/publishing partnerships with some of the world’s greatest game-changers and my extensive research on Black life and wellbeing, my integrated approach helps you liberate yourself from identities, skill sets and survival strategies that no longer serve you. I help you transition from surviving to thriving and position you to innovate in all areas of life by unleashing untapped resources within. I support you to envision possibilities and accomplish outcomes the “old you” could not imagine or access. You achieve more by being more rather than by doing more (read: instead of by overworking, overriding mental and physical warning signs, running yourself ragged and or adding more tasks to an already unachievable To Do list.)   

My approach includes but is not limited to the traditional skill sets of an ICF-certified professional coach. I also employ skills as an Energy Leadership Coach (™), Energy Leadership Index (™) Master Practitioner and an Embodied Coach (™) to assess how you deploy your energy under normal conditions and under stress, and to help you create superior results by deploying your energy differently. I’m also trained as a Somatic Abolitionist, meaning I use an embodied anti-racist practice and culture-building approach that honors the age-old wisdom of the human body, and tempers and conditions your mind, body and soul to hold, process and metabolize the energetic charge of race, racism and White body supremacy — the belief that the White body is the standard by which all other bodies are measured, structurally and philosophically, and that every body that isn’t White is deficient.

I support you to:

• identify and leverage your personal and professional strengths, as well as the mindsets that have helped you execute at such a high level;

• take stock of your skill sets, successes and positive results you’ve created in your personal and professional lives, as well as the challenges and difficulties you’re currently experiencing;

• plan, strategize, trouble-shoot, and thought partner in a psychologically safe environment;

• engage in the personal development that underlies professional success, including healing racial trauma, developing your emotional intelligence, and building relationships;

• reduce stress and take care of your health to prime yourself for high performance;

• navigate systemic, structural, institutional and interpersonal racism and White body supremacy;

• develop as a whole human being — spiritually, mentally, physically, and emotionally;

• align your actions with your personal and professional values;

• employ the new brain science of with high achievement;

• increase your emotional intelligence and improve relationships;

• release pain and energy blocks caused by personal and professional traumas;

• experience more freedom, joy and creativity;

• move beyond surviving to thriving.

The connection between executive coaching and writing

In addition to hundreds of hours of coaching experience, I have 17 years of experience as a journalist expert in Black health and wellbeing — including running three Black health and wellness publications and coauthoring two NAACP Image Award-winning books: “Health First! The Black Woman’s Wellness Guide” and “Promises Kept: Raising Black Boys to Succeed in School and in Life”. (Sometimes the way to create a workplace breakthrough is to schedule that long-overdue health exam or provide constructive feedback to the teacher who doesn’t understand your son.)

These two seemingly different types of work share much in common. Among them, leaders, visionaries, creatives and game-changers — from tennis’s Williams Sisters, to Angela Bassett and Courtney B. Vance, to NASA mathematician and “hidden figure” Katherine Johnson, to the founder of the Johnson Products Company (Ultra Sheen, Afro Sheen), George E. Johnson, whom the Wall Street Journal describes as one of the 10 greatest entrepreneurs of the 20th century. Both practices rely upon the same skills: deep listening to people’s stories and supporting the storyteller to understand, reframe or reinterpret their experiences, nonjudgment, self-awareness, inspiring movement from thinking to action, developing persuasive and motivating messages, clearing emotional blocks, increasing authenticity, overcoming fear, and finding their voice. As a result of listening to so many narratives, I can intuit the arc of a person's story. I also sense when to turn the page, wrap up a chapter, and even close the book.

My corporate background

Prior to making a mid-career change to publishing, I enjoyed 13 years of increasingly responsible sales, marketing and management experience with Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson and Pepsi. I managed people and business, and led new-product launches, product- and quality-improvement initiatives, and diversity efforts. During the late 1990s, I took a leap of faith and followed my childhood dreams of becoming a writer and editor. I’ve been self employed and free for almost a quarter-century.