NADOHE + C4LL
Leadership Coaching Circles
Because courageous leadership requires more
than individual heroism.
Higher education leaders are called to lead with courage and integrity amid political scrutiny, institutional transformation, legal uncertainty, shifting public narratives, and increasing demands on both their leadership and their humanity. This work is increasingly isolating and crisis oriented, resulting in mental and emotional strain, stress-related illness, and burnout.
Some leaders are asking how to continue leading effectively from within institutions whose approaches to equity and inclusion are rapidly changing.
Others have seen their offices dismantled, their programs eliminated, or their own positions disappear.
Across these experiences are profound leadership questions:
-
Where do I need to adapt, and where do I need to hold the line?
-
How do I distinguish strategic pragmatism from values compromise?
-
How do I exercise courage without equating courage with individual sacrifice?
-
And how do I sustain myself, my family and my campus community through a period of extraordinary uncertainty, change and loss?
The Center for Liberated Leadership and the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education (NADOHE) have partnered to create a powerful leadership coaching initiative where leaders can wrestle honestly with these questions and develop the strategic courage to lead through them.
LEAD Vanguard
A confidential brain trust for senior leaders.
A highly confidential coaching community where senior leaders can think strategically, wrestle honestly with difficult leadership questions, and learn alongside peers who understand the weight of executive responsibility.
Grounded in C4LL’s Liberated Leadership Framework, this coaching circle explores leading for equity as a practice of aligning courage with strategy. Rather than framing courage and adaptation as opposing forces, participants will examine how leaders can remain deeply rooted in their values while making thoughtful strategic choices that advance institutional change, protect their communities, and sustain themselves for the long journey ahead. Through trauma-informed coaching, reflective dialogue, and collective wisdom, participants will cultivate the discernment, resilience, and clarity needed to lead with both courage and strategy.
Together, we will explore:
-
Aligning courage and strategy in politically complex environments
-
Leading with integrity while navigating institutional risk
-
Distinguishing strategic adaptation from values compromise
-
Supporting teams through uncertainty, change, and loss
-
Releasing urgency and cultivating sustainable leadership practices
-
Building courageous institutional cultures rooted in trust, accountability, and hope
The three-month experience includes six 90-minute executive coaching circle sessions, an individual executive strategy session, and C4LL coaching resources.
Thursdays: 3:00-4:30 PT/ 6:00-7:30 ET.
Begins October 14. $2,500 - 2,800
LEAD Horizon
For leaders in career transition & renewal
A forward-looking coaching experience designed to help accomplished leaders navigate their next professional horizon with confidence, strategy, and renewed purpose.
Participants will combine executive coaching with practical career development to strengthen their executive presence, clarify career goals, expand professional networks, and position themselves for new leadership opportunities within and beyond higher education.
Grounded in C4LL’s Liberated Leadership Framework and informed by trauma-responsive coaching, the experience recognizes that career transitions involve uncertainty, loss, and questions of identity. Rather than rushing past these experiences, participants are supported in integrating them into a renewed sense of purpose, confidence, and possibility, creating a foundation for the next chapter of their leadership journey.
Together we will explore:
-
Approaching career transitions with confidence, resilience, and hope
-
Clarifying the next leadership horizon
-
Crafting a compelling executive leadership narrative
-
Navigating executive search processes and search firms
-
Translating higher education leadership experience across sectors
-
Strengthening résumés, LinkedIn profiles, and strategic professional networks
The three-month experience includes six 90-minute group coaching sessions, an individual executive coaching session, and C4LL coaching resources.
Thursdays* 3:00-4:30 PT/ 6:00-7:30 ET.
Begins October 8. $495 - 3500 subsidies available
An Unwavering Commitment to Courageous Action
NADOHE has been fearless and deeply values-aligned in responding to federal attacks on higher education institutions. In 2025, as the Trump administration began issuing executive orders targeting DEI, NADOHE became the lead plaintiff in a federal lawsuit challenging two Trump administration anti-DEI executive orders, arguing that the orders threatened constitutionally protected speech and sought to deter lawful diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility work. A federal district court subsequently issued a preliminary injunction against provisions of the orders, although litigation over the orders continued.
While institutions began dismantling diversity offices amid political and legal pressure, then-President and CEO Paulette Granberry Russell, J.D. demonstrated that institutions still had legally sound ways to advance access and equity and called on higher education leaders not to retreat from that work.
NADOHE has paid attention not only to what this environment means for institutions, but to what it is doing to the people leading through it. Its 2025 State of the CDO study made visible the impact of political attacks and institutional disruption on the mental and physical health of Chief Diversity Officers and academic diversity officers.
That combination of courage, strategic adaptation, and attention to the human beings carrying the work resonates deeply with C4LL.
Strategic courage is at the heart of our work.
At the Center for Liberated Leadership, we have been developing and teaching a framework called "strategic courage" for leaders navigating complex institutions.
Strategic courage rejects the idea that leaders must choose between boldness and pragmatism. It asks instead: How do we act with integrity and moral clarity while thinking strategically about power, timing, risk, and long-term institutional change?
Sometimes courage means speaking when silence would be easier. Sometimes it means refusing a compromise that would fundamentally undermine the work.
But sometimes strategic courage means adapting language, changing tactics, building an unexpected alliance, choosing the right moment, or finding another route toward the outcome we are trying to achieve.
This kind of discernment is difficult to practice in isolation, particularly when leaders are operating under relentless pressure.
That shared understanding became the foundation for the C4LL–NADOHE partnership. Under the leadership of NADOHE President and CEO Emelyn dela Peña, Ed.D., and C4LL CEO Chinyere Oparah, Ph.D., ACC, the two organizations are partnering to support leaders at pivotal points in their leadership journeys.
Designed and led by C4LL, the LEAD Vanguard, Horizon and Nexus coaching circles are spaces where equity- and justice-oriented leaders can step outside the urgency of their roles, bring the dilemmas they are actually facing, and strengthen their capacity to lead with courage, strategy, and sustainability.
Courage shouldn’t have to be carried alone.
One of the most damaging myths of leadership is that courageous leaders simply need to be brave and resilient enough to withstand whatever comes.
We believe something different.
Courageous leadership requires relationships. It requires places where leaders can tell the truth about what they are experiencing. It requires time to step outside the urgency of the immediate crisis and think strategically about what comes next.
And it requires practices that allow leaders to remain in meaningful work without sacrificing themselves to it.
That is the work C4LL and NADOHE are coming together to support.
Looking for individualized support?
The Center for Liberated Leadership also provides confidential 1:1 executive coaching for senior leaders navigating politically complex environments, significant leadership transitions, organizational change, career disruption, and questions of leadership sustainability. Schedule a Liberated Leadership Clarity Call to explore your leadership edge and learn more about coaching.
