Today we’d like to introduce you to Kristin Moody.
Kristin, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I am a Personal Coach and an Empathy Trainer. Although I have probably done these jobs since I was a kid, it’s only in the last few years they have become proper nouns on my business card. Ask any former classmates, students, clients–they will tell you I have been coaching and training people on empathy from the start.
My whole life, I have been a coach. Even as a kid, I was the one helping other people figure out their plan after high school, stick to a fitness routine, commit to changing a friend group. When I worked at Fellini’s in Little Five Points in the early 90s, I had a whole crew of folks in the neighborhood I helped make it to their cars, helped find jobs, take shifts getting people safely to their cars at night–I even had a crew of kids whose parents spare changed all day who did homework in the back. I was all about understanding where people were coming from, helping them set goals, and then being the champion of those goals that would help them stick to them.
I went on to be a high school teacher in New York and Los Angeles, then a principal, then I founded a high school in New Orleans after Katrina. All the while–coaching. Teaching empathy. Empowering kids to be the stars of their own ambitious dreams, even when everyone around them told them not to dream. Supporting teachers to be rock stars. I don’t want to be the one out in front–I’ve always wanted to be the one just behind one step behind, whispering in your ear what it is you are capable of, reminding you of the plan you made, pushing you when you are tired, cheering for you when you do that thing you didn’t think you could.
I’m now in my 12th year of coaching and training, and the work I do is specifically focused on empathy because empathy is powerful, it’s righteous, and it’s what sets smart, confident people apart. I do training for everyone from PTAs to large corporate offices on empathy to promote equity and cultures that will begin to undo all the disconnection we are being brainwashed to belief is in our nature. It’s coaching on a larger scale. It’s the same magic I felt teaching high school. The same magic as having all those kids sitting in the back of Fellini’s working multiplication tables while their parents were out on the square. That feeling of knowing I am making it safe for people to tap into a higher self, be better, do better. It’s the best job in the world.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Empathy gets a bad rap. When a CEO wants to check the box on equity training, wants someone to come in for an hour and deliver a workshop so they can say they “did a diversity training” and I talk about the long road to building an understanding for non-judgmental acceptance of another’s truth, they all just roll their eyes. But we are ready for real change. The days of making do with lip service about equity are on the way out–the younger generations are standing up to the old ways doing things. Empathy is on its way back in. So I feel optimistic about the role it will have in the work of our culture moving forward.
For me, personally, there have been some bumps. Having predominantly worked in the public education space for the past 20+ years, my appearance has sometimes mattered more than what I know. I was once hired by a network of high-performing charter schools in Chicago that disallowed visible tattoos on their teaching staff. When I arrived, having been hired to advise their leadership on a school improvement strategy for some of their failing schools, they realized the challenge they would have in bringing me on-site to schools where tattoos had never been seen. You would think that kind of experience would make them see the error of their ways, make them realize the absolute blight on their institution such short-sighted policies would cause, but instead they sent me home with a contractually obligated fee, choosing to go with a lesser service provider without visible tattoos. I could spend hours talking about the ramifications of these kinds of “bumps in the road” on the kids at those schools–kids whose parents and families certainly have visible tattoos and the messaging that sends the students about their own communities, but they weren’t hiring me for my empathy training either.
I would say another struggle has just been balancing my role as a business owner and member of my family. I am grateful to live in a community like East Lake, where my kids can walk to school, where we are surrounded by neighbors we love, where we attend a school in which teachers and staff feel like family, but I have definitely missed some important moments with my family because of travel for work or a commitment to a client. Finding a balance is persistent challenge.
Please tell us about Evolve Network.
Evolve provides Personal Coaching, Leadership Coaching, and Empathy-Based Training. Although this work was born of engagement in public schools, we have gone on to serve non-profits, start-ups, higher education, and for-profit companies across the country.
Our focus is on using the concept of empathy to position and organizations to realize goals. Because empathy is so often misunderstood as this fuzzy soft skill, clients seldom come to us looking for empathy support. They come to us because they want to improve their organizational culture, or they have improvement goals they need guidance to attain or a leader for whom they want coaching, or because they have a retreat they need facilitated. We use the empathy framework to drive that connection and understanding that allows all of that to happen. It sets us apart because it really positions people to connect in more authentic ways; it provides the foundation for the equity work so many organizations need; it provides the collaboration and thought partnership so many organizational leaders don’t have access to.
Personal coaching is something we have recently really expanded and is my favorite service we provide. As a boxing enthusiast, I rely on my coach for conditioning, accountability to a healthy lifestyle, technique. When I spar, he is in my corner to remind me of my strategy, hold me accountable to a strategy when I feel discouraged, push me. It’s odd to me that we invest in doulas, personal trainers, executive coaches–all these folks who push us and grow us around some specific aspect of our life, but then we go to our friends for things like a career change, work-life balance, personal goal attainment…I see all these super successful people who have personal coaches (even if they don’t call them that), so I knew I wanted to get trained in those skills. I think some of those flashy pyramid scheme people have made life coaching a weird thing, so I pursued a more scholarly approach to adult learning and psychology to understand how people change and grow. It has been the most rapidly growing service we have at Evolve.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
My work is 1/3 teaching, 1/3 consulting, 1/3 coaching. Much of what I do know I had to learn–in the last 12 years, I completed a doctorate, the International Coaching Federation accreditation, a Positive Psychology certification, a Neuroscience of Learning certification–I couldn’t have started from where I am now. And that doesn’t include more than a decade of work and hundreds of clients from whom I have learned about change, growth, improvement, empathy, connection.
Although there have been few instances in which I was asked to not be myself, I have been in situations in which I felt I was inauthentic. Public school districts, schools of higher education, for-profit corporations–some of these places can be incredibly conservative, and the people making decisions for these organizations can be incredibly powerful and opinionated. I have learned it is always better to be my authentic self–if I feel anxious or uncomfortable about who I am in a space, it is not a space where the work will be worth it.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.evolvenetwork.me
- Email: kristin@evolvenetwork.me
- Instagram: evolve_network
- Facebook: evolvenetwork.me
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