EVIDENCE BASED COACHING PROGRAM NAMES

NEW DIRECTOR, DR. OKOKON UDO

Fielding recently welcomed the new Director of Evidence Based Coaching: Okokon Udo, PhD, PCC, CPCC, CMC. Dr. Udo is an expert in international change management, leadership, diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Previously, Dr. Udo was an associate faculty member within Fielding’s EBC program. Over time, he has reinvented himself in a multitude of roles and sectors, from healthcare, nonprofit organizations, faculty at five different universities, and entrepreneur – to name a few. He is also the founder and CEO of Soul Engineering, LLC.

Although his roles have over time, some facets never changed, including his focus on coaching in the health, wellness, and leadership realms and an emphasis on DEI and systems change. In fact, coaching and supporting others have been part of the fabric of Dr. Udo’s life since elementary school.

One reason Dr. Udo was attracted to Fielding was the overarching sense of belonging.

"I have, in my own version of success, been able to navigate these complex systems that are out there in the world, but there is a spot in my life that has always been presented with this gap,” Dr. Udo said. “I am often in settings where I look around, and there's nobody like me. That could be in the role of leadership or the context of work that I am in, or the conference I'm attending. After a while it's like, ‘This is so much work to get the information and go home and translate it for myself. There's nobody to partner with.’

“At Fielding, it’s the opposite. There's this comfort of knowing I am not the token Black or Person of Color or one of two in a system but part of many representative and very diverse beings and voices. At Fielding, I have found my people. We do something that has always mattered to me –the blend of the head and the heart. Here at Fielding, I meet people who are doing rigorous academic work and yet do not lose sight of the human-being element.”

Dr. Udo has a myriad of macro and micro goals for the EBC program, including a focus on EBC faculty writing projects, a future ICF Level 3 accreditation, providing training and certification in group coaching, coaching supervision and mentor coaching, and continuing to build the EBC program to benefit scholar-practitioners. He also sees Fielding as a springboard for lifelong learning, both in and out of the classroom.

“We are in an environment where people are striving to do and be their best selves," he said. You are being called forth to do things in a different way because of the modeling around you in the EBC program. We do not follow the traditional educational pedagogy, where students were seen as empty vessels to be filled, and it was presumed students knew nothing. At Fielding, the faculty members are also lifelong learners alongside the students. We invite students to bring themselves into the classroom, and they are validated, and stretched. Their knowledge, experiences, successes, and failures are part of adult learners and have a place at Fielding. We welcome them all because we as faculty come in the same way.”