By Jeremy Robinson
I’ve been lucky to have had a front row seat watching the career of Celeste Lynn evolve since she’s been an iCoach Global graduate a number of years ago. Now Celeste is VP of HR at a global public company where her powerful call outs are in demand by the President of said company.
We’d had many extraordinarily talented HR folks graduate from iCoach Global over our twenty years. Sometimes they remain in HR but often these folks go on to do some type of executive coaching.
Celeste is an interesting hybrid. She worked in Talent Management when she first started at iCoach. Through the years and roles as HR Business Partner to current HR business leader she has honed an approach which is like the type of intentional approach executive coaches aim at.
Being able to find her voice in a direct way means her clients get to hear the whole truth, and nothing but. At the same time, Celeste also has a way of detecting the nuances of racial micro-aggressions that some of her white colleagues fail to see.
By surfacing these issues, often during tension-fraught times in organizations, Celeste acts as an advocate for system change within an organization in a very practical way.
To the well-known white Executive VP from her organization who demanded to do a background check before hiring a new leader, Celeste pointed out that such background checks are known to be skewed against minorities. A lot of us know this. But the wonderful thing about Celeste is she not only knows this, she says this.
In fact, Speak Up Culture, which is strongly touted as something that helps provide psychological safety to organizations, is a tool that Celeste brings as part of her working identity. Imagine for a moment, how useful this is to an executive coach like me, who is also trying to help a client see what’s really going on as she finds herself within an organization in transition. When Celeste gives an African American female executive feedback that she needs to “step into her own power,” she not only hears it from Celeste, but she sees it being modeled.
Outside of work, Celeste is working on her doctorate at George Washington University. But she’s still happy to be a resource to our iCoach Global community and can be reached by email at celeste.lynn@gmail.com.
Speaking of iCoach Global community, we’re entering the part of the year where we become most active in recruiting members of our 2024 PCP Class which begins at the end of February. For all you future Celeste Lynn-type talented people out there, please be bold enough to approach us. Contact us at info@iCoachGlobal.com to schedule an informational interview.
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