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We did it – together.
The trailblazing work that you have been doing under the auspices of The Foundation of Coaching is about to move into a new and exciting stage of growth. You know that we have been negotiating to create an academic home for the research program that was created by Dr. Mary Wayne Bush.
Mary Wayne, who imagined the possibilities in 2005, personally recruited a remarkable team comprising the most credible, ethical, philanthropically-minded individuals in coaching research worldwide to help her establish criteria and protocols for grantmaking.
She traveled the world, literally, drumming up enthusiasm for coaching-related research.
“We have money!” she would announce cheerfully. And now an impressive roster of researchers has some of it, and they are putting that money to work for the benefit of the field of coaching.
Mary Wayne created mentoring matches, so that aspiring researchers could receive professional advice and support, and she personally gave countless hours of mentoring to scholars from around the globe.
With Francine Campone, a repository of research was created so that scholarly work would be accessible and searchable.
Together, this wonderful community of researchers and the coaches who love them, under Mary Wayne’s leadership, with administrative support from Linda Ballew, Jennifer Raymond, Vanessa Koury, and others, created the largest grantmaking program we know of in coaching.
The only thing we didn’t do was fulfill Dr. John Bennett’s dream of having the first endowed chair in coaching. We offered that opportunity to Baruch College – the original Research Advisory Board members will remember meeting Dr. Kathleen Waldron, president of Baruch, at our first annual dinner. Dr. Waldron reluctantly but wisely concluded that it was not the right investment at the right time for Baruch. She is no less committed than we are to the creation of a coaching culture, and eventually Baruch’s academics will reflect that.
So from a twinkle in the eye of David Goldsmith, Vikki Brock, and most importantly Mary Wayne Bush in 2005, the baby is all grown up and ready to go to Harvard Medical School, specifically HMS’s largest psychiatric hospital, a teaching facility of HMS, McLean Hospital, where your work is about to become the first building block in The Institute of Coaching.
Today I authorized the transfer of $500,000 as an initial gift toward a promised minimum of $2,000,000 to the newly created Harnisch Fund for Coaching, which will continue the next generation of grants for coaching-related research and support the creation and launch of The Institute of Coaching.
The next $500,000 will be paid soon after the first of the year so we will start 2009 with a million dollars in the fund.
The Fund is designed to continue until at least 2015, with the intention of making $100,000 in coaching-related research grants each year.
They’re well aware of the value you built into the brand of The Foundation of Coaching, and they specifically put in writing their intention to “leverage prior successes and brand awareness of The Foundation of Coaching and build continuity from that entity’s endeavors to the work now moving forward at McLean.”
I want to share some of the specific language of the contract I signed.
It says:
“The purpose of the Fund will be to generate empirically supported best practices for coaching, especially peer-reviewed research into the transformational aspects of coaching relationships and effective change strategies, then assure the widespread dissemination of those research findings to encourage the application of the coaching model of conversation in everyday life.”
To continue the “going off to Harvard Medical School” analogy, Mary Wayne made a decision to step back and take pride in what she brought forth, entrusting same to those who will now act in loco parentis. That team will be headed by Dr. Carol Kauffman, along with Lew Stern, Susan David, and Margaret Moore. None of this would have been possible without Dr. Mary Wayne Bush and we thank her most sincerely for her untold contributions that will be creating ripples on the pond forevermore.
I hope you agree that this is one of the best outcomes we could have imagined for the work we have done together so far.
It’s a wonderful way for us to celebrate the end of 2008 and quite a way to start 2009!
Ruth Ann Harnisch
President, The Harnisch Foundation
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