Making Executive Coaching Accessible to Millennials, AceUp Aims to Develop the Next Generation of Innovation Leaders

Demand for AceUp’s executive coaching-as-a-platform propelled the company to record growth this year. Driven by its unique approach to making executive coaching accessible to Millennials in fast-growth high-tech, life science and biotech companies, AceUp has experienced 10-fold growth, empowering emerging leaders to develop their full potential. Backed by Harvard, and coming out of the TechStars Boston this year, AceUp’s executive coaching-as-a-platform has been deployed across high-potential employees at GE Healthcare, Akamai Technologies, Rapid7, Localytics, Moo, LovePop, and Ginkgo Bioworks, among others. In just three months, over 90 percent of AceUp-enabled trainees report being confident in their ability to succeed, with significant improvements in leadership, communication, and organizational skills.

Founded by Harvard grad and former Clinton Global Initiative adviser Will Foussier, a Millennial himself, AceUp is set to take on a big part of the $200 billion training and development industry by providing personalized and transparent access to rigorously vetted executive coaching at scale to Millennials — the second-largest generation in the US. The AceUp platform is entirely self-directed, with absolute transparency for employees, while equipping companies with 360-reviews and actionable reports that track employees’ progress and growth to close management skill gaps at all levels. The portfolio of learning provides a full range of customizable options – from one-on-one coaching, unlimited access to rich content, group coaching and monthly dedicated webinars.

“For too long, access to professional coaching, leadership and management skills training has been limited to senior executives only. At AceUp, we believe every emerging leader deserves an executive coach,” said Foussier, CEO of AceUp. “Our professional coaching-as-a-platform matches the right coach – vetted executive coaches, former C-Suite and serial entrepreneurs with years of experience – with each emerging leader based on the specificity of their role, the skills they want to develop, and the coaching style that works best for them. Our solution is key to help companies better attract, develop, and retain the best talent. It is a win-win-win for the employee, coach, and the business.”

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With 94 percent of Millennials employees pointing to career development as the main reason for choosing and staying at a company, according to LinkedIn’s Workforce Learning Report, AceUp’s coaching-as-a-platform approach is becoming their training and development destination of choice. In turn, AceUp is driving immediate business results, unfettered professional development, and increased customer advocacy:

• Over 90 percent of AceUp-enabled trainees report greater confidence in their ability to succeed;
• Adopted by 40+ companies with over 90 percent retention rate within less than a year;
• Key deployment includes over 100 women leaders at a global life sciences company across 22 countries and 4 continents;
• Ensuring a wide array of diversity, 90+ percent of the AceUp vetted coaches are executive-level professionals at Fortune 1000 companies, with more than half comprising women with professional leadership training experience; and long-standing, functional expertise — from sales, operations management, and engineering, to marketing and leadership;

“At LovePop, we believe every employee should feel like an owner of the business. This starts with providing our managers with the coaching, training, and support they need to become great leaders,” said Julia Sigel, Head of People at LovePop. “AceUp has been an invaluable partner to us and a game changer for our business, by helping guide and inspire our growing staff.”

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Bringing Tech-enabled Transparency and Scale to an Opaque and Inaccessible Industry

AceUp platform design was informed by leaders from Harvard, MIT and Yale who re-envisioned executive coaching for today’s young, immersive workforce and its career development needs:

• Built as a scalable, personalized, tech-enabled learning platform, AceUp recommends select coaches from its growing network that best suit the individual employees’ needs, with the ideal professional coaching experience and personality match for them to select from.
• Delivering a premier executive coaching marketplace with a diverse range of professional coaches, talent and companies, AceUp’s growing coaching network consists of a diverse community of over 500 executive-level experts, carefully vetted by AceUp’s Professional Coach Supervisors, and certified by ICF, iPEC, CTI, Hudson Institute, Harvard University, among other accredited institutions.
• Vetted coaches provide unfettered expertise across a wide area of disciplines including: leadership training, communications, career development, conflict resolution, negotiation, project management, professional speaking, team management, and other key areas.

Over time, AceUp’s intuitive platform fosters behavioral change through its engagement, inviting users to set up new objectives, goals and assignments: progress reminders keep learners on track; feedback on progress keeps their goals in check. And when employees reach a challenging point, the platform prompts personal touch points from their professional coach for support, guidance and critical check-ins. The network continues to grow, become a sought-after community for professional trainers, business leaders and subject matter experts to expand their own practice and greater accessibility to make a difference in people’s careers, help innovative businesses grow, and impact the world around them.

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