Since I finished my PhD in 2017, I’ve been dreaming of becoming a coach. In 2026, the dream is turning into reality 😊
With now 6 years of working as a professional in doctoral education within universities and providing individual confidential support for up to 40 PhD candidates per year, I started the professional training in coaching from the IDC Institute of Coaching from Geneva.
I will be finishing the 16 days “basic and advanced” training in January 2026 and will be aiming for the International Coaching Federation certification within the next one or two years.
For this certification, I need 100 hours of coaching practice with clients
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I am looking for people who are ready to commit to 10 sessions with me for an affordable price!
What can coaching help you with? some examples
- Unblocking a professional or personal project which you have been struggling with.
- Regaining satisfaction in your professional or personal life.
- Regaining satisfaction in your work/life balance.
- Making an important professional decision.
- Launching your blog project to help you explore new activities and maybe new professional opportunities, like this blog did for me 😊
What is coaching?
- It’s about accompanying you and empowering you to take actions toward an objective which you will set yourself.
- It’s about listening to you in a way you have never been listened to before.
- It’s about respecting the person you are and your values.
- It’s about accompanying you into self-reflections and self-awareness.
What coaching is not?
- Giving you my advice.
- Giving you my opinion.
- Telling you what I think you should do.
- Giving you easy-fix-all solutions.
- Fixing all your struggles in life.
Who is this for?
- PhD candidates.
- Postdocs.
- Newly appointed professors, for example on tenure track.
- Or actually anyone within or beyond academia too!
- If you speak English or French.
- If you can commit to the modalities below 👇
Who am I? What’s my background?
- In short: French women born in 1989 living in Switzerland since 2012, engineering master’s degree in biotechnology, PhD in biology.
- Since 2022, I am deputy at the Graduate Campus of the University of Lausanne = a central service for PhD candidates and postdocs giving workshops like “Getting your thesis off to a good start” and providing individual and confidential support to up to 40 PhD candidates per year and a few supervisors.
- For more, see the About page or my LinkedIn profile.
What are the modalities? 🤝
- One first 1 hour session for free to meet each other and discuss your needs – with no obligation!
- 10 sessions of 1 hour to 1.5 hours every 3 to 4 weeks => over 8 to 10 months.
- At the end of each session, I will invite you to decide the actions which you will want to complete until the following session = you commit both to attend the sessions and to take these actions 💪
- Price per session = CHF 40 (or Euros 43 or USD 50) => total CHF 400 (you may consider that the price of a certified professional coach is at least CHF 140 per session!).
- Either online (please note that I am in the Central European Time zone) or onsite in Neuchâtel or possibly onsite in Lausanne.
- As I will be doing this besides my employed job, best days for me will be on Fridays or Wednesdays or Sundays.
- Important : the coaching I am offering through this blog is fully independent from my work at the University of Lausanne. I do have the chance to use my coaching skills in my job at the University, but offering a full coaching process of 10 sessions for one person goes beyond the missions of my team, and this is what I need now to reach certification level 💪 Nevertheless, since the beginning of 2025, I practised intensive coaching process (6 sessions/person) with two PhD candidates and one fellow from the coaching training who is not working in academia 😊
Are you interested?
✉️ Contact me at pauline(at)academiac.net ✉️
We can schedule a first 1 hour session for free to meet each other and discuss your needs – with no obligation!