What Can We Learn from Coaching that Creates Impact?

Meet the 2026 ICF Coaching Impact Award winners and explore the ideas, approaches, and resources that can help you put their lessons into practice. 

  

What does coaching excellence look like when it moves beyond the coaching conversation? 

Sometimes, it looks like coaching becoming part of how an organization leads. Sometimes, it means extending coaching to people and communities that have had little access to it. And sometimes, it means exploring new approaches while protecting the standards, ethics, and human connection at the heart of our profession. 

The 2026 ICF Coaching Impact Award winners are doing very different work in different parts of the world. Together, their stories offer real-world examples of how coaching excellence can translate into greater reach, meaningful outcomes, and lasting impact — strengthening our profession while creating value for people, organizations, and communities. 

Meet the 2026 ICF Coaching Impact Award Winners

This year’s winners represent six countries and excellence across four areas of our profession: individual coaching, coaching education, organizations, and social impact.  

Coaches 

Distinguished Coach: Jonathan Reitz, MCC, ACTC (USA)
Accomplished Coach: Sharmi Roy, PCC, ACTC, MCS (India)
Emerging Coach: Brian Arao, ACC, EdD (USA) 

Coaching Education

Distinguished Provider: SolutionsAcademy (Germany)
Distinguished Educator: Heru Yuwono Liem, MCC, ACTC, MCS (Indonesia) 

Organizations 

Distinguished Organization: Brandix Apparel (Pvt.) Ltd. (Sri Lanka)
Emerging Organization: ABB India (India) 

Social Impact

Distinguished Coaching Catalyst: Shoolini University – Project Pragati (India)
Emerging Coaching Catalyst: Fundación Multipolar “Coaching en Zapatillas” (Argentina) 

3 Insights From This Year’s Winners

Look across this year’s winners and common threads begin to emerge. Their work gives us an opportunity to consider not only what coaching can accomplish, but also how we can extend its value and impact. 

1. Coaching Can Become an Organizational Capability

Consider: What becomes possible when coaching is embedded into how an organization leads, rather than offered only as an individual intervention? 

This year’s Organization winners offer examples of what can happen when coaching becomes more than something an organization provides and begins to shape how its people work and lead. 

At Brandix, coaching has been embedded into leadership development, talent strategy, and everyday management. An internal community of 26 trained coaches and more than 100 managers equipped with coaching skills has helped make coaching a shared leadership capability. The organization reports a 92% promotion rate among participants in its executive development programs, an 88% retention rate for top talent, and a 25% reduction in meeting time.  

At ABB India, more than 700 managers and 2,500 employees have been equipped with coaching skills as coaching has become more deeply integrated into talent development, succession planning, and change initiatives. ABB reports outcomes including stronger leadership effectiveness, higher employee engagement, increased productivity, reduced attrition, and an estimated $32 million USD return on investment.  

Put the Insight into Practice 

Help organizations build stronger coaching cultures. Whether you’re supporting an organization at the beginning of its coaching exploration or helping expand an existing coaching culture, connecting with ICF Coaching in Organizations can give you access to tools, community, and opportunities to help organizations use coaching to strengthen their people and performance.  

Bring coaching skills to more leaders. If you work with organizations, facilitate learning experiences, or develop leaders, ICF Leaders Using Coaching Skills gives you an ICF-developed program you can bring to organizations without building a leadership curriculum from scratch. It can help you expand your services, deepen client relationships, and equip managers and leaders with practical coaching skills they can use every day. 

2. Impact Grows When Access Grows

Consider: Who isn’t being reached by coaching today and what might need to change for coaching to serve them? 

Several of this year’s winners are challenging assumptions about who coaching is for and where it can create value. 

At Shoolini University, a coaching ecosystem has reached more than 1,400 students through 369 coaches across 22 countries. Through its Project Pragati, coaching is also reaching rural women in India, helping them build self-agency, make informed decisions, and move toward financial independence. Students are developing coaching capabilities of their own, creating a multiplier effect as they become informal mentors and enablers of growth within their communities.  

In Argentina, Fundación Multipolar’s “Coaching en Zapatillas” has adapted coaching language and practices to the realities of people experiencing homelessness and social exclusion. More than 1,200 people have participated since 2021, and in 80% of cases, participants report greater self-confidence, improved emotional management, and greater clarity about their future.  

That commitment to access appears among the individual winners, too. Sharmi Roy, PCC, ACTC, MCS, has built her work around a belief in “Coaching for all,” bringing coaching beyond traditional corporate settings to students, healthcare professionals, educators, artists, emerging leaders, and underserved communities.  

Their work reminds us that expanding coaching’s impact isn’t simply about reaching more people. It can also mean reconsidering where coaching happens, how it is delivered, and whose needs it is designed to serve. 

Put the Insight into Practice 

Create impact closer to home. Interested in using your coaching skills to support your community? Connect with your local ICF chapter to explore opportunities to participate in or help develop pro bono coaching initiatives that respond to local needs. 

Put your coaching skills to work for social impact. Through the ICF Foundation, you can contribute your expertise to initiatives that expand access to coaching and support positive change, including to serve as a volunteer for a Special Project, where coaches support mission-aligned organizations working to build leadership capacity and drive systemic change. 

3. The Profession Can Evolve Without Losing What Makes Coaching Human

Consider: As coaching evolves, what must we preserve and where should we be willing to rethink how coaching is practiced? 

The coaching profession isn’t standing still. Neither are this year’s winners. 

Jonathan Reitz, MCC, ACTC, has contributed to ICF task forces focused on Team Coaching Competencies and artificial intelligence, helping advance coaching standards while championing the ethical integration of emerging technologies.  

Brian Arao, ACC, EdD, is exploring culturally intelligent and accessible coaching while approaching AI as a tool for research, brainstorming, and accessibility, with attention to ethical and climate considerations.  

Our coaching education winners are helping prepare coaches for what’s ahead, too. SolutionsAcademy has trained more than 2,100 participants across 31 countries and is expanding research into ethical coaching, artificial intelligence, and the future of professional practice. Heru Yuwono Liem, MCC, ACTC, MCS, has helped expand access to ICF-accredited coaching education in Indonesia, mentoring 287 aspiring coaches since 2017 and supporting 101 in earning ICF credentials.  

Their work reflects a challenge — and an opportunity — facing all of us: continuing to evolve coaching while holding onto the quality, ethics, and human connection that give our profession its value. 

Put the Insight into Practice 

Navigate what’s next with ICF. As coaching evolves, ICF resources can help you explore emerging trends, technologies, and practices while staying grounded in the ethical standards and professional responsibilities that underpin quality coaching. 

Explore the future of coaching: 

• 2026 ICF Coaching Futures Report 

• AI Resource Hub 

Strengthen inclusive, ethical practice: 

• DEIB Resources 

• ICF Ethics Resources 

Keep learning: 

• Professional Development Opportunities 

Learn More From Coaching Impact Award Winners

When we learn from what’s working, connect those lessons to opportunities for action, and share them across our global community, individual examples of excellence can help strengthen the profession as a whole. 

Go deeper into this year’s stories and keep learning from past winners. 

Learn more about the work, approaches, and impact behind the 2026 winner recognition.

Discover additional stories and resources from Coaching Impact Award winners across our global community. 

Who Will Inspire Us Next?

Today’s winners show us what’s possible. Across our global community, the next examples of coaching excellence and impact are already taking shape. 

Nominations for the 2027 ICF Coaching Impact Awards will open in February. 

Know a coach, educator, organization, or change-maker whose work deserves to be recognized? Sign up to be notified when nominations open and help us discover the stories our profession can celebrate — and learn from — next. 

Notify Me When Nominations Open