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A first-class coach in business
Nancy Levy's wide-spanning career has taken her from social services to business to education. But when she decided to become a coach-a new kind of professional who's part consultant, part therapist, and part motivator-she really found her niche.
"I've always wanted to be a 'wise person,' " says Levy, MEd'72. "Life experience does count for something. When you're successful and have gotten through your young adulthood, and have survived middle age, you want to give back. When I heard about the job of a coach, it just clicked. I knew it was a calling."
In becoming a coach, Levy has joined the ranks of a profession that U.S. News & World Report recently characterized as one of the hottest around. Levy runs The Coaching Collaborative out of her Sherborn, Massachusetts, home. She works with already-successful businesspeople and entrepreneurs to help them achieve new goals in both their professional and personal lives.
Coaching is different from consulting or therapy, says Levy. Consultants are typically experts in a particular field who are hired short term to tackle a specific project or problem. As for therapists, Levy says they tend to deal with the past and with specific problems. Coaches, on the other hand, establish long-term relationships with their clients, address many facets of their business and personal lives, and look to the future, she says.
Since she started her business two years ago, Levy has coached about twenty clients whom she works with in half-hour telephone sessions four times a month. She also offers "spot coaching" when clients feel they need a little extra, and group coaching once a month, for no extra cost. The coaching relationship lasts anywhere from six months to two years. Levy hasn't had to advertise her services; people find out about her from current clients or others who know about her.
Levy's path to coaching is typical of the profession, she says. Since coaching doesn't require specific credentials, people have come to it from career counseling, therapy, law, the ministry, even from dentistry. There is, however, a Coach University-a "virtual university" that offers on-line courses on how to be a coach. Levy is scheduled to finish her own Coach U. program this month.
Levy, who heads the New England chapter of the International Coach Federation, says she and other coaches are working to set standards for the profession. "Anyone can call themselves a coach, so people have reason to feel somewhat skeptical," she says. "I advise people who call me: talk with other coaches, see who you feel comfortable with. It has to be someone who you trust and who has your interests at heart."
- Karen Feldscher
From the green line to the main line
In the late 1960s, Jack Leary was a business student at Northeastern, looking for a parttime job to help make ends meet. One day he heard that the Massachusetts Transportation Authority-the predecessor of today's Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA)-was giving its operator's exam in Cabot Gym. On a lark, he decided to take the test, and landed a job running a Green Line trolley. Three decades later, he now heads up the Philadelphia public transportation system, one of the nation's top transportation jobs.
Leary, UC'71, was named general manager last February for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA), a 10,000-employee system encompassing buses, trackless trolleys, light rail, and commuter rail. "It's very exciting, very challenging," he says.
From his days at N.U., Leary stayed at the MBTA for twenty-four years, working his way up the ranks and eventually becoming deputy general manager for operations. He learned to view public transportation as much more than just people-moving. A Brookline native, he saw the importance of the "T" to the region's economic and environmental vitality.
Leary also took part in a vast effort to modernize the MBTA. His experience caught the eye of public transportation officials in St. Louis, who in 1990 recruited him for the top job there. "They liked what they saw in Boston," Leary recalls. "It was a giant move for me. What happened is a very big deal in our business-a new start."
He proved himself worthy of the new job, guiding the engineering and construction of a new $450 million light-rail line to replace St. Louis's aging public transportation system. He got it built on time and oversaw its successful opening.
Things went well for him in St. Louis, but the public transportation system there was a "midsized property," as he puts it. So when the Philadelphia opportunity appeared, he couldn't pass it up. Now fifty-four years old, Leary is facing big challenges at SEPTA, including overhauling an aging system, responding to the region's changing demographics, and coming up with new ways to cut costs.
And he's trying to instill in SEPTA employees the lesson he learned in Boston: that their responsibilities don't end with transporting people. "We need to present ourselves like we're in the hospitality industry-not like we're a bus company," he says.
- Karen Feldscher