When Co-Active Training Institute was founded in 1992, Karen Kimsey-House, Henry Kimsey-House, and Laura Whitworth built their work around a simple, radical premise: that people are naturally creative, resourceful, and whole. Over 30 years of Co-Active coaching later, more than 150,000 people have trained with CTI across more than 120 countries, and that number keeps growing.
That founding belief has held up across every culture, industry, and context the Co-Active model has entered. The evidence is in the coaches, leaders, and organizations the work has shaped across three decades.
Ready to be part of what comes next with Co-Active? Learn more about Co-Active and see where the work can take you.
1. A Vision That Has Held Up
Co-Active coaching treats every client as capable of their own answers, and the coach’s job is to create the conditions for those answers to surface. That founding philosophy has deepened across three decades, and the evidence that it works has grown with it, across Fortune 500 boardrooms, nonprofit organizations, universities, and private coaching practices on every continent.
CTI was among the first coach training organizations accredited by the International Coaching Federation, and today it trains more new coaches each year than any other program in the world. The reach is global, and the foundation is unchanged. We take a rigorous, human-centered approach to coaching that develops the whole person alongside professional skills. What makes that foundation durable is its simplicity. When you start from the belief that the person in front of you already holds their own wisdom, every coaching skill you build serves that belief.
2. The People Who Carry It Forward
The true measure of any training program is what its people go on to do. Across the CTI faculty and alumni community, the pattern is consistent. Co-Active coaching changes how people coach, lead, build organizations, and show up in the world.
From the faculty
- Carlo Bos, CTI Faculty and former Co-CEO: Carlo spent over two decades transforming how leaders lead around the world. A seasoned coach, former C-level executive, and entrepreneur, he describes Co-Active work as elevating consciousness, relationship effectiveness, and impact in every context he enters.
- Gina Restani, CTI Faculty: After a decade in tech including six years at Twitter, Gina co-founded Inside Out Incubator, a women’s leadership consultancy that worked with more than 5,000 women leaders. She joined CTI faculty because she believes the core skills of active listening, curiosity, and strong relationships are essential for building empowered work cultures.
- Lottie Martรญnez, CPCC and CTI Faculty: Lottie began her career in international consulting and spent more than a decade in social impact leadership before discovering Co-Active coaching. She has since logged more than 2,700 hours of executive coaching across the United States, Latin America, and beyond, and now brings that depth of experience to her work as a CTI faculty member.
From the community
- Darla Beam, Life Coach: “The Co-Active Leadership Experience is a transformative program for anyone. We are all leaders, whether we are conscious of that or not. Each of us is having an impact on ourselves, each other, and the planet. This course teaches us awareness, ownership, and a model that empowers us to make a difference.”
- Christie Mann, Executive Coach: “Co-Active leadership is all about taking responsibility for your impact, and showing up now to fulfill what you are meant to be doing in this time and space.”
- Celeste Schenck, President, American University of Paris: “What’s so extraordinary about the program is that it lifts you right out of your expected ways of doing things and lets you effectively be a different person.”
These are the kinds of outcomes the Co-Active Coach Training Pathway is built to produce: coaches and leaders who carry the work far beyond the training itself.
3. What Three Decades Have Confirmed
30+ years of Co-Active coaching have shown a few things to be consistently true. People grow faster when they are held as capable and whole. Transformation deepens over time and with practice. And the skills that make someone a strong coach (deep listening, genuine curiosity, the courage to tell the truth) are the same skills that make someone a stronger leader, partner, and human being.
Research consistently shows that experiential learning produces stronger outcomes than traditional instruction, including deeper engagement, better knowledge retention, and greater self-awareness. CTI has built its entire training model around that approach, and the results speak for themselves. Coaches and leaders around the world carry the proof forward in every session, every organization, and every life they touch.
The Community Keeps Growing
The global Co-Active community shares a common language, a common set of values, and a common belief in what becomes possible when people are truly seen and heard. Those values, that people are whole, that relationships are the engine of real change, and that growth is always possible, have drawn coaches, leaders, and changemakers from every corner of the world into a shared practice that keeps deepening. That community has been building for three decades, and it is still growing.
Ready to be part of what comes next? Learn more about Co-Active and see where the work can take you.