We are executive coaches, facilitators, and justice seekers who work with leadership teams in the social impact space.

Women’s Brain Trust (WBT) is a collaboration between Jenna Shapiro and Stacy Berger, both ICF certified leadership coaches, master facilitators, and justice seekers who work with leaders and teams in the social impact space. We’ve worked as leaders in presidential campaigns, across all levels of school systems, at the senior leadership level of action-driven organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and alongside individuals and teams from the New York City Department of Education to Fair Fight in Georgia. We are passionate about doing work we love alongside people we respect. We partner with movement, government, and non-profit leaders because we understand their unique challenges. Like them, we believe in the possibility of redesigning our social systems to interrupt inequity and build toward a more just future. 

OUR STORY

We met at the Teleos Coach Development Program, where our wise teachers partnered us as peer coaches. We are forever grateful to Fran Johnston, Ray Fisher, Gretchen Schmelzer, and Shirley McAlpine for their mentorship and guidance as we’ve forged this path together.

We quickly realized that our skill sets and interests were aligned, and that we were both deeply committed to coaching in the social impact space in order to support leaders working to make the world a better place.

When we first met at Teleos, WBT was an idea in construction. Jenna was consulting full time, and Stacy was the Director of Public Policy and Government at Planned Parenthood Federation of America. The 2020 election cycle hit, and we joined forces as part of a team of over 100 volunteer leadership coaches working to support the Biden presidential campaign. We were all deep in the pandemic. Jenna homeschooled 3 kids, Stacy downshifted to part time work on behalf of PPFA. In our “spare time” through these turbulent years, WBT has blossomed, one client team at a time.

Fast forward to the fall of 2022. After some seriously inspiring client engagements, Stacy decided that she was ready to move on from her role at PPFA and Jenna decided to send her kids back to school. This shift means that we now have more time to do the work we love.

Our partnership is rooted in the shared values of love and empathy, and with reverence for the powerful change that can happen when we are in deeply resonant relationships. We both identify as white, cis, straight women. We hold ourselves accountable to maintaining awareness of our privileged identities and work to center anti-racism and liberatory consciousness in ourselves and our practice.

We choose to commit ourselves to working with movement, government, and non-profit leaders instead of corporate clients because we understand the unique challenges they face, and because we believe in the possibility of redesigning our social systems to interrupt inequity and build toward a more just future.

A NOTE ABOUT COLLABORATORS

We collaborate with incredible practitioners, including leadership coaches and facilitators, in service of meeting our clients’ needs. Specifically, when we are hired for 1:1 coaching engagements with full teams, we reach out to collaborators to support clients who prefer to work with coaches with shared identities different from those we hold.

Check out our case studies to learn more about the incredible practitioners with whom we’ve collaborated.