Karen Curnow – Privileged Marginalization: A Coach Educator’s Response

A person’s identity is a rich mix of multiple, intersecting dimensions of such things as race, sex, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, country culture, and much more. Some of these dimensions bring with them privilege, while others bring discrimination and marginalization.  This session is intended for coaches and coach educators who struggle with knowing what to do when issues of privilege and marginalization come up in coaching conversations. How do we teach new coaches to recognize and respond to these sometimes vulnerable and emotional coaching moments?  How do we ourselves work with these experiences and emotions as coaches? This session begins to answer these questions.



Compass International’s Karen Curnow, MCC is committed to developing powerful, compassionate, and equitable leaders across cultures. Having lived in five countries, Karen serves as coach, facilitator, and consultant for her corporate, federal, and not-for-profit clients and as faculty member in Georgetown University’s Leadership Coaching program.  Working with a multi-school coach educator team, Karen helped create the groundbreaking Calling in Power and Culture Summit, bringing together over 30 coach education programs to focus on dynamics of power, privilege, rank and culture in coaching. She is currently a Georgetown doctoral candidate, focusing on the impact of culture and marginalization on leadership development.