Meet your coach
Julia Johnson, Founder & Principle Career Coach
After 20+ years in the corporate world, working for companies such as Cisco Systems, Red Hat, and Fidelity Investments, I launched Careers for Humans Coaching, a practice dedicated to helping people be more successful and more authentic at work.
How is that possible? It all comes down to strategically fostering real connections in ways that are valuable to the business and meaningful to the people who make up the business. It’s not impossible, but it does require forethought.
As an independent career coach, I work with individuals and teams to build useful perspectives on challenges and opportunities, to develop a better understanding of the corporate landscape, and craft practical plans to find, grow, and optimize their strengths.
My background blends professional expertise in leadership, organizational and program management, strategic communications and marketing with industry-leading coaching approaches.
A nerd at heart, I mix theory with lived experience to deliver practical support to globally diverse clients. My theoretical approach is heavily influenced by business and social science disciplines, including strategic communication, decision-making science, economics, management, risk mitigation, goal setting and achievement, positive psychology, cross-cultural community building, and organizational psychology.
What does this mean for you? It means when we talk, I might pull a tactic directly from intentional change theory or leverage the perspective shift we gain through standpoint theory. We might speak directly about your recent 9-Box rating. Or we might employ strengths assessments, blue sky exercises, or SMART goal planning.
It means creative and rigorous problem-solving and support.
It means you get coaching based on sound principles spanning multiple-disciplinary data sets delivered in approachable conversations tailored to your needs.
A coaching engagement that adapts to the untemplate-able uniqueness of you — without sacrificing best practices.
Our Philosophy
We believe that being able to fully participate in the economic system is a foundational human right.
We believe that work does not have to be soul-crushing.
We believe that people, society, and economies thrive when we ALL apply our strengths.
We believe its OK to find your own path.
We believe we need each other to be our best.
We believe that asking for help is an act of courage.
We believe that investing in you is a great investment.
Our Principles
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We’re here for you and your dreams, not to impose our own ideas of success. Let’s find the path that lights you up.
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Diverse perspectives are magical! People who identify with underrepresented groups are warmly welcomed, and folx from majority demographics are too! We won’t, however, tolerate hate, discrimination, intolerance, or punching down.
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Our client list is always confidential. Our coaches will never share your personal or conversation details with your company, our clients, or anyone else. Privacy is paramount.
NDAs are built into every contract. Let us know if you need additional privacy accommodations.
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We’re real live humans. And we expect you to be too — flaws, inefficiencies, and imperfections included. That’s how we like it. And we like you.
Coaching FAQs
What is career coaching?
Coaching is working one-on-one with a skilled expert who’s aligned and invested in you and your performance – no competing corporate priorities, no unbalanced cheerleading, no comparison or judgements. Just a professional coach who is all about YOU – your goals, challenges, and strengths.
Coaching is different from just talking with a friend, because a coach is trained, skilled, and hired to help you build on your strengths, identify your blockers, and achieve your goals – not just be a pal. When you work with a career coach, together we focus on you – your skills, weaknesses, vision, goals, and the competition – just like athletic coaches do with their star players.
Is it therapy?
It is not. Therapists are also trained professionals that work with people one-on-one to address problems, challenges, and patterns, however, therapists tend to work with specific kinds of cognitive, behavioral, or medical issues. Coaches, especially career coaches, do not.
Think of it like this: coaching takes its name from athletics. Your favorite world-class athlete certainly has a team of folks helping them perform their best day-in, day-out and enjoy a long, successful career. That support team includes medical professionals – trainers, doctors, possibly surgeons and physical therapists after an injury. It might even include a sports psychologist or other therapist along the way.
It always includes a coach. Someone to study your performance, celebrate the wins, analyze the losses, and strategize how to best position your talents for the match at hand and life-long success.
A career coach helps you do the same, in a personalized, focused, one-to-one setting. We look at your vision, review your strengths, the ways you play best, your options, and we build a playbook to help you thrive. We always align it to your big goals, so that every little win adds up to successful career and a fulfilling life.
Why would I want a career coach?
People seek career coaching for all kinds of reasons. Your motivation will be unique to you.
Here are some signs it might be the right time for you to work with a career coach:
You have skills, interests, or talents that could be useful in your career, but they’re not being used in your current role or organization.
You don’t know what’s next.
You know what you wish was next, but you don’t have a plan to get it.
You know exactly what you want, you’re ready to crush it, and you want to take your performance to the next level.
You feel like everyone around you is playing corporate chess and you're sitting alone with a deck of cards.
You have a work nemesis – but that’s not helping anyone, especially you.
You’re bored. You could do this job half-asleep (and sometimes you do.) Life is awfully short to spend so much of it uninterested in your own day.
You have an upcoming high-stakes conversation, and you want to show up as well as you can.
You’ve been expecting your work to speak for itself, but no one seems to notice or appreciate your efforts.
Rewards are passing you by.
You’ve been told you need to “be more strategic” but who knows what that means?!?
You know you need to build better professional connections, but you just can’t seem to get started.
Your performance feedback from others is often confusing, unexpected, conflicting, or even non-existent.
While a coach won’t go to work with you, a skilled coach can review the feedback and interactions you experience in a professionally safe and supportive way to uncover blind spots, hidden expectations, communication patterns, and more nuances about how you show up in your professional life.
With a coach who’s fully committed to your success, you know you’ll get honesty AND uncompromising support to be your best you – no matter how that matches or differs from others’ vision for your career. It’s honest feedback and support – without the on-the-job politics.