BetterUp will offer life-coaching degrees online, even though Prince Harry isn’t scholarly

1 month ago 10

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It’s been a minute since we’ve heard anything about Prince Harry’s work as Chief Impact Officer at BetterUp. Last year, BetterUp’s wild growth stabilized and plateaued, which meant that the life-coaching company had to do layoffs for something like 16% of their staff. Given the aggressive expansion of the company throughout North America and Europe in the years prior, it felt like a perfectly normal scale-down as BetterUp figured out exactly what kind of services they needed to offer to their clients. Most of their clientele is made up of Fortune 500 companies and high-achieving tech types. Well, BetterUp is still chugging along, and now they’re offering “BetterUp University” which will offer degrees in life coaching. The Mail’s Richard Eden used this news to point out that Prince Harry isn’t very scholarly.

Academic success has not been a strong point for Prince Harry, who struggled at Eton College – leaving with a D in A-level geography and a B in art, bypassing university to head straight to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst as an officer cadet. It is a choice he says that he’s never regretted. Yet despite his scholastic shortcomings, the Duke of Sussex is an integral part of a team creating its own ‘life-coaching’ university, I can disclose.

Harry is third in command of the US coaching platform BetterUp and was appointed the company’s ‘chief impact officer’ on a reported salary of more than $1 million in March 2021 to focus on ‘preventative mental fitness’. The Silicon Valley mental health firm flogs its mentoring and counselling packages to companies across the globe and offers the chance to book time with the firm’s experts.

But now I hear the company has plans to launch an academic institution called the BetterUp University which will offer degrees in life coaching online. In newly filed papers, the San Francisco-based outfit has applied to the US Patent and Trademark Office to register its BetterUp University idea. The application states the university will be ‘providing online educational forums in the field of life coaching, professional coaching, personal development coaching, and career development coaching.’

Despite the Prince declaring that he intended ‘to help create impact in people’s lives’ with his role at the coaching firm, he was criticised for not appearing in one of their free online livestreams at a San Francisco summit back in April. Instead, he appeared at a session called Beyond Burnout: Transforming C-Level Stress into Strength – to which tickets went for £1,200.

[From The Daily Mail]

What does this have to do with Harry again? Nothing. He’s not going to teach the life-coaching classes and he’s not going to be handing out accreditations. This sounds like BetterUp needing to hire qualified life coaches and putting together their own system to train life coaches. Which is just a reminder that life-coaching isn’t therapy and that BetterUp people are not trained psychiatrists or psychologists. BetterUp’s goal is to help Fortune 500 companies’ worker bees be more productive.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.

San Francisco, CA – Prince Harry, ‘chief impact officer’ at coaching platform BetterUp, appears onstage with BetterUp co-founder and CEO Alexi Robichaux at the ‘BetterUp Uplift’ two-day event at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, CA. Harry and Alexi spoke for 40 minutes onstage at the event. They discussed children, International Women’s Day and their respective careers. BetterUp is based in San Francisco. Pictured: Prince Harry BACKGRID USA 8 MARCH 2023 USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*

San Francisco, CA – Prince Harry, ‘chief impact officer’ at coaching platform BetterUp, appears onstage with BetterUp co-founder and CEO Alexi Robichaux at the ‘BetterUp Uplift’ two-day event at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, CA. Harry and Alexi spoke for 40 minutes onstage at the event. They discussed children, International Women’s Day and their respective careers. BetterUp is based in San Francisco.  Pictured: Prince Harry  BACKGRID USA 8 MARCH 2023   USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com  UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com  *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*