These scholarships are open to engineering leaders at any level — from Senior Engineer to CTO — who identify as being from an underrepresented group in technology and would not otherwise be able to easily afford coaching.

Applications for coaching scholarships are currently closed

Thank you to everyone who applied. We will be in touch soon to let you know the outcome of your application.

If you missed out on applying this time, then applications are likely to open again on 1st June 2026 when, we will be offering a new set of coaching scholarships.

About these scholarships

Coaching can be life-changing, but it is not always accessible. These scholarships exist because we want to change that, and because we believe that increasing the diversity of senior leaders in technology matters.

Our coaching offers you a powerful way to develop your skills and advance in your career. Our clients typically find that coaching brings them greater clarity, confidence, and control in their professional lives.

If you want to learn more about what coaching is and how it can be valuable, then the following articles may be useful:

• 10 ways to know that you are getting great value from your coach
• As an engineering leader, should you be working with a coach?
• How does a CTO know when they need a coach?
• How is coaching different from similar disciplines?

Application Process

1. Submit your application by the end of the day on 31st January 2026.
2. In 2nd week of February we will email you to let you know if your application has been successful.
3. If you are successful then one of us will be in contact to arrange a chemistry call with you in February. If you and the coach decide that you want to work together after the chemistry call then you can begin your free coaching programme as soon as you wish.

About the coaches

We are all professional coaches. You can find out a little more about each of us below.

• 

  Joel Chippindale (me)

  Joel coaches talented senior engineering leaders to successfully navigate difficult transitions and achieve significant career breakthroughs. His style is calm, thoughtful, and supportive. His background as a CTO allows him to blend pure coaching with practical mentoring when needed.

  His coaching is transformative and supports leaders to renew confidence, gain clarity on goals, build stronger relationships with stakeholders and teams, and develop practical tools and skills that they continue to use long after their coaching ends.

  Joel is offering 2 coaching scholarships.

• 

  Alex Martynov

  Alex is a leadership coach who helps people experience their work in a profoundly satisfying and fulfilling way. Among the themes that he can be most helpful with are emotional intelligence, navigating difficult conversations, dealing with uncertainty, building more trust with your colleagues, developing authentic leadership style.

  After leaving his almost two-decade tech career, apart from his coaching practice, he runs two Ukrainian restaurants in Prague with his wife.

  Alex is offering 3 coaching scholarships.

• 

  Alia Rose Connor

  Alia is a leadership coach with a background in engineering, management, and entrepreneurship. Prior to launching Frank & Eddy Leadership (with Fiona!), she was a coach manager at Spotify for 7 years of explosive growth, where she helped product and engineering leaders (Sr, Director, VP) lead through continual change. She specializes in supporting engineering and product leaders on collaborative leadership teams, and is passionate about digging into understanding – within oneself and amongst others – in order to provoke change and get to impact faster.

  Alia is offering 1 coaching scholarship.

• 

  Amy Rich

  Amy focusses on helping seasoned and emerging Engineering leaders, especially those operating in environments of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA), improve outcomes for themselves and their organizations.

  Amy is offering 2 coaching scholarships.

• 

  Blanca Garcia Gil

  Blanca offers transformational coaching, a focused, one-on-one process designed specifically for technical leaders, staff+ engineers, architects, and senior managers seeking a thinking partner. Her coaching enables lasting, sustainable change by helping clients develop their own unique leadership style. This deep approach tackles core challenges such as increasing influence, enhancing communication, and amplifying impact, ultimately leading to greater clarity, improved decision-making, and significant career and personal growth.

  Blanca is offering 1 coaching scholarship.

• 

  Cara Wilson

  Cara is a coach with 20 years of experience working with teams and leaders. She was embedded for five years as a leadership and management coach for the engineering team at Tableau software. She has experience working with neurodivergent leaders (and she is one herself).

  Cara is offering 1 coaching scholarship.

• 

  Dan Bartlett

  Dan coaches emerging leaders in Tech, helping them build the clarity, confidence and momentum that creates impact—for themselves, their teams and their organisations. He helps leaders connect with a more authentic, centred leadership that doesn’t skimp on purpose. He loves supporting leaders who want to bring the human side to Tech.

  With over 15 years’ experience as an engineer turned leader, Dan has founded and exited 2 companies. Alongside his geeky credentials, he has spent 2 decades immersed in meditation practice, primarily in the Vipassana tradition. His coaching blends a welcoming warmth and calming clarity that supports genuine growth.

  Dan is offering 2 coaching scholarships.

• 

  Eric Nehrlich

  Eric is an executive coach who loves to identify and challenge mindsets and habits that hold people back from their next level of leadership, especially as they reach the executive level. Before becoming a coach, Eric spent ten years as an engineer and product manager across several startups before joining Google, eventually leading business strategy and operations for the Google Search Ads team for six years as Chief of Staff.

  Eric is offering 1 coaching scholarship.

• 

  Fiona Siseman

  Fiona works with established and emerging tech leaders who are looking to feel more comfortable in their role. She helps overthinkers and doubters develop the confidence to get out of their own way so they can find their own authentic leadership style.

  Fiona has spent 20 years building software development orgs. A generalist, she has been a project manager, engineering manager, agile coach, operations lead. She is known for her curiosity, pragmatism, empathy and frankness.

  Fiona is offering 2 coaching scholarships.

• 

  Francis Lacoste

  Francis coaches CTOs and VPEs to become leaders who nurture amazing engineering cultures. He helps his clients transition from “building the product” into “building the org that builds the product”.

  Before coaching, he spent over twenty-five years in the open-source and cloud developer tools industry. First, as a software engineer, then as an engineering leader at Canonical, Heroku, and Salesforce where he built successful high-performance remote engineering teams. With long history of contemplative practice, he’s also a meditation teacher with Buddhist Geeks since 2020.

  Francis is offering 2 coaching scholarships.

• 

  Jessica Tai

  Jessica works with emerging leaders (ICs and managers) in tech, particularly those facing Imposter Syndrome or feeling stuck in their career. Through her undergrad at UCLA, grad school at Stanford, and 11+ years at Airbnb through hypergrowth to IPO, she has dealt with self-doubt and insecurity herself. With supportive coaches and mentors, she progressed from a new grad IC to leading multiple teams as an Engineering Manager.

  She is known for being action-oriented, pragmatic, and empathic. As a Co-active Insitute trained coach and international conference speaker, Jessica is passionate about helping others discover their inner strength and finding their path forward.

  Jessica is offering 2 coaching scholarships.

• 

  Stefan Ross

  Stefan coaches engineering and non-technical leaders at tech startups and scaleups. Drawing on over 20 years in high-growth engineering companies, he brings deep understanding of the challenges leaders face. Clients can get straight to thinking clearly about what they actually want, recognise strengths and achievements they’ve overlooked, and find their own way forward. His style is curious, direct, and non-judgmental, and his clients consistently describe leaving sessions with greater clarity and confidence in their own capabilities.

  Stefan is offering 2 coaching scholarships.

• 

  Theresa Aristarco

  Theresa is a leadership coach who helps ambitious product and engineering leaders grow effectively, strategically, and sustainably. A former senior engineering leader with over 13 years in tech at companies like Square, Apple, and Intuit, she understands what it’s like to navigate growing scope, shifting identities, and high-stakes decisions at work while trying to lead well and live well.

  Theresa is trained by the Co-Active Training Institute, and her coaching style is supportive and practical. Through empathetic listening and structured, actionable strategies, Theresa helps clients focus on what matters most and take meaningful steps toward their goals.

  Theresa is offering 1 coaching scholarship.

• 

  Tobi Tonner

  Elevate your impact and guide your team with renewed clarity by learning to lean fully into being brave. Tobi provides a dedicated space for leaders to build deep self-awareness, make courageous decisions, and cultivate authentic confidence.

  As an ICF-certified coach who has spent two decades navigating the wild world of fast-paced tech, he acts as a collaborative thinking partner focused on actionable growth. By designing a bold strategic vision and building habits that actually stick, he helps leaders turn courage into lasting resilience.

  Tobi is offering 2 coaching scholarships.

The impact for you

We share these quotes from some of the talented alumni of this coaching scholarship programme to offer you a tangible sense of the experiences and benefits of our coaching.

• 

  Over the course of our working together [with Fiona], I was able to implement better ways of communicating. I’m now more confident to share my perspective when before I would have held back, and I’m influencing better outcomes by proactively sharing my experience and opinions. I’ve seen a lot of positive changes in my professional life More ↓

• Working with Amy was a positive game changer. With each of our conversations, I either learned something new about myself or it reinforced a strong belief that aligned with my values. It was a very holistic way of approaching engineering leadership, going beyond the technical aspects and into the whole self. In doing so, that reaped greater rewards and it had positive ripple effects in my personal and professional life, along with teams and community. I highly recommend Amy!

• I had a really great time working with Alia as my coach. She excelled at taking my thoughts and, through thought-provoking questions, guided me to profound insights I wouldn’t have discovered on my own. These “gems” not only gave me a deeper understanding of my professional motivations but also enabled me to become a more effective leader by clarifying my career priorities and what to let go of.

• 

  It’s been really fantastic to work with Tobi as my coach. Tobi has a remarkable way of asking insightful questions that challenge my assumptions, spark new insights, and help me see things from fresh perspectives.

  Through thoughtful inquiry, he empowers me to find my own path forward, rather than just waiting for someone else to give me the answers.

  If you want to understand yourself better, and gain clarity on your goals and challenges, I highly recommend working with Tobi.

• 

  Alex’s exceptional approach made it a game-changer for both my professional and personal growth… His deep expertise in coaching shone through in his ability to ask thought-provoking questions, challenge my assumptions, and guide me toward meaningful insights with remarkable skill. He helped me uncover strengths I hadn’t fully recognized and empowered me to become a more confident, authentic version of myself as a leader More ↓

• 

  Working with Joel has been transformative for my career as a senior technical leader. His unique blend of coaching and mentoring combined with deep expertise helped me navigate complex leadership challenges, guiding me to understand myself better than I could’ve ever imagined in the process.

  Joel creates a space where you can think clearly, challenge your own assumptions and discover solutions you didn’t know you already had. I’m endlessly grateful for his guidance, it’s genuinely been life-changing for me.

• Working with Stefan has been genuinely transformative. He has helped me not only to navigate my job search but to rediscover confidence in my own abilities that I had not fully recognised.

  What sets him apart is his ability to shine a light on the achievements you’ve accumulated over a career but somehow never stopped to acknowledge. He helped me to see the real value in what I have done, articulate it clearly and walk into interviews with a confidence I simply did not have before.

• 

  Thanks to the coaching I have received from Francis, I have gained a new perspective, enhanced confidence in my decision-making as an executive, and greater effectiveness as a leader in managing and navigating challenging situations with my team.

Frequently asked questions about coaching scholarships