The beauty of change

Justine Wright - a career and leadership coach who has spent decades navigating change through the arts and education, with a rare ability to hold the big picture and the small details at once, and the kindest heart.

I met Justine back in 2020 and collaborated with her on two lockdown projects for young east London students - first a panel talk and then the Young Innovator Challenge. Her professionalism, contagious optimism and passion for her craft fills up the room and is inspiring. Our conversation scratches beneath the surface of what - change means for Justine: taking agency over self-employment, leading a team delivering impactful social mobility programmes and navigating a career change into coaching in her 50’s. Yet she recounts these significant transitions with a lightness that makes even the most challenging moments seem effortless.

I'm fortunate enough to be coached by her, her coaching style is calm and grounded, with a depth that encourages clarity to you on a table with a quiet wisdom and patient listening. There is something in her presence that supports you to tell her everything, and when you think you’ve said it all, she asks - "what else?". She holds your hand, carrying you from cluttered thoughts to opening doors in your mind that make you feel that maybe the solution isn't that far away. Some people just have this gift and she uses hers beautifully.

Shaped by the past

"No one could pronounce my name," she smirks as she tells me her experiences of having a French name at an English grammar school in Kent that forced the mindset of being the best in her. Even as a young adult, she didn't run away from uncertainty but embraced it.

After studying history in university, the universal "what do you want to be when you grow up" question hit her and she responded with a change of scenery. Moving to France was a transformative experience for her, she dealt with living abroad alone, testing her resilience and discovering more about herself. Then moving to London, she started a career in art galleries, and found enjoyment in exhibition management, it was a time that made her fall in love with the process of collaboration, whilst learning sales was not for her.

 "Change is kind of this running theme for me. I love the idea of new. I love the idea of innovation."

Change remained a constant theme that pushed her from the world of fine art to spend 10 fantastic years at Which? Magazine, deepening research skills and building project and programme management experiences. But then, a kind of change came that she was not equipped to deal with: redundancy whilst pregnant with her second child. This made her confront difficult questions, if her womanhood overshadowed her importance as an employee. While her emotions drowned her in questions, her logical side came in as she said, "but if you work for a large organisation, restructuring is a part of the way the world works."

Redundancy isn't easy. Especially for a passionate, hard-worker like Justine but she took it on with grace, and what followed was a period that would quietly shape everything that came next. When her daughter was nine months, she became self-employed, allowing flexibility around a growing family. Over the next 10 years, contracts included a £4.1M EU funded project through the Centre for Innovation and Partnerships (CIPs), delivering a project connecting fashion, education and social mobility, and an accreditation programme for the Chartered Society of Designers that she is particularly proud of.

When the children were in secondary school, Justine moved back to full time employment with the University of East London (UEL) eventually leading an outreach team, deepening her commitment to opening doors for young people through education. Leading teams in social mobility and place making in east London during the pandemic was a turning point. Along with so many others, Justine looked inwards, reflecting on what her next should be – a moment of realisation that a new change was required. After some personal reflection and research, she gradually moved her into coaching career, what I believe is her calling.

Coaching, her way.

Her why was clear from the get-go: "During Covid, I was becoming more disillusioned with working for others and felt a growing pull towards supporting people in a different way”. In her 50’s she embarked on a Level 7 qualification. Coaching felt like a natural progression for her, bringing together her experience, curiosity and belief in people's ability to find their own way forward. As she talks about her work today, the warmth and enthusiasm in her voice make one thing abundantly clear: she genuinely loves what she does.

At its core, her philosophy is deceptively simple: "I'm the facilitator. You're doing all the work." There's something radical in that perspective. In a world obsessed with quick fix solutions, coaching creates the space for people to uncover their own answers and pathways towards their change.

Clients come to coaching often carrying things that are heavy and hard to name – ranging from confidence shaken by redundancy, the invisible weight of a toxic work environment, burnout that crept in quietly, or that persistent whisper of imposter syndrome that makes even the most capable people doubt themselves. During her training she discovered her coaching heroes, Nancy Kline and Claire Pedrick, who have shaped her approach. Known for their belief in the power of deep listening and creating thinking environments, Justine aligns these philosophies with her own style. Possibly one of her greatest gifts is not having all the answers, but making people feel genuinely heard—creating the space, trust and confidence for them to discover their own.

One recent client, shifting careers from working in a corporate to a startup organisation, used coaching to strengthen her resilience, build her confidence and support her leadership growth.

There's a special privilege in being invited into someone’s thinking. Justine draws on visualisations and reflective questioning, she helps clients imagine an ideal future, creating space for clarity to seep through and possibilities to emerge. Her own experiences of navigating change have shaped her beliefs "Coaching for me is forward thinking, and learning from looking back." This is why every time you join a session with Justine, the air is immediately filled with a warm, comfortable energy, she works with you to clarify layer by layer and create your own way forward.

Optimism is her driver

"It's about making it work for me. It's about making my life what I want it to be. It's not perfect. And I'm not looking for perfect. I'm just looking for joy."

This belief continues to guide her self-employment journey and the freedom she consciously is building for herself. She made her own strategy for her way forward, governed by her values and what she wanted to pass on to those around her - that anything is possible.

At the heart of it is optimism. Not every decision is the right one, but every decision offers something to learn - you make your peace with decisions that were not right for you, knowing you made it in good faith with yourself.

Self-employment has strengthened this mindset and widened her knowledge. But her biggest growth source of learning remains her clients. Every conversation adds another stream to the river. Justine finds joy in the endless process of learning and unlearning.

MIE Partners was born - a coaching practice built entirely on her own terms, with a simple but powerful purpose – to help clients create authentic, fulfilling working lives and create meaningful change.

Change is a process

If there's one thing Justine keeps coming back to, it's that change isn't something you "figure out" overnight. It's something you sit with. Sometimes uncomfortably. "Change is a process," she says. "And I think we rush it because we want certainty."

But certainty is rarely available. In fact, she believes that learning to sit with uncertainty is often the hardest part of change—and the most important. It's in those uncomfortable moments that the deepest thinking happens.

Justine doesn't see change as something that requires a perfect plan. Quite the opposite. Throughout her own career, she has learned that growth rarely follows a neat, predictable path, more of a meander down a river, taking a few side streams for interest, but always remaining true to the journey. Instead of searching for all the answers, she encourages people to ask better questions.

“If you ignore the pain, you ignore the version of you that can exist”.

Maybe that's where her ever-shining optimism comes from - not from believing everything will go perfectly, but from trusting that even if it doesn't, you'll learn, you'll adjust, you'll keep moving.

The values underpinning all of it - inclusivity, collaboration, equity, creativity, calmness, voice, optimism - aren't just words on a coaching profile. They are the way she moves through the world, in every session, every conversation, every quiet moment of someone else's breakthrough. " You don't need certainty to move forward. You simply need to believe that change is possible."

To find out more about Justine's coaching and how MIE Partners can support your own journey of change, visit www.miepartnersltd.co.uk