This document has no interest in performing inclusion. It exists to make visible how MSB thinks about equity and belonging — in our team, our practice, and the clients we serve. If something here does not match your experience of us, we want to know.
1. Why this exists
MSB exists to celebrate humanity in education. That sentence does real work. It means we believe the full range of human experience — across identity, background, culture, language, and context — belongs in every room we enter as coaches, facilitators, and learning partners.
EDIB is not a module we deliver or a box we tick. It is the condition that makes our coaching meaningful. You cannot hold space for a leader’s full humanity if you have decided in advance which parts of humanity count.
This policy names our commitments plainly. It also names what we refuse.
Both matter.
2. What we mean by EDIB
We use these four words deliberately, and in a specific order.
Equity
Fairness that is contextual, not identical. We recognise that people arrive with different histories, resources, and barriers. Equal treatment is not always equitable treatment. We design our practice to meet people where they are.
Diversity
The genuine presence of difference — in identity, experience, background, culture, and thought — across our team, our associate network, and the communities we work with. We do not treat diversity as a target to hit. We treat it as a condition of intellectual and relational health.
Inclusion
The active practice of making differences welcome, not merely tolerated. Inclusion is a daily choice made in the small moments — who speaks, who is heard, whose knowledge is valued. MSB is committed to noticing those moments and making them consciously.
Belonging
The felt sense of being seen and valued as you actually are. Belonging is not something MSB can manufacture. It is something we work to create the conditions for — in our team, in our coaching relationships, and in the learning spaces we hold.
Being. Belonging. Becoming. These three words are at the heart of our work — with clients and with each other.
3. What we commit to
In our team
- We actively recruit across background, identity, geography, and experience. We seek difference, not comfort.
- We provide every team member with a development budget, coaching access, and a Wellness Action Plan. These are not perks. They are part of how we invest in the full person.
- We name things when they feel off. We do not absorb discomfort quietly. We have the honest conversation.
- We are pursuing B Corp certification — a commitment to social and environmental accountability that shapes how we pay, procure, travel, and grow.
In our associate network
- Our network of 28+ coaches and facilitators spans continents, time zones, cultures, and languages. This is a deliberate condition of our model, not an accident of scale.
- We can currently deliver coaching and facilitation in English, French, Spanish, Arabic and Mandarin. We match coaches to contexts with cultural intelligence, not just linguistic competence.
- We hold our associates to the same values we hold ourselves to. EDIB is part of every associate conversation, not an addendum to it.
In our coaching practice
- We attend to the deep contexts of identity, culture, race, and power that shape every leader we work with. We do not pretend coaching is neutral.
- We hold space for difference as a feature, not a complication. Coaching that does not account for who someone is cannot serve who they are becoming.
- We use a regenerative framework that draws on plural ways of knowing — including non-Western, indigenous, and ecological perspectives. We are genuinely influenced by thinkers and coaches like adrienne maree brown, Salma Shah, and Bernice Hewson as guides, mentors and learning partners.
- Every coach at MSB holds a valid internationally-recognised coaching accreditation and engages in ongoing supervision and CPD that includes explicit attention to equity, power, and cultural competence.
In our programmes and design
- We design with diversity in mind from the beginning — not as an adaptation after the fact. Who is in the room, whose stories are told, whose voices are centred.
- We refuse surface-level CPD. We decline professional development that assumes doing more is the answer. We create spaces where leaders can breathe, question, grieve, and grow.
- We review our materials regularly for assumptions, blind spots, and gaps.
4. What we refuse
Acts of refusal are part of our philosophy. We name these not to be provocative, but because clarity about what we will not do is as important as clarity about what we will.
- We refuse to treat EDIB as a compliance exercise. Policies that exist only to be cited are not policies — they are performance.
- We refuse to tokenise. Representation without genuine inclusion is not progress.
- We refuse coaching that ignores the social, cultural, and structural contexts shaping the person in front of us.
- We refuse to over-promise. We are a small organisation. We will name honestly where we are still growing.
- We refuse to treat ‘neutrality’ as a virtue. Coaching that claims to be neutral about power and identity is not neutral — it is avoidant.
5. Alignment with the ICF Coaching Futures Report 2026
MSB holds ICF alignment across all its programmes, including Prologue and Story. The ICF’s 2026 Coaching Futures Report identifies five drivers reshaping the profession by 2036. Our EDIB commitments speak directly to these.
| Collaborative Ecosystems The rise of interconnected networks and cross-sector partnerships that emphasize shared value creation, co-learning, and collective impact. |
MSB works across an interconnected global network of coaches, clients, and adjacent fields — education, wellbeing, systems leadership. Our associate model is designed for cross-cultural collaboration, not uniformity. |
| Globalisation & Cultural Intelligence Increasing global interconnectivity requiring deeper cultural fluency, contextual awareness, and relational adaptability. |
We deliver in English, Spanish, French, Arabic and Mandarin. Our coaches bring lived experience across six continents. We design programming that is culturally resonant, not culturally neutral. Our coaching approach recognises the layered cultural contexts we are shaped by as integral to self-awareness and agency. We offer training to all Associates where we look at our own shaping, biases and assumptions. |
| Regulation & Trust in Expertise Emerging models of governance, credentialing, and ethical oversight aimed at rebuilding trust in institutions and professional services. |
All MSB coaches hold valid credentials from internationally recognised coaching bodies such as the EMCC, AC and ICF. We as an organisation are pursuing B Corp certification and practices. Our supervision and CPD structures ensure ongoing accountability to quality, ethics, and equity. |
| Economic Disruption & Evolving Work Structural shifts in labor, business models, and leadership norms driven by automation, globalization, and socio-political turbulence. |
We serve school leaders navigating extraordinary complexity. Our regenerative model equips leaders to build resilience, purpose, and adaptive capacity in communities under pressure. |
| Technological Acceleration Rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and digital platforms transforming human interaction, service delivery, and decision-making. |
We use technology to extend access, not replace relationship. Human presence, cultural attunement, and relational depth remain the foundation of our model while we remain open and curious about the value of emergent intelligence and the ethical questions it presents. |
6. Our global capability at a glance
For specific confirmation of our capacity, ongoing EDIB work and self-study to date:
| Diverse & inclusive practice | Embedded across our coaching philosophy, associate selection, programme design, and internal culture. In 2025 our coaches and facilitators took part in ‘Coaching Across Difference,’ a bespoke programme from Bernice Hewson foregrounding awareness of how we are shaped by the systems we inhabit. In evaluating this learning coaches expressed that they are more aware of their blindspots, assumptions and biases. |
| Global representation | Associate network of 28+ coaches and facilitators across six continents, active across established and emerging international school markets. |
| Languages | Coaching and facilitation delivered in English, French, Spanish, Arabic and Mandarin by qualified, accredited coaches. Additional language capacity available on request. |
| Sustainability | B Corp certification in progress. Sustainability considerations inform travel, procurement, pay, and growth decisions. Aligned with ICF’s ecological and systemic wellbeing commitments. |
| Coach Education Programming & Development | Our Coach Education learning design is based on the regenerative principles of Emergent Strategy (2017) by adrienne marie brown. We intentionally draw on plural ways of knowing from non-Western, indigenous and ecological perspectives alongside the scaffold of the ICF code of ethics and core competencies. A full-scale curricular review and work on identity and equity has been conducted and remains in process for 2026-2027 in tandem with Bernice Hewson and Raising Racial Consciousness. Each year, we review and iterate our programmes based on feedback from multiple perspectives. |
| EDIB alignment | This policy. Reviewed annually. Held as a living document, not a destination. Grounded in our values of Integrity, Conversation, and Adventure. |
7. Accountability, Stretch and Challenge: Our Living Aspirations
Accountability without mechanism is aspiration. Here is how we commit to stretching our learning edges and encompassing challenge to continuously move our learning forward:
| Diverse & Inclusive practice | Embedded across our coaching philosophy, associate selection, programme design, and internal culture. Accountability & Aspiration: We commit to remain grounded in regenerative, equity-centred principles, stretching ourselves to:
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| Global representation | Associate network of 28+ coaches and facilitators across six continents, active across established and emerging international school markets. Accountability & Aspiration:
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| Languages | Coaching and facilitation delivered in English, French, Spanish, Arabic and Mandarin by qualified, accredited coaches. Accountability & Aspiration
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| Sustainability | Sustainability considerations inform travel, procurement, pay, and growth decisions. Accountability & Aspiration:
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| Coach Education Programming & Development | Accountability & Aspiration:
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| EDIB alignment | Working with advisory board and collaborators who stretch and challenge our strategy, curriculum, practices, innovation and training. Accountability & Aspiration: This policy will be reviewed annually, and held as a living document, not a destination. Grounded in our values of Integrity, Conversation, and Adventure, we commit to stretch ourselves to collaborate with EDIB thought-leaders in the coaching and education sector. We commit to convening with a range of EDIB Practitioners, to grow our awareness, fill gaps in team knowledge and raise more questions that move our sector forward. |
- This document is reviewed annually and updated as our thinking and practice evolves. Version changes are named and dated.
- EDIB is a standing conversation in team planning, not a separate agenda item. It belongs to everyone, not a designated role.
- We welcome challenge. If a client, associate, or community member believes we are not living these commitments, we want to hear it. That feedback does not go into a form. It goes into a conversation.
- We do not claim to have arrived. We claim to be genuinely in motion.
Culture is not what an organisation says about itself. It is what happens in the small moments: how someone responds when something goes wrong, whether the difficult thing gets named or quietly absorbed.
A final word
This document is a living thing. It will change as we do. If something in here does not match your experience of MSB — as a client, an associate, a partner, or a member of our team — we want to know.
We are not interested in performing equity. We are interested in practising it, imperfectly, honestly, and with genuine commitment to the communities we serve.
Being. Belonging. Becoming.
