“I want to mentor and equip women to achieve personal fulfilment through combining a worthwhile career with a family life.”
Melany Green, Founder & Executive Coach
THE STORY OF GREAT EXPECTATIONS
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The story of GE is one about courage of conviction,
power of connection and clarity of purpose
There is neurological evidence that writing down your goal or vision will increase the odds of achieving it. It worked for me. I wrote mine at 44 years old, when in the midst of managing multiple roles: wife, mom, career, business ownership ... the challenge of managing the ultimate balancing act. At 57, the vision became reality.
“I want to mentor and equip women to achieve personal fulfilment through combining a worthwhile career with a family life.”
This is what I had written in my journal. At the time it was just a desired future of where I wanted to focus my time and talents, but I had no plan. Then in 2012, inspired by a mentoring conversation with a younger protegee in London who first shared the concept of ‘maternity coaching’ with me, curiosity got the better of me. On the strength of my research, I trusted and acted on my instinct, establishing Great Expectations, the first company in S.A. dedicated to coaching professional women through the Parental Transition. The company was registered, I was clear ‘who’ we were as a business but with only a vague idea at that stage of what we would offer. It was enough, I felt, to go and find a client. Winning one of South Africa’s biggest professional accounting firms as a client in the first months of operation, was wonderful validation that there was a dire need for our work and that I was on track.
The rest is history and work -in-progress
WHAT WOMEN ARE SAYING
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Thank you for your advice, empathy and time – the transition from newly-wed to “stay at home” mom to a newborn to “career loving parent” in 12 months and understanding the shifts of those different identities and how to navigate them, have been immensely helpful. My return to the workplace has been nothing but a positive one.
— Megan MacNab Harvie, Marketing Manager, Brown-Forman SA
Meet Our Coaches
Melany Green
Deep and expansive acumen as a leader and business owner, together with personal experience of an enduring 40-year marriage and motherhood, are a few attributes in Melany’s toolkit as an executive and parental transition coach. Mixed with her driving passion for helping parents find practical solutions in this life and career phase, this enriches every engagement she has with her coachees.
Melany has always believed that one’s potential lies outside of one’s comfort zone. In her view, every opportunity or challenge life brings, holds the probability of growth and learning. Everyone she coaches and mentors leave conversations with her, not just practically equipped, but encouraged, enthused and optimistic.
Aneshrie Yasar
An Organisational Development Practitioner, Facilitator and Coach with over 20 years’ corporate experience, Aneshrie left Nedbank and dared greatly by embarking into the world of independent consulting. As mother to a son, Aneshrie felt the constant tension of integrating the multiple roles of being a professional working mother. Curious to understand what support mechanisms were available for women like herself, Aneshrie explored this topic further in her Masters dissertation … and this path led to a destined meeting with Melany. And so began a love for this genre of coaching.
Gill Cederwall
After a 13-year corporate career in financial services, as a communications executive in a high-pressure environment, Gill pivoted to build her career as a business coach. She is especially passionate about women in leadership and helping them manage and balance their personal and corporate lives. Having had both her little girls while working a demanding global role, Gill knows that driving high performance at work and at home can be hard work! This is what positions her perfectly to support our work with parents, offering empathy and relevance to her coaching.
Sally Downie
Besides having the personal experience of raising a son to adulthood, Sally brings deep business acumen to her coaching conversations from having worked in a senior HR role for over 30 years, 25 of which were with Deloitte Africa. Amongst other activities, she headed up the HR team for Consulting, responsible for the talent needs of over 1000 staff. While she has an affinity with the unique challenges facing fee-earning professionals in particular, she is deeply interested in supporting women in any role to manage this career and life phase.
Nomfuzo Ntolosi
Nomfuzo has a rich background in the field of human and organisational development, supporting individuals and teams to navigate change. She is a mom to two children and is invested in her work with communities and mentoring young people, with a particular passion for the development of women. Her warm and engaging manner creates a comfortable and safe space in which her clients are able to expand their capacity to think through challenges and be effective in their leadership.
Karen Grant
Karen is living the daily challenge of integrating work with a busy ‘life’, raising two sons. Having been a corporate employee in professional services (Ernst and Young) for 11 years, she transitioned to being a professional coach and facilitator. Her coaching work has understandably focused on individuals encountering transition and she enjoys envisioning new futures with clients who are navigating their way through critical milestones in their lives. She has a particular heart for helping women navigate the parental transition to manage their career and broader lives optimally.
Making an Impact
We have worked with over 400 women since we started, in law, finance and other professions in SA and other African countries, making a difference to their lives personally and professionally. We coach women, not to fix them, but to equip them to lead change from within. Consequently, with the female career a core focus, through our coaching and development programmes, we continue having dynamic impact, influencing change towards more gender equal and inclusive workplaces.
WHAT COMPANIES ARE SAYING
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“Great Expectations have offered amazing coaching support for our employees who are facing maternity leave and adjusting to being working parents. As a company, we recognize that the period around maternity leave is high risk.
We are grateful that Great Expectations are supporting our employees to navigate this change and improve employee retention.
The feedback we have received from our employees on this parental transition coaching has been amazingly positive and we are now extending this coaching to our expecting fathers as well. We also partnered with Great Expectations during the COVID pandemic to offer coaching to our employees, many of whom were struggling with juggling remote working and childcare. Again the feedback we received about their coaching was incredibly positive.”
— Heidi Kornmuller, Head of Talent Management, Coronation Fund Managers
WHAT ABOUT THE MEN?
Our work is not exclusive to women. We recognize the power of men as allies and the value of engaging them in the conversation. In most instances, the men we coach are the husbands or partners of women who have careers and children. Recently pioneering parental coaching for fathers – another first in SA – we regard this as a major contribution to normalising the parental transition in the eyes of organisations for both genders and its impact on career advancement.
WHAT WOMEN ARE SAYING
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“A standout benefit of the programme for me was when you said about motherhood being the introduction of a new set of enhanced leadership skills. This made all the difference for me. I am reminded of this every day when I too see, that with motherhood, I have become a much better, more relaxed leader.”
— Emmy Kumwenda, Executive Director & Head of Client Coverage, Standard Chartered Bank
SPECIAL CREDIT
I give special credit to the UK-based, now global business, The Executive Coaching Consultancy, with whom I continue to have a strong friendship and affiliation. I refer to them affectionately and respectfully as the ‘Mother Ship’, as they were the pioneers of maternity transition coaching in London from 2005. I value the personal relationship with their wonderful leadership and the global body of associate coaches, their ethics as a business, their long and successful track record, their ongoing on-point solid research and innovation, which we are privileged to tap into, while blazing our own trail in Africa.