Alejandra Badilla is convinced coaching has helped her career

Professional coaching has been good to Alejandra Badilla, helping to accelerate an already rapid rise. The 36-year-old Chilean, who will complete her Executive MBA at Madrid’s IE Business School late this year, started monthly coaching sessions over Microsoft Teams six months into the course. Soon afterwards, she was promoted to a director-level role at the insurance business Chubb. “I believe that everybody needs a coach, always, because your life is changing constantly,” says Badilla, who switched careers a few years ago, having trained originally as a physiotherapist. She also has experience in the health and financial sectors and was a convert to coaching long before starting at IE. “For me, it is like a religion.” EMBA providers increasingly emphasise the importance of executive coaching. According to 2023 research by the Executive MBA Council (EMBAC), a network of schools, more than 87 per cent of its member programmes offered a coaching service, up from 58 per cent in 2011. Prospective students are also demanding coaching. The most recent Tomorrow’s MBA study, by higher education consultancy CarringtonCrisp and the European Foundation for Management Development, found executive coaching was the second most demanded career development service sought by prospective EMBA candidates, just behind mentoring.