Coach development grounded in evidence.
Evidence-led coach development
ACE brings rigorous research on how coaches grow and learn to life. We design professional development programmes for experienced coaches who want to practise with greater precision, depth, and accountability.
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Evidence-led
Every programme grounded in empirical research
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ICF, EMCC, AC aligned
Designed to support your continuing coach education
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Practitioner-built
Created by research-informed coaches, for coaches
A new standard for coach education
The coaching profession has matured considerably — yet many CPD offerings remain light on evidence and heavy on intuition. ACE was founded to change that. We provide advanced coach development that takes the research seriously: drawing on coaching psychology, scholarship, and the science of behavioural change to help coaches build richer, more effective practice.
Research-informed practice
ACE programmes translate current research into practical application. We believe that the most advanced coaches have done the most work on themselves and can translate evidence into their practice.
Professionally aligned
We design with all three professional competency frameworks in mind, the ICf, EMCC and AC. So your development with ACE maps directly to your continuing professional development requirements.
For experienced coaches
ACE programmes are not introductory training. They are designed for qualified and experienced coaches who want to deepen their expertise and engage serioiusly with the evidence based underpinning coaching practice
ACE was co-founded by two practitioners and coach educators who share a conviction that coaching development must be held to the same rigorous standards as any other professional field.
ACE was born from years of delivering coach education within higher education — some of the most rigorous and rewarding work either founder has done. But institutional frameworks, however well-intentioned, are not always able to move at the pace the coaching profession demands.
ACE exists in that space: evidence-based, professionally aligned, and built around one core question:
What kind of coach do you want to become?
The people behind ACE
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Verity Hannell Msc, PCC
FOUNDER
Verity has been coaching and developing coaches for over fifteen years, bringing to that work an unusually wide range of experience. She has developed a healthy portfolio career in leadership and organisational development work - including creating coaching pools and leader as coach offerings.
Verity has delivered workshops for the ICF and EMCC covering topics relating to ethical practice, mental health and wellbeing. Most recently Verity served as Programme Director for the triple-accredited Professional Certificate in Executive Coaching at Henley Business School, and is currently the Managing Editor for Ethical Edge Insights magazine.
That breadth is deliberate. Verity believes that the best coach educators are those who have done the work themselves; in real organisations, with real stakes, and who hold their practice up to genuine scrutiny.
Her academic grounding includes an MSc in Coaching for Behaviour Change, and she is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and an ICF Professional Certified Coach. In 2022, Verity was named British HR Awards Coach of the year.
She is particularly interested in what it takes for experienced coaches to keep growing, and in building the kind of learning environments where that growth is taken seriously.
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Dr Holly Andrews PhD, PCC
FOUNDER
Holly has spent over twenty years in academia alongside building a highly sought after private coaching practice. In that time she has become one of the most consistently curious voices in coaching research, always asking not just whether coaching works, but how and why it does. She isn’t afraid to ask the questions most important to coaching.
She is currently a part-time Lecturer in Coaching Psychology at the University of Leicester, contributing to their MSc programmes in Coaching Psychology and Occupational Psychology. Her published research and thought leadership span the breadth of the coaching field, and she is co-author of the British Psychological Society’s Key Topics in Coaching Psychology. It is that commitment to bringing academic rigour into practitioner spaces that led her to co-found ACE.
Holly is also a deeply experienced coach in her own right, an ICF Professional Certified Coach who has worked with over 200 individual coachees, from job seekers to C-suite executives across a wide range of organisations. Her coaching specialism is supporting people navigating toxic relationships, work that grew directly from her PhD research into workplace psychopathy. She is regularly invited to speak on such topics to professional audiences.
Bringing the rigour of academia into coaching is her passion. Developing coaches who share that commitment is what ACE is for.
What we stand for
Research that coaches can actually use
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ACE's regular research digest and discuss for practitioners — translating coaching research into accessible, practitioner-relevant summaries with time for discussion and opportunities to consider how research applies to your practice.
What's coming - Summer 2026
Our first programmes are in development. Each addresses a specific dimension of coaching expertise where the evidence base is rich, under-applied, or both.
Register your interest so we can notify you when we’re delivering programmes that matter most to your practice.