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BearingLeadership coaching

About Bearing

Hi, I’m Nadia. I help capable people become confident leaders.

I spent fourteen years leading product and operations teams before I became a coach. I know what it’s like to be promoted on a Friday and handed a team on Monday, because it happened to me.

Leading teams
14 yrs
Coaching hours
3,800
Based in
Pittsburgh
Illustrated portrait of Nadia Whitcombe

Nadia WhitcombeFounder and leadership coach

My story

The manager I needed at 29.

My first management job came with a bigger title, nine direct reports and no training at all. For a year I did my old job and my new one, badly, mostly after 9pm. I thought that was what leading looked like.

A coach my company hired for the leadership team changed that in about four sessions. She didn’t tell me what to do. She asked what I was still holding on to, and why. By the end of that year I was home for dinner and my team was doing the best work of their careers.

I went on to run operations at a logistics software company through its growth from 60 to 400 people, then trained as a coach and opened Bearing in 2017. The studio is in the Strip District, five minutes from the river.

Illustration of the Bearing studio in Pittsburgh: two armchairs facing each other by a tall window with a yellow bridge outside

“Most leadership problems aren’t about knowing what to do. They’re about permission, practice and someone in your corner while you try.”

Nadia, on why she coaches

The path here

From the work to the people

  1. 2008

    Product analyst

    Good at spreadsheets, better at asking why.

  2. 2012

    First-time manager

    Nine reports, no training, a lot of late nights.

  3. 2015

    Director of Operations

    Scaled a team of 14 to 70 across three cities.

  4. 2017

    Founded Bearing

    Coach training complete, first studio on Penn Avenue.

  5. 2021

    First 90 Days cohort

    Twenty-two cohorts and 170 managers since.

Credentials

Trained, accredited and supervised.

Coaching is an unregulated field, so it’s worth asking any coach what stands behind their title. Here’s what stands behind mine.

  • Professional-level coaching credential

    Accredited by an international coaching federation, with 500+ logged client hours and a recorded, assessed session.

  • MSc, Organizational Psychology

    Dissertation on how first-time managers learn to delegate.

  • Certified 360° and strengths practitioner

    Qualified to run two widely used leadership assessments.

  • Monthly supervision

    I review my own practice with a senior coach every month, and follow a professional code of ethics.

How I work

Four promises to every client

  • Candour, with care

    I’ll tell you what I see, kindly and clearly. You’re paying for honesty, not applause.

  • Practical over profound

    Every session ends with something you’ll do differently this week.

  • Your answers, not mine

    I bring tools and questions. You decide what kind of leader you want to be.

  • Confidential, always

    What you say stays between us, even when your employer is paying.

Outside the studio

A few things about me

  • I row on the Allegheny most mornings from April to October, slowly.

  • Two teenagers, one retired greyhound called Biscuit, zero free weekends.

  • I host The First Hundred Days, a podcast for new managers.

  • I mentor two first-time founders a year through a local accelerator, unpaid.

If this sounds like the kind of coach you need, let’s talk.

Book a free intro call