Dr. Janine Elias PCC, NBC-HWC
Founder & President
I’m so glad you’re here, and I’m delighted you’re exploring what we offer at the Elias Institute of Professional Coaching. Our approach looks at the whole picture: coaching, leadership, and the well-being of the entire organization.
I’d love to share how the Institute came to be, where we’re headed, and why I’m so committed to building a community of support for those who protect and serve.
Skills
Programs with Heart
Pull up a chair, because I’d love for you to know where all of this comes from. My work isn’t just a job or a career. It’s a calling.
It’s important to note, I didn’t have a conventional start. I dropped out of high school and became a business owner… with a partner who, as it turned out, was less than forthcoming with the finances. Ouch. Lesson learned: I needed a formal education. So back to school I went.
In my very first college management class, I looked around and couldn’t believe it. So many of my classmates had never even held a job! I remember thinking, “How on earth do you learn to manage people, let alone lead them, with no idea how any of this applies in the real world?”
Turns out, the answer to that question actually has a name. You might have heard of it: transfer of training. Fancy!
I spent the rest of my college career asking, “How does this apply to the job?” My professors were thrilled. (Okay, not so much.)
That mix of passion and curiosity is still the foundation of everything I do: how I lead, how I build trainings, and who I choose to work with. If it doesn’t work in the real world, it doesn’t make the cut.
Now, you might be thinking, “That’s the practical side. So where’s the heart in Programs with Heart?”
Stick around. This is where the story gets deep.
Every Twist and Turn
Looking back, my career has been anything but a straight line. There have been incredible adventures, unexpected opportunities, a few spectacular wrong turns, and plenty of bumps and bruises along the way. Some chapters were wonderful. Others? Not so much! But through it all, I’ve never lost my curiosity, my sense of adventure, or my love for what I do. And somehow, every twist and turn has brought me right here, to our work together.
Becoming a Educator
Here’s something I never imagined when I dropped out of high school: one day I’d be standing on the other side of the classroom!
For over two decades, I’ve taught psychology at the community college level, working with students from all walks of life. And let me tell you, there’s nothing quite like watching someone who isn’t sure they belong in college begin to find their footing, believe in themselves, and discover what they’re capable of.
I’ve always believed education is about so much more than earning a degree. It’s about opening doors, developing the ability to think for yourself, and realizing that where you end up isn’t determined by where you started.
Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia because he understood that in order for a nation to govern itself, its people need to be educated. Being an Army brat, that has always resonated with me.
That belief also shapes how I design and teach my programs. Academic rigor matters, but so does making what we learn meaningful and applicable in the real world. I want students to leave with more than knowledge. I want them to have the skills and insight to apply it.
Business Consulting
In 2001, I started consulting with small businesses, and I was hooked. These were owners with big dreams and a whole lot of duct tape holding things together. Ready to grow, no systems to get there. That’s where I came in. It was challenging, it was exciting, and watching their vision come to life? Nothing better. Before long, I was working with bigger companies gearing up to scale and sell.
Discovering Coaching
So here’s how it really started. After dropping out of high school, I went to beauty school and bought into a full-service salon. And honestly? Half the time, doing hair felt more like being a counselor than a hairstylist! That got me thinking about becoming a therapist, so I went back to school and earned my master’s degree in Clinical Psychology.
But during my internship, I discovered something about myself. I’m wired for goals, and coaching was a much better fit for my natural talents. But more on that later!
Working with Senior Level Leadership
Here’s a little secret I learned early in my consulting days: if the folks at the top aren’t on board, nothing sticks. You can roll out the best initiative in the world, but without senior leaders in the game, it’s dead on arrival. And yet? They’re so often the most untapped resource in the room. So guess where I started focusing my work?
Providing Formal Coach Training
Okay, can we talk about something that drives me a little crazy? Walk into any organization anywhere in the world, and you’ll hear a senior leader tell a supervisor, “You need to coach your people.” Then they’re shocked when they don’t experience the outcome they were looking for.
Here’s the thing no one wants to admit: most of what gets called coaching isn’t coaching at all. Giving advice? Not coaching. Asking a few good questions? Still not coaching. Professional coaching is a finely honed skill, full of nuance, that requires rigorous training, deliberate practice, and thoughtful feedback.
So I started teaching leaders formal coaching skills, and the results were tremendous. Now I train professional coaches and leaders to build resilient departments, strengthen organizational culture, and create workplaces where people actually want to show up.
A Promise Made with Love
In 2004, my career took a turn I never could have imagined. I received a phone call from my cousin, Sgt. Glyn Elias, who had just returned from his second tour in Iraq. He was crying so hard he could barely catch his breath. Three of his friends had died by suicide that month. He pleaded with me to help, and he made me promise that I would do something.
That promise, made with love, changed the course of my career.
In 2006, inspired by Glyn, I attended my first training with the Center for Deployment Psychology. I came home and began training mental health professionals in Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) for war-related PTSD. I worked side by side with service members and their families as they navigated coming home—not just returning to a familiar place, but discovering what home, family, and life could look like after everything they had experienced. That’s where healing begins.
Along the way, something beautiful happened. Everything I had learned over the years as a business and leadership consultant and coach began to weave together with my work coaching military and emergency response personnel. The more I worked with them, the closer I got to the root of their pain, and to what it would take to move through it.
And then came a moment I can only describe as divine intervention.
A question rose up in me so clearly it stopped me in my tracks: Why is there such a strong focus on survival when there’s so much more?
I knew recovery was possible. I had seen people move through the hardest experiences of their lives and come out the other side. Survival gets you through. Recovery carries you forward.
That was the moment Emotional Recovery was born.
In 2021, as the world reeled from a pandemic and social unrest, I began working with law enforcement. I offered a six-week Leadership Group Coaching program in Transformational Leadership and Crisis Response to help leaders carry their people through one of the hardest seasons in recent memory.
And I kept going. I kept refining the programs, kept researching resilience, and kept asking how leaders can ease the toll of prolonged stress and permacrisis.
It all traces back to that one phone call, and a promise I’m still keeping.
Leading to My Commitment to Close the Resiliency Training Gap by taking a Leadership Coach Approach
Resilience is essential for military personnel, peace officers, and first responders. When your job involves repeated exposure to high-stress situations, adversity, and crisis, learning how to adapt, recover, and move forward matters.
But here’s something I’ve learned over the years: teaching resilience and actually building it into everyday operations are two very different things.
In 2009, the U.S. Army introduced its Master Resilience Training program. Years later, research conducted by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research identified a gap between learning resilience skills and putting them into practice.
In a 2022 U.S. Army article, researchers called for shifting resilience training toward coach education, engaging leaders, and helping people apply their skills in everyday life.
Sound familiar? It’s that transfer-of-training question I’ve been asking since my very first college management class!
When I read it, I recognized the work I’d already been doing for years. Beginning with my dissertation research in 2019 and continuing through my work with law enforcement, I developed Resiliency Leadership® to go beyond teaching resilience skills. It brings together professional coaching, leadership development, and organizational development to build resilience into the way departments actually operate. Resiliency Leadership® was already answering the call.
In fact, I’d gone well beyond what the researchers were recommending. They were calling for leaders to take on a coaching role. I’d already developed a comprehensive professional coach training program that integrates coaching, leadership development, resilience, and organizational development. Rather than simply learning to use coaching skills as part of their leadership role, participants are formally trained as professional coaches, equipped to bring that expertise into their departments and embed resilience throughout the organization. And I’d taken it even further by building that training into an independently accredited professional coach certification program.
We don’t need another resilience training program that ends when the classroom doors close. We need professionally trained coaches embedded within the leadership ranks, building resilience into the very fabric of public safety organizations.
And that’s exactly what we’re doing through the Nationwide First Responder Resiliency Leadership Initiative.
We’re not just talking about closing the resilience training gap. We’re closing it. One department at a time.