Portrait of Yvonne Hernandez Friedman

Yvonne Hernandez Friedman, Ph.D.

Leadership Coach | Empowering women in higher education to navigate their careers while developing a new model of career clarity and self-care for success and greater fulfillment.

Yvonne is a coach and consultant with over 20 years of experience in higher education. Her experience includes executive-level leadership roles within student and auxiliary services at regional universities, land-grant universities, and highly selective universities. Her experience includes residential life, first-generation programs, leadership programs and student involvement, housing services, student conduct, and crisis management.

Yvonne focuses much of her practice on coaching female-identified professionals “at all levels” on advocating for themselves in the workplace in order to preserve time, talent and energy to get to the next level of their careers. In addition, she assists executives in successful transition to new roles and building teams. She also helps them to curate a career road map, purpose statement and personal brand while defining the skill sets needed to keep their careers moving forward as well as enhancing their toolbox.

Yvonne has a Ph.D. in education with a specialization in educational equity and social justice. She specializes in inclusive leadership development with a focus on helping mid- and senior-level executives to disrupt systemic racism/sexism in order to create an environment of trust, inclusion and job satisfaction in the workplace. Yvonne also works with women of color in senior-level positions to utilize their perspectives and unique talents so they can identify and leverage power/privilege dynamics to address inclusion barriers for professionals from marginalized identities.

Yvonne, a formally trained life and career coach, has a Ph.D. in Education from Claremont Graduate University, an MEd in Higher and Postsecondary Education, and a BA in Political Science from Arizona State University. She is Vice President for Student Affairs at Coastal Carolina University.