The more important question — the one nobody's talking about loudly enough — is how AI is changing the leaders we coach. Because the people sitting across from us now aren't the same leaders they were three years ago. They're navigating constant change, managing teams alongside AI agents, and making decisions at a pace that's never existed before. And if we're still bringing them the same coaching we always have, we're already behind.

Pam founded Optify in 2018 with a simple but radical idea: coaching should reach people earlier in their careers, not just at the top. Eight years, one pandemic, and one AI revolution later, she's watching a shift that reminds her of something she's seen before — the move from Waterfall to Agile in software development. That wasn't a process tweak. It was a fundamental rethinking of how you build things. She thinks AI is doing exactly the same to leadership development — and most of the industry hasn't caught up yet.

Rebecca and Pam dig into what coaches actually need to bring to clients now, how to turn AI tools into real learning opportunities rather than just getting stuff done, and what it means to help a leader who's no longer just leading people.

• Why "how is AI changing coaching?" is the wrong question
• Leading agents, not just people — what that means for who we coach
• Learning in the flow of work as the new coaching frontier
• What coaches need to bring to clients that AI simply cannot

Links and resources mentioned in this episode:

• Optify.io
• Pam Krulitz LinkedIn

Find out more:

https://vivalacoaching.com/vivapodcast/

As Program Director of the Headspace Training Institute — training the next generation of mental health coaches — Shelby sits at one of the most critical intersections in coaching today: where AI meets mental health, and where getting it wrong has real consequences.
This conversation is about what getting it right actually looks like. At Headspace, that means clinical safety guardrails with human oversight, a 30-minute limit on AI companion conversations to prevent overuse and prompt degradation, and an empathetic AI companion called Ebb that meets people where they are — every single day, not just in crisis.

Because that's the shift Shelby keeps coming back to: mental health care can't only happen when things fall apart. It needs to be daily. Like going to the gym.

Rebecca and Shelby also dig into how Headspace is training coaches to have the AI conversation with their clients — not avoid it — and why the coaching industry needs to stop asking "AI or human?" and start asking how AI can amplify what only humans can do.
And in a moment that lands quietly but hard: Shelby shares why she's teaching her students to embrace failure — and why that might be the most human skill of all.

In this episode:

• Why Headspace put a 30-minute limit on its AI companion — and why that's revolutionary
• How to build clinical guardrails that actually hold
• Training coaches to talk to clients about AI — not around it
• The danger of general-purpose chatbots being used for mental health
• Embracing failure as the foundation of mental health and coaching

Links and resources mentioned in this episode:

• Headspace Training Institute
• Headspace
• Ebb - Headspace's Empathetic AI Companion
• Headspace Coaching
• Shelby Garay LinkedIn
• Shelby Garay Coaching & Consulting

Find out more:

https://vivalacoaching.com/vivapodcast/

• The 1+1=3 case for human-AI coaching collaboration
• Why efficiency without depth is a slow kind of atrophy
• Agentic AI and the future of long-term behavior change
• Leading through constant uncertainty — and staying grounded
• The uncanny valley, AI personas, and the politics of naming

Links and resources mentioned in this episode:

• aiirconsulting.com
• aiiranalytics.com

Find out more:

https://vivalacoaching.com/vivapodcast/

Coaching is changing. AI is here. And nobody has all the answers yet.

The Edge of Human & AI is the podcast for coaches, leaders, and thinkers who want to go deeper than the hype — into the real questions about what it means to be human in an age of intelligent machines.

Bold conversations. Uncomfortable edges. No easy answers.

Welcome to the Edge.

https://vivalacoaching.com/vivapodcast/