Experience

Dr Janet Hope is the owner of Limina Coaching & Consulting, a qualified coach and credentialed member of the International Coach Federation. She brings over 20 years of professional experience to her coaching practice and has successfully coached more than 170 individual clients.

Janet trained as a biochemist and lawyer before working as legal counsel for the Australian Government Solicitor and as an advocate and mediator at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. More recently she was Senior Fellow/Senior Lecturer at the Australian National University, where her research and teaching focused on intellectual property law and policy, the governance of collaborative technology development and the broad process of creating scientific and other forms of knowledge.

Janet has travelled the world as an invited expert speaker, sharing specialist knowledge with audiences in Europe, the United States, Australia, Canada, China and Japan. As an academic, she was an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow and lead Chief Investigator on two successful Discovery Project applications. Her academic writing has been published by Harvard University Press and Cambridge University Press and has won national and international awards, including the prestigious global Independent Publishers’ Book Award.

In addition to her academic and coaching work, Janet has worked at executive level in the Australian Public Service and was one of a three-person startup team for a successful non-profit educational initiative providing free classroom resources for senior high school STEM subjects.

Janet is the mum of two lovely children, born in 2004 and 2011, and has been a carer and advocate over many years for a close relative with complex post-traumatic stress disorder. She transitioned to full-time coaching in 2013.

At Limina, we are committed to the highest standards of professionalism. You can be assured that your coach:

• holds internationally recognised coaching credentials (Professional Certified Coach, International Coach Federation (ICF));
• has graduated with advanced qualifications from one of the world’s most respected coach training organisations (Advanced Coaching Program Graduate, Coach U);
• maintains current professional indemnity and public liability insurance;
• has undertaken to uphold an established professional Code of Ethics supported by a robust review process;
• engages in continuing professional development, including regular mentoring and supervision by an appropriately qualified ICF Master Certified Coach; and
• is an active member of relevant professional organisations (International Coach Federation; European Mentoring and Coaching Council (founding member, Asia-Pacific Region)).

In addition to the above qualifications, Janet brings to your coaching partnership a substantial depth and breadth of education, work and life experience. She is a trained scientist, experienced lawyer and legal academic, global research leader, international award-winning writer, respected teacher and facilitator, long-term disability carer/advocate and engaged parent.

Full CV and references are available on request.

Janet says:

I moved into coaching after working first as a lawyer, then as an academic researcher and teacher. I’ve enjoyed driving my own successful legal and academic practice, but some of my most fulfilling work over twenty years has involved supporting others through advice, advocacy, mentoring, teaching, research supervision and consulting.

Since becoming a parent, I’ve been deeply engaged in my children’s care and education. I’ve also spent time over almost two decades caring and advocating for a loved one with severe physical and psychiatric injuries. Through all this experience of helping others learn, grow, decide and act, I’ve become a firm believer in the remarkable power of listening.

Although there is more to coaching than ‘just’ listening, I believe that compassionate, respectful listening is the key that truly unlocks a person’s potential. Good listening is rare. That’s because it takes time and focus. It takes willingness to step outside our own frame of reference and into someone else’s. To listen is to be stretched, emotionally and intellectually, on another person’s behalf.

For me, listening is an active process. When I listen, I make room for you — room to speak and room to be silent. I ask questions, offer feedback, share new perspectives and occasionally challenge what I’m hearing. Together, we take the raw materials you bring to the conversation and create whatever you need in order to move into action on the things that matter most to you.

I became a coach because I find this process endlessly beautiful, fascinating, satisfying — and fun! It’s also incredibly effective, because when someone really listens to you, you know that your thoughts and feelings are worthy of attention and consideration. You start listening to yourself, and learn things you never realised you already knew. You find your voice. You gather your resolve.

That’s when your real work can begin. I wonder what it will be?