Creating Space for Transformation: Coaching Through the Achieving Excellence Program
As a coach, my role is to create a safe and supportive space where leaders can explore, reflect, and navigate transformative changes. Over the next 12 months, I have the privilege of working with a dynamic group of leaders from across the country—visionaries committed to solving some of our most pressing social challenges.
These leaders are advancing solutions for affordable housing, ending homelessness, community development, housing counseling, preventing children from entering the foster care system, capacity building, and expanding educational opportunities for college students. They are not just managing organizations—they are transforming communities.
About the Achieving Excellence Program
All of this is made possible through NeighborWorks America’s Achieving Excellence Program, offered in partnership with Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. This 16-month organizational development initiative is designed to help senior leaders tackle significant, measurable performance challenges within their organizations.
What sets this program apart is its rigorous, results-oriented approach. Leaders don't just attend training sessions—they define a major organizational challenge at the outset and work intensively to resolve it with support from faculty, peer learning groups, and executive coaches like myself.
Learning in Action
The program includes three intensive sessions at Harvard, where participants engage in deep learning on leadership, strategy, and organizational change. Between those sessions, they participate in structured peer meetings and receive one-on-one executive coaching. This format ensures that the program is not only academic but deeply practical—leaders apply what they learn in real time to drive measurable progress.
Since its launch in 2002, the program has graduated more than 500 executives, who report substantial gains in effectiveness, innovation, and organizational impact. In fact, recent evaluations show that 100% of participants experienced significant or profound improvement in their performance.
Real Impact, Real Communities
The ripple effect of this work is remarkable. Leaders report not just improved internal systems, but also increased capacity to serve clients and deeper community outcomes. One recent class of participants collectively leveraged nearly half a billion dollars in new capital for their communities.
As a coach, it’s inspiring to witness the courage, creativity, and commitment that each leader brings to the program. Their work is deeply personal, often rooted in lived experience, and always driven by a desire to serve others more effectively. For me, this work is personal, too. Throughout my career, I’ve walked alongside organizations and teams navigating complex housing challenges, and supporting this field has never just been a job; it’s been a calling deeply tied to my values.
Being part of NeighborWorks and the Achieving Excellence Program allows me to continue advocating for housing stability and community well-being in a new, powerful way. It’s important not just to me, but to the communities we serve – because stronger leaders mean stronger systems, and stronger systems mean more people with safe, stable homes and brighter futures.
Coaching with Purpose
Coaching in the Achieving Excellence Program is not just about setting goals—it’s about creating space for bold thinking, deep reflection, and courageous action. It's about walking alongside leaders as they challenge the status quo and reimagine what’s possible for their organizations and communities.
I am honored to be part of this journey and excited to see the progress that will unfold over the next year.
Learn more about the Achieving Excellence Program at NeighborWorks America.
Connect with Anna
Coaching is a transformative experience, and Anna works to help any leader, at any stage, uncover their innate wisdom. Book a time for a free discovery call with Anna to learn more.
About Anna & Executive Horizons
Anna Alvarez Boyd, is the founder of Executive Horizons LLC, a consulting and leadership coaching business. Anna brings over 30 years of experience as a trusted senior leader to her clients. Her coaching starts with the belief that every individual is talented, creative, and whole. She supports clients to deeper self-discovery, through a unique, tailored approach for each person that includes skill building, reflective practices and leadership development.