Former USAID employee and trauma-informed leadership coach Kyle Dietrich was coming out of a challenging season. Amid widespread federal layoffs, he had no choice but to lay off most of his team, and then he was laid off himself. In the aftermath, Kyle asked himself: What could he do for others facing the same situation?
His answer led him to create and post two sign-up forms on LinkedIn in February 2025. The first form was for laid-off federal employees interested in receiving pro bono coaching to help them navigate their next steps. Most of these people were coping with uncertainty, trauma, and potentially a new career path. The second form was for professional coaches willing to offer free sessions for these former federal employees.
Kyle had no idea what kind of response to expect, or if anyone would be interested at all. But within a month, more than 1,500 credentialed coaches had signed up, and Kyle and his team began matching them with displaced workers from government, nonprofits, universities, multilateral agencies, and other affected organizations.
“It all started as a passion project. As a few additional like-minded professionals joined me, we didn’t know if we would ever become a formal organization. We didn’t have any funding, and we just did everything on our own because we wanted to help people. During the first four months, we were often matching about 50 coaches with 50 clients a day.”
Establishing the Organization
When the initial demand never slowed, it became evident that Kyle and his team needed to formally establish an organization. Six months later, the effort officially became Grounded Idealist, a fiscally sponsored nonprofit with the mission of providing a safety net for all public servants affected by mass layoffs in the federal workplace. The organization seeks to empower changemakers to continue serving and build regenerative futures for themselves and the sectors they care about.
The organization began raising funds and developing plans to move from Kyle’s initial spreadsheets to a structure for coaching public servants that would be sustainable, scalable, and targeted. So far, the organization has four full-time staff and several volunteer advisors.
Grounded Idealist continues to help public and social sector workers in transition turn disruption into possibilities through career support, skill-building, and purpose-aligned pathways forward.
From LinkedIn Post to Nonprofit: Building Grounded Idealist
From its earliest days, the coaches who filled line after line of Kyle’s spreadsheet have been as committed to supporting public servants in transition as Kyle. Many have gone far beyond the initial request to help their clients thrive and find a long-term partnership in the process.
For example, ICF-credentialed coach Susan Mahoney, PCC, worked with a federal employee who was laid off by USAID. “She was trying to work through all the issues, and the whole situation just broke my heart,” Susan said. But in their coaching sessions, they were able to acknowledge the loss and grief, explore potential pathways within the federal, state, and local government, as well as outside government, and turn adversity into a new start. Susan added, “This was an opportunity for exploration.”
The former USAID worker is still working to overcome the challenges of her abrupt layoff; however, she has passed on the gift she received in sponsored coaching sessions by offering her own expertise to a public sector start-up.
Coaching Impact by the Numbers
As of January 2026, Grounded Idealist has mobilized nearly 3,000 coaches to support more than 3,500 individuals navigating career upheavals with more than 25,000 hours of one-on-one and group coaching and coaching supervision. So far, the organization has a 98% success rate with matching public sector workers to coaches, with only 2% of participants asking to be rematched. For each of these matches, the coaching client receives three coaching sessions. Many matches, including Susan and her former USAID worker, opt to continue working together on their own for longer.
Expanding the Mission: Masterclasses, Programs, and the Public Service Incubator
Kyle and his team offered close to 20 coaching masterclasses in 2025 with industry leaders. These masterclasses were designed to equip coaches with critical skills and capacities to enhance their expertise in supporting displaced public servants, covering:
- Trauma-informed coaching.
- Coaching as a collective action for systems change.
- Technology and AI in coaching.
- Coaching for a chaotic world.
- Coaching through crisis — brain-based tools.
Grounded Idealist also launched Conscious Catalyst, a coach membership program to strengthen the community and learning among its coaches.
The organization has led dozens of workshops and events focusing on building individual and collective resilience, AI-powered career mastery, harnessing unexpected transitions, and skills sessions on resume writing, LinkedIn, networking, and optimizing the job search to support displaced workers. In late 2025, Grounded Idealist launched Root to Rise, a cohort-based career navigator and leadership development program for displaced workers.
Grounded Idealist also built a public service incubator, designed to support former public servants with innovative ideas for social change, helping them transition into entrepreneurs. All these programs were designed to be responsive to their communities’ needs and to empower public servants to continue serving.
How Coaching Turns Disruption Into Possibility
Grounded Idealist’s success looks like continuously building on the values that the organization is committed to. They are embracing crisis as an opportunity, empowering public sector workers, and partnering with coaches, universities, nonprofits, and local governments. In the future, Kyle believes the most powerful approach is to support changemakers in investing in their inner development, creating value-aligned career pathways, and continuing to serve in today’s volatile climate.
Achieving results and developing long-term collaborations and a path to success, however, will always need the mindset and partnership of coaches like Susan, whose DNA is built around empowering people in need. Organizations like Grounded Idealist can help facilitate lasting change by making coaching accessible to those on the frontlines.
Learn more about the Waves of Change series or our Ignite program here.
