By Chelsea Chambers
The heat of a late summer afternoon persisted but a cool breeze blew across the Boise River onto the patio where Julie and I sat, sipping our drinks and chatting about life, love, and everything in between. Her gentle laugh and natural ability to forge connections made it immediately apparent that she was in the right industry. Dr. Julie Compton is in the business of helping people, and with an impressive educational background and more than two decades of experience with helping individuals, small nonprofit groups to massive corporations like Walmart, Pfizer, Nike and BP Oil.
“As an executive coach, my role is to help clients figure out things for themselves, to seek new perspectives, and to be their trusted advisor,” Julie explained. “I’m here to gain an understanding of my clients, their wants and needs—for themselves, their teams, their businesses, and their lives and through a proven methodology, I help them learn skills, make behavior changes and achieve their goals. This benefits the organization they work for as well as their own lives.”
Julie, after working in business and academia, entered the world of coaching and consulting in 1998 in San Diego, California, where she set out to start her own business. She quickly began acquiring clients, as the coaching industry was quite new at the time. She began meeting clients face-to-face, learning about them, their businesses, and what steps needed to be taken for improvement. Whether it was communication skills, team-building strategies, emotional intelligence, leadership training… you name it, Julie has a solution for it.
Now, twenty years later, Julie has had clients from all walks of life. From “As a single mom raising a teenager, my daughter is my number one priority. And I am absolutely blessed to have the flexibility in my career to maintain that. Friends, my faith, and fitness—these things keep me going, no matter what.”
With dozens of clients all over the world, Julie keeps herself busy. But she’s found time for her latest endeavor: self-publishing an incredibly motivating book, Rise to the Top: Coaching Insights and Challenges for Leaders. The book is a unique blend of fiction, following the story of a young woman’s journey through leadership, and nonfiction, incorporating the latest research and gleaning insights from Julie’s client’s experiences, and a workbook, offering coaching challenge questions for the readers to work through as they read.
Beyond work, family, writing, and spending every moment she can in nature, Julie is also a dedicated volunteer. Recently, she began volunteering at St. Vincent de Paul (which is the second largest food pantry in Idaho plus 5 Thrift stores) and was so inspired by the nonprofit, that she now provides pro bono executive coaching and consulting for them. SVdP is currently working toward, with Julie’s help, establishing effective meeting strategies, improving communication efforts and other strategic efforts to assist elevating the organization.
“If I could get people to realize one thing it would be that everyone is a leader. You don’t have to wait until you’re a senior VP to get coaching or training. Be open, vulnerable, and authentic and allow yourself to grow and change through reflection. We can’t be responsible for others but we can be accountable for ourselves. Change isn’t easy, but it is worth the effort.”
It’s difficult to sum up the collective lifetime of such an inspirational woman in one brief article, but fortunately, her website comptoncoaching.com, is filled with information about Julie, her business, and her life-long goal to help people achieve more.
