From Brisbane, to Saigon, and beyond!
Leslie V. Coaching was established in Brisbane, QLD in February 2019. Travelling back and forth between Brisbane and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, I am currently available for online consults, so I can work with you wherever you are in the world.
I’m Leslie Crudup Villagarcia, a formally trained, certified Life Coach committed to helping you forge a purpose-driven mindset grounded in YOUR core values–not society’s expectations. I’d love to have a chat to answer any questions you may have, but first, here are some things you might want to know about me…
Inclusivity and Integrity in Action
I value inclusivity in every sense of the word. I respect your pronouns (mine are she/her/hers). I respect your background, your lifestyle, and your lived experience. I’m a proud queer, polyamorous woman, an ally for marginalised groups, and a fierce advocate for racial, social, and disability justice. I myself am Autistic and have ADHD and run a neuroaffirming practice.
My coaching approach is deeply inspired by the value of community. I believe that authentic growth and self-awareness must include awareness of systems, privilege, and collective responsibility. True empowerment isn’t about escaping the world. It’s about engaging with it compassionately, critically, and courageously. This also means that I actively challenge the industry’s tendencies toward hyper-individualism, spiritual bypassing, and “toxic positivity.”
What Working with Me Looks Like
When you work with me, you won’t be told to “just trust the universe” and wait for your dream life to arrive. You’ll be supported to put in the intentional work to build the life you actually want 😉. Don’t get me wrong! Optimism is valuable, but action and accountability are essential. My approach is no-nonsense, evidence-based, and deeply human.
I reject “positive vibes only” culture because it denies our full range of human experience. Instead, we focus on building a solid, sustainable foundation so your growth doesn’t collapse under the weight of external pressures or internalised expectations.
Here’s a clip from an International Coaching Federation panel I participated in regarding the future of coaching. In this clip, I address the insincere nature of coaches who claim to empower, yet choose to remain silent in the face of real-world problems.
Here’s another clip addressing the damaging cliche, ‘We all have the same 24 hours in a day’. Statements like these deny the real-life challenges faced by many individuals and communities.
A Life Built on Curiosity and Connection
I’m a triple citizen (U.S., Peru, Australia) who has spent over a decade working as an educator, trainer, curriculum developer, e-learning designer, and workshop facilitator across Australia, Europe, Asia, and the U.S. My international experience and passion for solo travel fuels my coaching, giving me a global, culturally informed understanding of what fulfilment means in different contexts.
I now live and work mainly in Vietnam, continuing my mission to help clients navigate major life transitions, uncover purpose, and live according to values that reflect who they truly are.
A family legacy of helping
Helping professions are a part of my heritage! My mother worked for 30 years as a counsellor in a children’s hospital. She now assists older adults with developmental disabilities in an in-patient facility. My sister has been a social worker for many years and is currently undertaking a Masters degree in psychotherapy. My father worked as a mentor throughout his engineering career and now runs a consultancy business. He has also been very active in community building and politics and has developed a number of programs to support at-risk youth. Having grown up in Oakland California, he was also a member of the original chapter of the Black Panther Party. My brother has also been bitten by the helping bug, having developed programs through which he led groups of young people from North America on educational expeditions through the Amazon rainforest.
It’s also worth noting that my partner (they/them) is a lover of philosophy who teaches Psychology in a secondary school. Discussing the deeper meanings of, well, everything, is a daily conversation in my home. We are so committed to examining reality from various perspectives that we, in fact, named our daughter after the philosophical concept of Qualia- the raw sensory perceptions that individuals hold which cannot be measured from one person to another. Think ‘is your Red like my Red‘.
In short, to draw upon this foundation of helping is not just a skill I have committed to developing over the years; it is a part of me. It is who I am and it is why I connect with my clients so effectively.
A staunch advocate for critical thinking and social justice
Below: the speech I delivered for the 35,000+ attendees at the Black Lives Matter rally in Brisbane on 6 June 2020.
I am a proud supporter of human rights. I’m not the kind of coach that says ‘step into your power’ and ‘find your voice’, yet remains silent when it really matters! I walk the talk and have helped countless others do the same, in their work lives, personal lives, or otherwise! That said, your politics do not have to match mine in order for us to work together effectively because the coaching relationship is about helping YOU align with YOUR values.
Throughout my former career in university teaching, a primary focus of my teaching was helping students from around the globe develop strong skills in critical thinking, research literacy, and debating. True critical thinking (not simply contrarian thinking) is a skill that is becoming increasingly important, and I’m proud to have a solid, verifiable background in cutting through the noise that has pervaded the personal development industry in this regard.
A true woman of the world
I am a world traveller, a serial expat and a triple citizen: USA by birth, Peru by maternal descent and Australia by naturalisation. My early childhood was spent traveling back and forth with my family between Peru and whichever US state my American father was working in at any given time. After settling in Pennsylvania, my life in Peru became a 3-months-per-year ritual of running around with my wonderful cousins, becoming educated in Andean lore and traditions and living in a reality very far removed from the country in which I undertook my formal schooling. Bear in mind also, this was Peru in the 1980s and 1990s–a very different Peru from the one of today. Beautiful and wonderful all the same, but it was certainly more fraught in terms of the socio-political climate. Terrorist attacks were a regular occurrence and, due to my family’s political status, my sister and I were particularly at risk. Consequently, becoming resilient from a very young age was crucial. There was no other choice!
Having been raised a traveler, it was not long before my need to see more of the world took me on solo trips throughout Europe, the Middle East and Asia for the purposes of travel, exploration, study, and work. Eventually, after two years working in Vietnam, I found my way to Australia where I had planned to live and work for a year before moving to another country. I stayed for nearly 16 years, much of that time married to a remarkable person I met during our time as Parkour instructors, and raising an even more remarkable child. She is an amazing little travel buddy and we can’t wait to show her even more of this big, beautiful world.
A career of educating, facilitating, and leading
Before I started my private coaching practice in February of 2019, my major focus was in training and developing innovative methods for using technology in language teaching. I spent several years teaching in the U.S, Europe and Asia before moving into the Australian university sector, during which I also delivered a number of professional development sessions domestically and abroad. I also served as the teaching staff representative on the Academic Board in my most recent university position.
Among other factors, it was a growing desire to work one-on-one with my students that led me to pursue coaching as my primary career. I realised, after several years of coaching my students toward academic success, that what I was truly passionate about was helping them achieve deeper engagement with their internal motivations and assessment of their own study/life skills.
I owe so much of my unique coaching abilities to the lessons I learned through working and studying around the world in various cultural contexts. I am very well-versed in rapidly adjusting to the differing communication styles and support needs of my clients, having done so on a daily basis with classes of students comprising up to 15 different nationalities at a time. I actively draw upon these skills in every coaching session and workshop I conduct.
My numerous educational qualifications include a Masters degree in Applied Linguistics (University of Newcastle), which focuses heavily on how language is used to communicate across cultures, verbally and non-verbally. The expressions people use to describe themselves and the world around them reveals so much about their self-belief and their values and provide valuable material with which to explore their stories. Having a solid foundation in how people communicate allows me to help my clients connect the dots between their words and behaviours in a manner that leads to deeper insights, clarity of communication, and more efficient goal achievement.
My Life Coaching training, delivered through The Life Coaching Institute of Australia, a sister school of the Australian Institute of Professional Counsellors, comprised modules focused on a variety of therapeutic practices, psychological principles and coaching techniques. My ongoing training involves regular communication and practise sessions with coaches, counsellors and students from the LCIA and AIPC programs as well as through the International Coaching Federation (ICF).
A former serial client
There are situations in life when it is just not appropriate to rely solely upon the expertise of ones family and friends in order to crawl out of a hole. Sometimes, outside sources of support are essential. This has certainly been my experience as well. Social workers, psychiatrists, mental health nurses, counsellors…these are just some of the support sources I have drawn upon in the past to tackle issues related to depression and anxiety, partially caused by a very high risk pregnancy. I had suffered four heartbreaking miscarriages before becoming pregnant with my daughter. Those 39.7 weeks carrying her were fraught with crippling anxiety of another loss, a fear remedied in part by a dedicated mindfulness meditation practice [note: mindfulness practice is about a LOT more than just meditation]. This fear had been exacerbated by the numerous warnings (during the countless hospital visits) that I was on the verge of miscarrying my 5th pregnancy due to heavy blood loss.
Now, how can we work together to help you design your customised personal transformation curriculum? Book a free online consultation with me to find out! Looking forward to chatting with you 🙂
My relationship with the universe and everyone in it had been under threat for so long during my pregnancy journey that it was a struggle to find my place in the world again after giving birth to my daughter. It was around this time that I had to seriously revise my list of mental health professionals with whom I was comfortable speaking, as the effectiveness of each relationship varied widely. Through this revision process, I developed a much deeper understanding of the purpose, limitations, strengths and weaknesses of each relationship in terms of my needs at the time. This process also led to an epiphany–that the support I was receiving could help me feel more stable, but could only get me so far towards achieving vitality and thriving in life. I realised that what I needed was not only an action plan for fulfilment; I needed to be on the other side of the conversation. This, along with a deeper understanding of my changing career needs was the catalyst for my launch into coaching as an explicit career focus.
It is within the coaching space that I am most authentically in my element. Witnessing my clients’ breakthrough moments and helping them reach their goals is a truly rewarding experience. I come out of each session feeling uplifted, inspired and grateful for the encounter.
Now, how can we work together to help you design your customised personal transformation curriculum? Book a free online consultation with me to find out!
More about me…
You can learn more about me through my facebook and instagram posts, my Youtube channel and by emailing me directly. I would love to hear from you!
sincerely,
Life Coach Leslie V.