Cynthia Pong

I've spent 15+ years working with professionals navigating high-pressure workplaces and organizations trying to build better ones.What I've learned: what worked before doesn't cut it anymore.I'm the Founder and CEO of Embrace Change, a multiple award-winning training and coaching firm specializing in leadership development, employee engagement, and workforce wellness. We partner with government agencies, mission-driven organizations, Fortune 500 companies, and tech startups during periods of transition, crisis, or strategic growth. Together, we build workplaces that are resilient and accountable, without sacrificing performance or people.I started my career as a public defender. I met my clients on the worst days of their lives. The work demanded precision under pressure, sharp judgment in high-stakes environments, and the ability to navigate complex systems with serious consequences.After my own reckoning with burnout, I founded Embrace Change—first as a coaching practice supporting mid-career women of color exhausted by extractive workplaces. That work revealed a pattern: individual burnout goes hand-in-hand with organizational dysfunction. Our practice evolved into a training and coaching firm offering wrap-around services for leadership development, employee engagement, and workplace wellbeing.My legal background means I operate easily in high-scrutiny environments with real constraints: oversight and accountability, limited resources, entrenched systems, complexity and nuance. We build custom solutions that actually work in the real world.As the work expanded, we encountered a critical gap: organizations need coaches who operate with rigor, cultural competence, and integrity inside complex, high-stakes environments. So we created the Embrace Change Coaching Certification program (ECCC)—an ICF-accredited coach training designed for coaches serving BIPOC professionals in mission-driven institutions.I'm also a Forbes Contributor on Leadership Strategies and a freq