It’s been a minute since we’ve heard anything about Prince Harry’s work as Chief Impact Officer at BetterUp. Last year, BetterUp’s wild growth stabilized and plateaued, which meant that the life-coaching company had to do layoffs for something like 16% of their staff. Given the aggressive expansion of the company throughout North America and Europe in the years prior, it felt like a perfectly normal scale-down as BetterUp figured out exactly what kind of services they needed to offer to their clients. Most of their clientele is made up of Fortune 500 companies and high-achieving tech types. Well, BetterUp is still chugging along, and now they’re offering “BetterUp University” which will offer degrees in life coaching. The Mail’s Richard Eden used this news to point out that Prince Harry isn’t very scholarly.
Academic success has not been a strong point for Prince Harry, who struggled at Eton College – leaving with a D in A-level geography and a B in art, bypassing university to head straight to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst as an officer cadet. It is a choice he says that he’s never regretted. Yet despite his scholastic shortcomings, the Duke of Sussex is an integral part of a team creating its own ‘life-coaching’ university, I can disclose.
Harry is third in command of the US coaching platform BetterUp and was appointed the company’s ‘chief impact officer’ on a reported salary of more than $1 million in March 2021 to focus on ‘preventative mental fitness’. The Silicon Valley mental health firm flogs its mentoring and counselling packages to companies across the globe and offers the chance to book time with the firm’s experts.
But now I hear the company has plans to launch an academic institution called the BetterUp University which will offer degrees in life coaching online. In newly filed papers, the San Francisco-based outfit has applied to the US Patent and Trademark Office to register its BetterUp University idea. The application states the university will be ‘providing online educational forums in the field of life coaching, professional coaching, personal development coaching, and career development coaching.’
Despite the Prince declaring that he intended ‘to help create impact in people’s lives’ with his role at the coaching firm, he was criticised for not appearing in one of their free online livestreams at a San Francisco summit back in April. Instead, he appeared at a session called Beyond Burnout: Transforming C-Level Stress into Strength – to which tickets went for £1,200.
What does this have to do with Harry again? Nothing. He’s not going to teach the life-coaching classes and he’s not going to be handing out accreditations. This sounds like BetterUp needing to hire qualified life coaches and putting together their own system to train life coaches. Which is just a reminder that life-coaching isn’t therapy and that BetterUp people are not trained psychiatrists or psychologists. BetterUp’s goal is to help Fortune 500 companies’ worker bees be more productive.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid.
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- San Francisco, CA – Prince Harry, ‘chief impact officer’ at coaching platform BetterUp, appears onstage with BetterUp co-founder and CEO Alexi Robichaux at the ‘BetterUp Uplift’ two-day event at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, CA. Harry and Alexi spoke for 40 minutes onstage at the event. They discussed children, International Women’s Day and their respective careers. BetterUp is based in San Francisco. Pictured: Prince Harry BACKGRID USA 8 MARCH 2023 USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- San Francisco, CA – Prince Harry, ‘chief impact officer’ at coaching platform BetterUp, appears onstage with BetterUp co-founder and CEO Alexi Robichaux at the ‘BetterUp Uplift’ two-day event at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, CA. Harry and Alexi spoke for 40 minutes onstage at the event. They discussed children, International Women’s Day and their respective careers. BetterUp is based in San Francisco. Pictured: Prince Harry BACKGRID USA 8 MARCH 2023 USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- San Francisco, CA – Prince Harry, ‘chief impact officer’ at coaching platform BetterUp, appears onstage with BetterUp co-founder and CEO Alexi Robichaux at the ‘BetterUp Uplift’ two-day event at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, CA. Harry and Alexi spoke for 40 minutes onstage at the event. They discussed children, International Women’s Day and their respective careers. BetterUp is based in San Francisco. Pictured: Prince Harry BACKGRID USA 8 MARCH 2023 USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- San Francisco, CA – Prince Harry, ‘chief impact officer’ at coaching platform BetterUp, appears onstage with BetterUp co-founder and CEO Alexi Robichaux at the ‘BetterUp Uplift’ two-day event at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, CA. Harry and Alexi spoke for 40 minutes onstage at the event. They discussed children, International Women’s Day and their respective careers. BetterUp is based in San Francisco. Pictured: Prince Harry BACKGRID USA 8 MARCH 2023 USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- San Francisco, CA – Prince Harry, ‘chief impact officer’ at coaching platform BetterUp, appears onstage with BetterUp co-founder and CEO Alexi Robichaux at the ‘BetterUp Uplift’ two-day event at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, CA. Harry and Alexi spoke for 40 minutes onstage at the event. They discussed children, International Women’s Day and their respective careers. BetterUp is based in San Francisco. Pictured: Prince Harry BACKGRID USA 8 MARCH 2023 USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
Harry left salt isle and they thought he wouldn’t be able to do anything. Well he has a few jobs plus all his charity works. I’m willing bet money that if Peg had to leave and start over he would be curled up in a fetal position crying. Harry is doing just fine for himself.
IMHO the best part of Harry getting a job with BetterUp is that he gets to see what a bona fide employment contract looks like. He was in the military before, but I’m not sure what happened to his salary since he was living in a room in Chuck’s house that his horsey wife turned into a closet. Can you imagine signing up to do a job, and just take it on faith that you might get some compensation, depending on Chuck’s whims?
I’m so glad for Harry, I don’t know about degrees in life coaching…I think it’s that coach Mike on the Dr Phil show.
Richard Eden is a weirdo.
He really is. Over the past few weeks he has written nearly a column a day about Harry. Do you recall the video where he nearly cried just after Harry/Meghan left? He said it felt like “a boyfriend was breaking up with us (the UK) and he said he was sad. Hes diabolical.
The Rota really did start acting like a vicious, jealous ex-boyfriend after the Sussexes fled for their lives. But dang, he really said the quiet part out loud, huh?
The current state of parasocial relationships between UK media and the royal family are toxic, abusive, inappropriate, and a sign these “journalists” are deeply mentally unwell.
Also Richard Eden shows the entire world here what an ableist piece of crap he is, by blaming Harry and mocking him for the dyslexia he was born with, that his dogsh-t father refused to get him help with (unlike Andrew who got Beatrice help for hers)…
Eden n’ pals: If they don’t like it here they can leave!
Also Eden n’ pals: It’s like a boyfriend is breaking up with us.
Lmaooooooooo
… as is Maureen Eyers.
The most intelligent person in my team is dyslexic. Dyslexia often occurs together with giftedness. For example, Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci and Charles Darwin were among many other people with severe dyslexia. The only thing that people with dyslexia need is targeted and special support for their reading and spelling skills, informed and helpful parents and teachers, and psychological support so that they can overcome the often merciless stigmatization as “stupid” and fight back.
Maureen/richardEden has carved out a role for himself of parasite on H&M’s life. I believe he has notifications on for every aspect of everything even remotely associated with them so he can write and talk about hit and earn his coins. Afterall, the dog food he gets from kitty’s brother cant sustain him, even as a poor-ass brit who knows his place.
Good grief. Regardless of how tenuous the connection they got to turn out that story huh? Perhaps next they’ll write about how Harry doesn’t have any IT accreditation but better up is getting new servers? I really wonder for the average person in England that is neither Team Sussex or Team monarchy, if they wonder why they still see articles like this, and hear these articles discussed in their morning shows rolling into 2025. Do they think Harry and Meghan are driving these increasingly thin connections?
Just a heads up for my neurodivergent peeps- life coaching doesn’t work the same for us. It can be incredibly helpful if you find a life coach who is either neurodivergent themselves or who specializes in life coaching people who are neurodivergent.
Our brains work differently so our life coaches need to work differently too. There is nothing wrong or shameful about that.
Offering educational forums doesn’t mean they will conferring degrees and getting accreditation isn’t easy. BetterUp has collaborations with several universities – maybe the degrees (if there will be any) will come from there?
I love how Charles is all worried about Harry’s financial status and here we have him making $1 million a year.
Yeah, the idiot needs to learn to read. The patent application doesn’t say anything at all about degrees or even certificates.
Peanuts compared to what the King gets. Especially now they are putting windfarms out at sea.
I often wonder what happened to make Eden such a shit stain on humanity.. what a sad little life he must have.
It strikes me as odd that Eden put quotation marks around “life coaching” — but not around “university “.
Can anyone, even Trump or BetterUP call themselves a University?
As a kid, I remember hearing my mom talk about the challenging process an HBCU was committing to as they shifted from being accredited as a College to being accredited as a University. Perhaps the critical issue here is the accreditation body— not what they choose to call themselves?
Blithe, I doubt they will be accredited, and I’m sure they’ll explain that if someone wants to take their courses.
It makes sense that they BetterUp is doing this. It’s a great way to get new employees when needed who are trained. I think we’ll need to wait until they actually start this up. It sounds interesting.
It does sound interesting — and a promising way to get more coaches trained with a more consistent set of skills. I’m definitely up for learning more about this.
In the U.S., anyone can set up and call something a university, and several big companies have done this, ie. McDonald University is what the fast food restaurant calls its training program for restaurant owners and managers.
However, in the U.S. academic world, a college is generally a higher education institution that grants a single type of degree. A University is a much larger institution that grants degrees in many different fields. For example, I taught at a college that offered bachelor, masters, and doctoral degrees only in several business fields–business administration, finance, taxation, information systems, marketing, etc. It had about 4,500 students. And as a student after high school, I attended the University of Michigan, which has a College of Education, College of Business Administration, College of Liberal Arts, College of Engineering, College of Medicine, etc. (Note that some universities call these “Schools”, such as the School of Engineering, etc.) U of Mich has about 50,000 students.
But, the important thing is that both types of institutions are accredited equally by the regional accreditation organizations and their degrees are considered equal. In fact, there are some very prestigious liberal arts colleges that are considered much more rigorous and harder to get into than the big universities. Examples are Wellesley, Williams, Vassar, etc.
Is Maureen okay?
How long has it been since PH was at Eton and not doing well academically because of problems following the loss of his mum? Interesting how he glosses over the fact that PH graduated from Sandhurst and did well with military training and learning to fly complicated machinery.
Richard Branson left school with on O level, school doesn’t suit some people.
Harry still did better than Uncle Edward with 2 D’s and 1 C and who nevertheless was taken by Cambridge when everyone else needs to have straight A+ to be admitted.
Three or 4 As at A level for state school children and 5 or 6 from places like Eton. I was in conversation of a group of Mathematicians at Oxford. BTW people from state schools are more likely to get ‘firsts,’ they have to be cleverer in the first place to get there.
This was before they did A+s
Eden is obsessed with Harry and Meghan and constantly pushing the ’strip the titles’ and ‘remove them from the Line of Succession’ narrative. He has researchers monitoring every corporate filing for Archewell, ARO and any organisations linked to the Sussexes, which is how he discovered the Better Up development.
He’s a malicious, vindictive KP twunt.
agreed. BetterUp was a good idea, but now it’s devolving into a company latching onto a wave of awareness for mental health to let randoms offer life advice and “therapy” with no training in the guise of mental health. working in corporate, i have no trust in BetterUp to actually help and is a bandaid for employers to offer support for horrible work conditions. we don’t need this, we need more funding into training programs for licensed mental health professionals. Harry needs to dissociate from this.
Not sure it was ever a good idea, long-term. Agree Harry should dissociate.
Look, the article is trash, but personally, I’d be looking at getting out of this. Unaccredited “life coaching” degrees is getting into murky territory I wouldn’t want a part of.
agreed. BetterUp was a good idea, but now it’s devolving into a company latching onto a wave of awareness for mental health to let randoms offer life advice and “therapy” with no training in the guise of mental health. working in corporate, i have no trust in BetterUp to actually help and is a bandaid for employers to offer support for horrible work conditions. we don’t need this, we need more funding into training programs for licensed mental health professionals. Harry needs to dissociate from this.
The patent application says nothing about degrees. That part was thrown in by Eden. Don’t take anything he says as true.
I have no trust in life coaches, as I know three, and their personal lives and finances are a mess. Two of them are at least good performers, the third one is just pathetic. And now the term life coach is tainted for me forever.
Those gutter rats often say Harry and Meghan are whiners,when the biggest whiners are them. They cannot keep the Sussexes name out of their mouth or out of their activities.
I admire Harry and Meghan, but ngl, the life-coaching and (for-profit?) BetterUP university sound kinda scammy.