Sara Hegy is an award-winning scientist and a leadership coach who is dedicated to helping other leaders achieve their full potential while being fulfilled. She grew up in an environment where producing results is a measure of self-worth. Hence, she always struggled to apply self-development teachings until coaching helped her gain clarity on her struggles and gave her tools to overcome them. Through harnessing the power of her mind and taking effective action, she graduated with honors, won a scientific prize, and her findings raised a$2.7 million research grant. She's the founder of her coaching business that globally serves. Her mission: Passionate leaders who create massively and live a life that they love.
Sara Hegy, PhD and Leadership Coach
Introduce yourself! Please tell us about you and your life, so we can get to know you better.
I’m Sara Hegy, born and raised in sunny Cairo, Egypt, to two hardworking, dedicated parents who wanted to have the best future for their kids in everything they were committed to doing. My parents believed that education elevates the soul and creates a future of opportunity for its holder. That’s why they raised me to believe in the power of education and their parenting led to my immigration to Germany in 2012 to study for my master's degree. The moment I left my family house in Egypt was the moment that every value and strong quality I knew in me was tested. In Germany, I spent 8 years seemingly doing mediocrely bad. I viewed my master's degree as not up to my expectations of myself. I was amongst the top in my class during my Bachelor's degree and I fell from grace (excellent to very good). The reader might think I’m joking at this stage, but funny enough I’m not!
A few years back in high school, I was an A student, never an A+, even though I was raised on literally only study, so most of the day every day, I was just studying or attempting to study but, in fact, distracting myself with my thoughts because of being tired and bored. My parents were very strict and they didn't know much about having fun and enjoying life so they were not able to help us create sturdy healthy routines of work and play. And without the best grades, there was no chance for immersive play so, I was stuck with my books or watching TV for most of my life.
I was always told: ‘If only you studied harder, if only you focused more’ and all that I could believe was if only you were good enough. So, once I got inspired in University and got very curious about science, discoveries, and fundamental processes that shape our existence, I had incredible success and I wasn’t going to leave that behind. Long story short, I believed for the longest time in Germany that this passion, curiosity, and ability to succeed had left me.
Little did I know, that those challenges I faced were necessary for my growth and development into the success I later caused myself to step into. From getting stuck to burnout to depression to publishing a first-author academic paper in the best journal worldwide and being awarded a doctoral degree with the grade excellent with highest honors from one of Europe's best universities in sciences. My mentor jokingly said: I have never seen somebody cry so much out of joy. Looking back, those were the tears of healing, mixed with vibes of inspiration and relief. It’s the experience of the universe patting me on my shoulder as I claim my power back.
Now, from the heart of Germany in Berlin, I am living a life doing absolutely what I love, working alongside organizations and privately to support humans to develop their leadership and performance in any area of life they are dealing with. It all lies within the power of education and awareness. The secret sauce is simple but not easy, between where you are and where you want to be are thoughts to think, words to speak, opportunities to create, past to heal, and actions to execute. I provide the people with the science to understand and mental nurture to heal, and then we create systems to support their growth and provide them with the practical action steps to accelerate their performance.
My passions are meditation, being educated on the science of achievement, spirituality, and the art of living a fulfilled life, and reflecting in the universe: its duality and connectedness. My hobbies are growing plants, calligraphy, playing with kids, organizing events, and dancing to high beats.
Can you provide a brief overview of your business - GenX Leadership Academy and its core offerings?
GenX Leadership Academy by Sara Hegy is a company that offers human development services to individuals and companies to accelerate the human factor’s performance to maximize their leadership potential and their satisfaction with their quality of life.
You talk a lot about leadership, and we often understand that leadership is something to develop at work, but what connects leadership with the quality of life?
To lead is often referred to as to act as a guide; show the way so it implies having a position in advance of others. But in reality, leadership is the process of interacting with one’s self in the level of thoughts, feelings, actions, one’s environment, one’s surrounding people, and one’s resources in a way that creates the outcome.
If you think about it, you’re always thinking about something that you want to achieve in any area of your life, so you’re always thinking and taking action whether you like it or not. In other words, you’re always leading yourself, your environment, and the people around you to reach a goal. Exactly like this interview, you’re leading me with your questions and I’m leading myself to answer your questions and working in a team alongside you to deliver this interview. We are right now doing the process of leadership.
What doesn’t work most of the time is that people are unable to lead effectively, which means they are unable to reach desired outcomes because something about the process is not working. At GenX Leadership Academy, we develop services to help people get to the bottom of the factors that aren’t working and get them on track to have their processes in the different areas work such that they are satisfied with how they perform the process and cause satisfying results that reassure them on their quest of being alive that they are capable, resourceful, enough and powerful. Those experiences then lead to a dramatic improvement in the quality of people’s lives and leave the decision-makers with a strong return on their investment in their teams.
What sets your products/services apart from others in the market? What is your unique selling proposition?
At GenX Leadership Academy, we wholeheartedly care about supporting people with science-grounded tools to get their best experience of being alive. We serve bright minds with authenticity, nurture, and passion. Our quest for excellence and innovations has our products and services always progressive and simplified. Our core offerings include workshops and leadership development training programs for highly committed leaders in both private and corporate settings alongside a line of products that help their customers clear their mindset and reaffirm great thoughts throughout their day.
Who is your target audience, and how do you tailor your products/services to meet their needs?
Our target audience is progressive open and highly committed leaders who value success greatly and are naturally driven to give their projects keen attention and perform with dedication. We foster environments of synergistic teamwork and dynamic performance in our group program offerings.
Tell us about your greatest career achievement so far.
My greatest career achievement as a coach has been my client’s experiences and acknowledgments. I made a declaration 2 years ago that every heart I touch heals and every person I coach steps into a golden future of possibilities. Having my client's experience makes my heart sing. It is also a particularly gratifying experience having earned several times the best leadership coach nomination for the years 2022 and 2023 on several listings.
My greatest career achievement as a scientist has been in my Ph.D. defense, standing there proudly with a lot of grace and gratitude after having made it in the marathon of making a big scientific advancement that I won a scientific prize.
How do you leverage your online presence to connect with customers? What is your digital marketing strategy?
My strategy has been to stay in alignment with my values. As the lead decision maker in my company, I am at best when I am being vulnerable and proactively sharing my life vividly. When I speak, I’m speaking to move, touch, and inspire you even if I’m going through a challenging time, there’s always a lesson to be learned for me that I comfortably and happily share with my audience. I’m looking to partner with highly talented service providers who have the same values in the delivery of their services to help me expand my online and offline presence.
If you could change one thing about your industry, what would it be and why?
I’d have coaching be an education to attend at school and in every academic institution, every private business, every organization, and every household. I’d have curriculums on fostering freedom of the mind, self-love, self-belief, acknowledgment, teamwork, and the process of decision-making to enable leaders to be visionary, profoundly capable of leading themselves and others, by being proactive, resilient to change, and fulfilling outstanding performance measures. The natural consequence of that will be individuals who move the needle for their societies and create sustainable outcomes globally, for their environment and the planet.
A visualization diagram of the process of coaching to develop leadership. Between the desired outcome and the current reality, there’s always a performance gap that is filled through the coaching process, acquiring knowledge and strategies to bridge the gap to the desired outcome more efficiently.
Tell us about a pivotal moment in your life that brought you to where you are today.
It was on the 23rd of February 2019, it has been months since the beginning of my quest to find some professional help throughout my depression. I went to this women’s career workshop and there was this wheel of life exercise to help you evaluate where you stand in terms of your satisfaction in the different areas of your life. I scored a perfect pentagon at 3 out of 10. A few minutes later, we did this exercise to visualize how your next year would look like if it was an amazing year. I closed my eyes and for the first time in many years I saw myself winning at my own game, I saw myself finishing the PhD with the highest honors, as a first author in Nature and I experienced being at an elevated place in my life. On this day, my life has been altered forever because I walked away from this workshop with an offer from the coach who led it to support me throughout the next 6 months which I accepted without any second thoughts.
In those 6 months, I transformed into this whole new person who is alive, confident, and grateful instead of fearful, doubtful, and depressed. I finally got why my life wasn’t working before and it wasn’t because I was doing something wrong. I had the vision but I just couldn’t feel in the steps. Having my coach helped me clear my self-doubt and fear, and instead gave me new tools and strategies to approach my challenges in a different way that got me faster results and more efficient outcomes.
There’s an unwritten law in the Universe that says: when there’s a will, there is a way. We tend to think that the way is in the strategies but, it’s not accurate. Think of the seed, the seed needs to be planted in a good enabling soil and water before it transforms into a seedling. The soil represents your mental space and the water represents the nurturing routine that you have through education and knowledge. But what’s often overlooked is that there must be an event that happens in the universe before the process starts. This event is the contact of the seed with the good soil. If this event is left to probability, it will take a very long time until a seed transforms into a seedling. That’s why humans have developed ways to plow the bad soil, optimize the soil conditions, and cultivate seeds to maximize the outcome of transformation into a plant that serves humanity.
Similarly, working with a coach activates this plowing process in the brain to clear the disempowering thoughts, stuck experiences, and heavy feelings that lead to creating the perfect soiling conditions for the coachee’s thoughts (seeds) to transform into seedlings through the knowledge, awareness, process of education and execution of effective action to grow more efficiently
So on further reflection, I hope that the reader walks away with a new insight that the way is through the people who educate and enable you so that you feel in the steps then, you rise to lead yourself, others, and the environment into your desired pathway to results.
There are many coaches out there, do you have any recommendations on how to choose the right coach?
That’s a brilliant question indeed, I always refer to the definition of help when I answer this question: help is to give or provide what is necessary to accomplish a task or satisfy a need; contribute strength or means to; render assistance to; cooperate effectively with. So, if you end up working with a person who doesn’t satisfy that need for you, thank them and move on to the next person, life is too short to wait another day and tolerate our human suffering.
I also find it absolutely necessary to work with an expert who is vulnerable and share their experience along the way as they guides you. It is very easy to give expert advice but it’s way more challenging to walk the walk and have an elevated way of listening and speaking with ourselves and the people around us. So when the expert you’re working with has those qualities, it means they will be able to pave the way for you to develop yourself as well.
If people are interested in working with you, what are the steps they should take?
It depends, if you’re an individual, I’d strongly recommend you get in touch with me, then book a coaching session to discover the experience for yourself. We’d then take a look at what’s not working and if we are a fit and you’re ready to get to work, I’d offer you to work with me in a 1:1 setting or a group setting, depending on your preference.
If you’re a decision-maker in a company or an organization, we’d talk about the biggest challenges to your staff members, and where you’d like to see improved performance and better results, then I’d write you a proposal about how I think your staff’s development roadmap should look like. Upon mutual agreement, we start working together to fulfill your measures of success as a decision-maker.
