Gloria Hauwa Gbemudu works with people who, from the outside, seem to have figured it all out.
They have built careers, earned trust, taken on responsibility and learned how to deliver. Some are leading teams. Some are running businesses. Some have spent years proving they can be trusted with more. And yet, behind the competence, there can be a quieter struggle: the decision you keep revisiting long after you have made it, the promotion you want but are afraid to pursue, the “yes” you give when every part of you wants to say no, or the exhaustion that comes from being the person everyone knows will handle it.
And sometimes, the quiet question underneath all of it is simple: Can I trust myself?
This is where Gloria’s work becomes interesting. Not because she approaches people as problems to solve, but because she has spent much of her own career watching what happens to people beneath the surface of performance.
Her journey to that work, however, began somewhere very different.
For 16 years, Gloria built a corporate career across telecommunications, oil and gas, aviation, sales and business development. She worked in environments where results mattered, relationships mattered and the ability to navigate people could make all the difference. She learned how organisations work, watched people move into bigger roles and saw high performers become managers, discovering along the way that being excellent at something does not automatically prepare you to lead other people.
She also saw something else: people rarely bring only their professional selves to work. They bring their fears, their ambitions, their insecurities, their need to prove themselves and their assumptions about what they are allowed to want.
Perhaps that is part of what eventually drew Gloria towards coaching.
In 2017, she moved into professional coaching, bringing her corporate experience with her. The second chapter of her career would take her much closer to the person behind the role.
Today, Gloria works with senior executives, managers, business owners, high-potential professionals and leaders navigating pivotal moments in their careers. Her coaching has reached leaders across Africa, Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States, including people in Fortune 500 and other high-stakes organisations.
She is a Professional Certified Coach with the International Coaching Federation and a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach. She has completed more than 1,800 coaching hours and trained in Intelligent Leadership, Positive Intelligence and leadership development. Her work has also taken her through global coaching organisations and platforms including BetterUp, CoachHub and the Center for Creative Leadership.
The credentials tell us how far she has come. They don’t tell us much about the woman. For that, you must look at the things she notices.
One childhood memory has stayed with Gloria: playing hide-and-seek with her father.
He always found her.
It could have remained a simple memory of a little girl playing a game with her father. Instead, it became something else, a way of thinking about how adults hide. Not by disappearing, necessarily, but by waiting until they feel ready, keeping quiet, making themselves smaller or looking around for permission when they already know what they want to say.
It is a very Gloria way of seeing the world. She notices something ordinary, then looks again.
Another example comes from something far less serious: cows.
Gloria once noticed cows walking across a bridge built for cars. It was funny, but then she began thinking about what happens when you don’t occupy your own space. Something else eventually can.
The image is simple, but the idea is not. Fear can take up space. Self-doubt can. Perfectionism can. The need for approval can. And sometimes, without realising it, a person can become so accustomed to making room for everything else that there is very little room left for herself.
That is particularly relevant to the women Gloria works with.
Many are already accomplished. They have the careers, the credentials and the responsibilities. Yet they may still find themselves second-guessing decisions, overextending themselves or struggling to say no.
Gloria’s work is not about convincing them that they need to become tougher. It is about helping them understand what is already happening inside them.
A woman may think she has a confidence problem when what she really needs is to trust her own judgement. She may think she has a delegation problem when the deeper issue is the belief that everything will fall apart if she stops carrying it. She may struggle with boundaries because disappointing someone feels harder than disappointing herself.
These are difficult things to see when you are the person everyone thinks is doing just fine.
Gloria once joked that she is the “ChatGPT of my house”- the person who knows where everything is, remembers what everyone needs and somehow always has an answer. The joke works because so many women know that role: the remembering, the anticipating, the caring, the being available.
But there is something underneath the joke. There is a particular kind of exhaustion that can come from always being the person everyone depends on.
And sometimes, the person holding everything together needs somewhere to put down her own weight.
This is where Gloria’s work with women becomes bigger than conventional leadership coaching. She is not simply helping women perform better at work. She is helping them examine the relationship they have with themselves while they are doing all that performing.
Can they make a decision without needing everyone to agree? Can they set a boundary without feeling guilty? Can they pursue ambition without apologising for it? Can they lead without losing themselves in the process?
Her work with women has extended beyond individual coaching. She has supported women through initiatives including WomenLift Health’s Nigeria Leadership Journey. Through the ICF Foundation’s Council of Ambassadors, she led a team of 20 coaches providing pro-bono coaching to the University of Ibadan leadership team and also supported Teach for Nigeria, working with young teachers in rural communities.
She has also served the coaching profession through leadership within the Nigerian Chapter of ICF and contributed to coach development through training, facilitation and mentoring. She currently serves as Director of Membership.
What Gloria learns, she seems to find ways to pass on.
She started in corporate life. Then came coaching, followed by leadership development, social impact, mentoring, training and coach development. The roles have changed, but the interest in people has remained.
She continues to ask questions. She continues to learn. And she seems comfortable with the idea that growth is not something you eventually finish.
Maybe that is also why Gloria’s understanding of leadership feels different.
Leadership, in her world, is not simply about getting the promotion, leading the meeting or making the difficult decision. It is also about the person making the decision.
Those are not questions you answer with another leadership framework.
Sometimes they require something much more personal: honesty, reflection and the courage to listen to yourself.
Gloria Hauwa Gbemudu has built a career around creating that kind of space for other people. But perhaps the most interesting thing about her story is that, beneath all the credentials and professional milestones, she has remained someone who pays attention, to people, to ordinary moments, to the things we say and to the things we sometimes don’t.
Maybe that is what connects the different chapters of her life.
Not one job title. Not one neat definition of leadership. But a continuing curiosity about what makes people who they are, and what becomes possible when they stop seeing themselves as a problem to be fixed.
Perhaps that is what makes her work matter. She is not giving women another version of who they should become. She is creating the space for them to hear themselves again, and trust their own voice.
