LSE Policy Career Coaching Programme

LSE Research and Innovation is offering 15 policy career staff the opportunity to engage in one-to-one professional coaching, alongside cohort-based learning and peer exchange, focused on policy engagement, career development and progression led by Dr Bridget Sealey and Stephen Meek.

About the Programme

As part of the Research for the World Strategy, the School is committed to supporting training and development opportunities for colleagues at all career stages, developing training for research leadership, and fostering an equitable, diverse and inclusive environment to support and deliver excellent and collaborative research and innovation activities.

 The LSE Policy Career Coaching Programme offers a targeted programme for colleagues on LSE’s policy career track, which will enable you to holistically evaluate your career, identify barriers and enablers to your progression, and strategize next steps to achieve your aspired career pathway. It will explore actions to help you fulfil your personal and disciplinary goals whilst also meeting the School’s priorities. Ultimately, it aims to facilitate a productive, inclusive, stimulating and positive research culture at LSE and to nurture our talented researchers to produce world-class research with real-world impact and become leaders of the social sciences.

Programme Highlights

• Individual Coaching: 4 x 1 to 1.5 hour personalised coaching sessions
• Launch Workshop: 2-hour session to meet the coaching team and your cohort, learn about the programme, and set intentions and reflect on initial questions to build your action plan
• Asynchronous Learning Hub: Access to a dedicated site hosting the programme materials
• Email Support: Ongoing email support between sessions

What to Expect

Coaching sessions will combine supportive questioning with relevant mentoring insight. The emphasis will be on helping participants to reflect, gain clarity and shape their own direction, while also drawing—where helpful and invited—on sector-specific experience of policy, research and higher education. This blended approach is particularly useful when thinking through career opportunities, challenges and next steps in policy fellow roles both within or external to LSE.

• Confidentiality. Coaching conversations will remain confidential to the individual coachee.
• Allocation of coaches. Participants will be allocated to Bridget Sealey or Stephen Meek based on: even distribution of workload; and best fit with individual development needs. 
• Raising issues. Participants may raise concerns or request reallocation via the programme lead or the Senior Research Culture Manager.

About Dr Bridget Sealey

Bridget has a diverse, 20-year professional background in higher education, research and knowledge exchange. Currently, she is the Director of Sealey Associates Ltd, which she established in 2020. Since 2021, she has delivered high-quality policy engagement support programmes and evaluations for various organisations, including the Research England-funded Yorkshire and the Humber Policy Engagement Research Network and Northumbria University. Bridget also led the Economic and Social Research Council’s national Postdoctoral Development programme between 2021 and 2025. She was a Learning Associate at Capabilities in Academic Policy Engagement/Nesta and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Exeter. In addition, Dr. Sealey is actively involved in sector group memberships, including the EDI Caucus Stakeholder Group and the Knowledge Exchange Concordat Advisory Committee. 

About Stephen Meek

Stephen is an expert in the translation of evidence into policy, and an experienced evaluator. At the University of Nottingham, he set up and led the Institute for Policy and Engagement, supporting academics to engage with policymakers and other audiences.  Prior to that Stephen worked for 25 years as a civil servant, holding senior posts in HM Treasury and board level roles in the Department for Education (DfE) and the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), as well as spells in local government. In these roles he led the development and delivery of major policy as well as strategic roles spending review negotiations and managing departmental change programmes. Stephen was Head of the Policy Profession for MHCLG and led work to develop Masters and Apprentice qualification in policymaking for the civil service.  He was Chair of the Universities Policy Engagement Network from 2019-2021 and was an Impact Advisor for REF 2021, Main Panel C.