The Academic Coaching Podcast

Catherine Pacilio, an executive function and academic coach and founder of Pacilio Coaching, joins Gretchen to unpack what happened when she and fellow Anti-Boring Learning Lab member Robin turned the science of learning into a five-day summer study skills intensive for middle and high school students. Catherine shares what worked, what students responded to, and what surprised her about teaching study skills online — includi...

Frankie Trevor, a senior at California State University, Sacramento and former academic coaching client of Gretchen Wegner, joins Gretchen to reflect on how coaching skills can take years to fully take hold. Frankie went from a 1.39 GPA and deep shame about his grades to the Dean's Honor Roll and Presidential Honor Roll, with plans to take the LSAT and pursue law school. They talk honestly about his initial resistance to coaching, ...

Suzy Evans and Dr. Shane Saeed, instructional coordinators in Colorado's St. Vrain Valley School District, have spent eight years building a different kind of professional learning experience: a voluntary Science of Learning Collaborative, coordinator-led and increasingly teacher-powered. In this conversation, they share what happened when Gretchen brought her working memory mini-lesson to their teachers—and how the "parking ...

In this episode, Gretchen talks with Patrick Quinlan — actor, improviser, executive function coach, and dad — about the moment he realized his longtime way of working had become unsustainable, and in some cases too comfortable, for the families he served. Patrick shares his path from theater and tutoring into EF coaching, and why becoming a parent forced him to rethink in-home sessions, LA traffic, and the emotional lab...

In this episode, Gretchen talks with Sarah Ward — speech-language pathologist and Co-Director of Cognitive Connections — about why task completion is its own executive function skill, separate from starting. Gretchen opens up about her own struggle to finish things (yes, including a song she wrote herself about it), and Sarah brings decades of clinical experience into genuinely tiny, doable tweaks for classroom teachers...

In this episode, Gretchen sits down with Seth Perler — executive function coach and creator of TEFOS, the Executive Function Online Summit, now in its 8th year. Gretchen expected to unpack what TEFOS has taught Seth over the years, and they do — but the conversation also goes further, into Seth's personal story and the single biggest skill that turned him from a self-described "lazy failure" into an internationally know...

In this episode, Gretchen talks with Cathleen Pittman — academic and executive function coach, organizational specialist, and founder of Our Learning Studio — about building a tutoring business, selling it, and then facing a sudden cancer diagnosis that made "what happens to my business if something happens to me?" feel anything but hypothetical. They dig into what actually makes a solo coaching or tutoring practice mor...

In this inaugural episode, Gretchen talks with Susannah Cole — executive function coach, educational diagnostician, and co-author of Flexible Mindsets in Schools — about the gap EF coaching fills and why school was never really designed to close it. Inspired by NPR's Wild Card, this first conversation runs three rounds of questions across three chapters of Susannah's life, going deeper than a typical interview. They tra...