Interview: Sarah Felice — Eighteen Years of Career Coaching and One Belief That Never Changed

There are careers that are chosen, and there are careers that choose you. For Sarah Felice, Founder, Principal and Director of Sarah Felice Career Coaching, the distinction is clear. She has known since childhood that she wanted to do the work she does today, shaped in large part by watching her father, Frederick Davidson, build the outplacement industry in Australia from its very beginning in 1983. What followed was not a shortcut but a deliberate, experience-first journey that has produced one of Australia’s most respected senior executive career coaches, with a specialisation in coaching female executives and a philosophy as straightforward as it is powerful.

The Origin Story: A Father, an Industry, and a Calling That Waited

Sarah’s path into coaching began long before she entered the profession. Her father, Frederick Davidson, founded the outplacement industry in Australia in 1983, and from a young age she understood, even if she could not yet fully articulate it, that his work was important and meaningful. “I wanted to do what he did,” she reflects simply. “I didn’t fully understand it when I was young, but I knew it mattered.”

In her twenties she hoped to work alongside him, though that opportunity never came. What she received instead was something equally valuable: a front-row education in what genuine career coaching looks like when it is done with integrity. Her father went on to become an Industry Board Chair and Executive Coach before his death in late 2021, a loss she carries with quiet gravity. His influence on her career choice was profound, though entering the outplacement industry at thirty-eight was, she is clear, entirely her own decision, one he actively supported.

That combination of inherited conviction and hard-won personal experience gave Sarah a foundation that is unusual even among coaches with decades of practice behind them. Her coaching philosophy reflects it in its simplicity and its depth: “I see the best in people and I enable them to see the best in themselves.”

A Career Built on Experience Before Everything Else

Sarah understood early that business experience was not optional for the kind of coaching she wanted to do. It was essential. After university, she spent her twenties largely in recruitment, before joining Arthur Andersen in 1998 to manage their Victorian and Tasmanian Graduate Recruitment programme. That role, and the mentorship she received during a demanding first year from a key mentor, Robyn Worthington, shaped her professional identity in ways she still acknowledges directly. She stayed until the firm’s closure in 2002.

After seven years in graduate recruitment and a brief return to talent acquisition, she joined the outplacement industry in 2008 when, as she puts it, the timing was right. Two years later, in 2010, she founded Sarah Felice Career Coaching when a client asked her to work with someone they were exiting from their business. In 2018 she joined Prima Careers as Executive Coach and Lead Consultant, a partnership she values greatly, while continuing to grow Sarah Felice Career Coaching alongside it.

A particularly significant period came in 2017, when she spent a full year focused entirely on her own business, her coaching practice, her writing, and her research. “That is when I fully developed who I was as a coach.” It shows in how she is described by those who know her work: the Whole Person Coach, Strategic Partner, Trust Builder, Invested Advocate, Perceptive Listener, and Confidence Builder.

Coaching Methodology: Tailored, Structured, and Built Around the Individual

As a career coach working with senior executive professionals, Sarah structures her programmes at Sarah Felice Career Coaching around three core pillars: Evaluation, Preparation to go to Market, and Active Job Search. Each pillar contains multiple components, and no two client engagements are the same. She works across multiple industries and tailors every service to the individual in front of her.

Practical deliverables such as a winning resume and a strong LinkedIn profile are part of the picture. But so is the deeper work: supporting leaders whose confidence needs rebuilding before they are ready to begin a job search, and working with senior professionals who are not seeking a new role at all but want to develop their leadership presence and self-understanding.

Her use of Birkman assessment tools adds a further layer of insight, helping clients develop a clearer and more accurate picture of themselves as leaders and of the environments in which they are most likely to thrive. A testimonial from a senior executive she coached, who subsequently became a Healthcare CEO, captures the essence of her approach: “Her insights supported me to evolve my view of myself as a leader, and how I can ensure that I have the right environment to support my own growth, development and success.”

Why a Career Coach Who Stops Learning Falls Behind

Sarah’s perspective on ongoing professional development is grounded in five decades of observation, from watching her father navigate the earliest years of the outplacement industry in Australia to managing the disruptions that AI is now introducing across the entire sector.

“The more expert you become, the more you see that you still need to learn.” It is a position that reflects both intellectual humility and professional seriousness. The job market shifts constantly. Technology is changing the nature of job search at a pace that demands active engagement from every coach who wants to remain genuinely useful to their clients. “Our clients look to us to help them upskill within their job search,” she says. “It is essential that we stay ahead.”

Final Insight: Persistence Beats Everything

Sarah closes with a conviction she shares with her father and has spent three decades watching proved true. “In any job search, persistence beats everything: brains, education, and talent.”

The professionals who succeed are not always the most qualified or the best connected. They are the ones who show up consistently, who network even when it is uncomfortable, who refine their approach after rejection, and who maintain momentum even when nothing visible seems to be happening. “Too many people wait for the perfect moment or consider giving up too soon.” The ones who persist, who do the work not only when they feel inspired but especially when they do not, are the ones who succeed.

It is advice she has given countless times over eighteen years. It is also, unmistakably, the way she has built her own career.

To connect with Sarah Felice or learn more about her executive career coaching programmes, visit sarahfelicecareercoaching.com or connect with her on LinkedIn.