We built what we kept wishing existed.
The research on instructional coaching is some of the clearest in education. Consistent, specific, personalized coaching is one of the highest-leverage investments a district can make in teacher development.
And yet most teachers report receiving little to no consistent coaching. Not because districts don't value coaching. Because the financial and structural math doesn't work. Coaching is expensive, and the coaches you have get pulled into meetings, coverage, paperwork, evaluation cycles. The teachers who most need support end up least likely to get it.
Lydia Freeman Kumar spent seven years in K–12 classrooms and five years at Public Impact designing professional development systems for schools nationwide. She understood the problem from both sides as a teacher who rarely had a coach, and as a PD designer who watched well-intentioned systems fall short at the classroom level.
Kinwise Coach is her answer.
Our Mission
To make world-class instructional coaching the standard for every educator.
Our Vision
We envision a future where every teacher grows consistently, supported by coaching that meets them where they are, without requiring their district to choose between breadth and depth of support.
What We Believe
Trust by Design: Consent is the architecture. Teachers own their data and control what gets shared. Coaching only works when teachers feel safe, so we built safety into the foundation of how the product works.
Radical Growth: We coach, we don't score. Real professional growth requires separating development from evaluation. Teachers need a space where they can be honest about struggle without it affecting their employment, so we built that space.
Collective Excellence: The expertise your teachers need already exists in your district. Our job is to surface it and connect it. When one teacher figures something out, every teacher should eventually benefit.
Universal Support: Every educator deserves access to coaching , not because they're struggling, but because they're professionals doing complex, demanding work. Elite support shouldn't depend on which school you work in or which district has budget this year.
Actionable Insight: Patterns, not play-by-plays. Teachers see their own growth clearly. District leaders understand what their staff actually needs: without surveillance, without judgment, without data being used in ways teachers didn't consent to.
About Lydia
Lydia Freeman Kumar is the founder and CEO of Kinwise. She taught K–12 for seven years, including at KIPP ENC as a TFA corps member, before joining Public Impact, where she spent five years supporting innovative school models and designing professional development systems for school districts across the country.
She started Kinwise Coach because she'd seen what happened when coaching was done well and how rarely it reached the teachers who needed it most. Kinwise Coach is her attempt to solve the structural problem and financial constraint.
She's completing her Executive MBA at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School and is based in Durham, North Carolina.
Want to see how this works for your district?
We're accepting a small number of pilot partners for spring 2026. If you're a district or school leader interested in bringing Kinwise Coach to your teachers, let's talk.
Connect with us using the form to the right or schedule a call below.