The Coaching Skills That Reach Young People Also Build Better Leaders
September 21, 2026
Consistency, precision, and efficiency for ICF coaching competency assessment. Built by the team at Youth Coaching Institute. Designed for coaches, training programs, and mentor coaches who take quality seriously.
Explore Critara at Critara.proCompetency evaluation is at the heart of everything we do in the coaching profession. It determines who earns credentials, whether training programs meet accreditation standards, and whether coaches are truly equipped to serve their clients well.
The problem is that the current process is time-consuming, inconsistent, and difficult to scale.
Critara was built to change that. Developed by Leah Mazzola, PhD, PCC, NBC-HWC, BCC, Founder and CEO of Youth Coaching Institute, Critara translates the ICF Core Competency framework into an AI-assisted evaluation workflow that supports consistent, evidence-based, and scalable assessment.
Critara was not built by a tech company that learned coaching from the outside. It was built by a credentialed coach, behavioral scientist, and ICF program accreditation expert who has lived the evaluation problem firsthand.
The result is a platform grounded in the actual language, standards, and nuance of ICF competency assessment, not a generic AI tool repurposed for coaching. Every feature reflects the way evaluation actually works inside an accredited program.
Whether you are preparing for your ACC, PCC, or MCC credential or working to develop your skills between supervision sessions, Critara gives you objective, competency-level feedback on your coaching sessions before it counts.
Mentoring and supervision require your full presence and professional judgment. Critara handles the administrative weight of session evaluation so you walk into every mentoring conversation with structured, competency-level feedback already in hand. The paperwork is done. The developmental work is yours.
Critara gives ICF-accredited programs a consistent, defensible evaluation framework that works across evaluators and cohorts. Your team evaluates with greater confidence. Your graduates credential at higher rates.
Assessments are mapped directly to the ICF Core Competency framework so feedback is always grounded in the actual credentialing standard.
Critara applies the same evaluation criteria across every session so results are defensible and comparable across evaluators and cohorts.
Every evaluation produces a structured, competency-level report that mentor coaches and supervisors can review, refine, and deliver. The documentation is ready before the conversation begins.
Coaches preparing for ACC, PCC, or MCC can use Critara to get objective, evidence-based feedback on their sessions before submission.
Training organizations can track evaluation trends across cohorts to identify where coaches excel and where targeted development is needed.
Every plan includes access to an AI assistant grounded in ICF competencies, ethical standards, behavioral science, and youth coaching best practices.
Every Critara plan includes access to an AI coaching assistant built specifically for the work you do, not a general-purpose chatbot with a coaching prompt layered on top.
Ask about any coaching challenge and get strategies grounded in the ICF Core Competencies, ethical standards, psychology, neuroscience, adolescent well-being science, and lifestyle medicine. Never advice that crosses into therapy, consulting, or mentoring.
The assistant asks targeted follow-up questions and offers focused insight, not walls of text. It works the way a thoughtful colleague would.
Working with clients ages 10 to 30? The assistant draws on the YCI Youth Coaching Competencies to provide age-appropriate, developmentally informed strategies.
Built with ICF referral-to-therapy guidelines. If a situation falls outside the scope of coaching, the assistant helps you navigate the conversation responsibly.
Critara was developed by Leah Mazzola, PhD, PCC, NBC-HWC, BCC, Founder and CEO of Youth Coaching Institute, and built on a foundation of 13+ years running an ICF-accredited coach training program. It reflects the evaluation problems that credentialed coaches, mentor coaches, and accreditation reviewers encounter every day, and it was designed to solve them.
Critara is actively being developed for coach training programs, individual coaches, and evaluators. Visit the Critara website to learn more, explore features, and get on the early access list.
Explore Critara at Critara.proDiscover a library of free expert resources exploring the youth coaching landscape, the experiences of adolescents today, and opportunities to strengthen your approach.
