Inner Assembly for executives & leaders
What you carry, your organization carries.
A year-long practice for founders, executives, investors, public leaders, and people whose decisions shape teams and institutions.
Inner Assembly helps you understand what pressure is doing beneath the surface, stay connected to your judgment, and lead without leaving yourself—or your people—behind.
Are you a coach or facilitator? Explore the Practitioners cohort.
When the answer is not obvious
People still look to you.
The strategy is changing. Two people on the team have stopped trusting each other. A decision that looks straightforward on paper carries consequences nobody can fully predict. You can feel the emotional temperature of the room rising, and part of your job is to help everyone else keep moving.
So you absorb more. You prepare harder. You make yourself available. You try to create certainty while privately living with uncertainty of your own.
These responses may be part of what made you successful. Under sustained pressure, they can also become control, avoidance, over-responsibility, impatience, false reassurance, or a life in which everyone receives your capacity except the people waiting for you at home.
The higher your authority becomes, the less private these patterns are. They enter the meetings you lead, the truths people do not tell you, the decisions you make quickly, and the culture other people learn to survive inside.
Inner Assembly creates somewhere to notice those patterns while life is still happening—and to practice what you want to do instead.
A peer room for people carrying real responsibility
You do not have to translate the weight of the role.
The Leaders cohort brings together up to 12 people from companies, investment firms, public institutions, nonprofits, universities, foundations, and entrepreneurial ventures.
Their titles and sectors differ. What they share is responsibility: for other people’s work, for decisions without clean answers, for organizational change, and often for families and communities beyond the job.
This is not a room for performing certainty. It is a place where capable people can speak plainly about the conversation they are avoiding, the pattern that keeps returning, the authority they are learning to hold, or the success that has begun to cost more than they expected.
Participants are selected for curiosity, honesty, generosity, and willingness to practice—not for polish.
The work becomes visible in how you lead
More choice in the moments that shape everything else.
Over the year, you practice how to:
- notice when pressure is narrowing your judgment before it becomes somebody else’s problem;
- distinguish genuine urgency from the activation that makes everything feel urgent;
- communicate what you know and what you do not without manufacturing certainty;
- set a boundary before overcommitment becomes resentment;
- let a team think instead of immediately rescuing, controlling, or supplying the answer;
- stay in contact during conflict without collapsing, hardening, or performing calm;
- hear feedback without losing access to yourself;
- repair trust when your impact did not match your intention; and
- carry responsibility in a way that leaves enough of you for your health, relationships, and life outside work.
The aim is not to become endlessly calm or perfectly self-aware. It is to remain more available to reality, relationship, responsibility, and the full range of intelligence already within you when the stakes are high.
From the first assembly
A different response changes more than one person.
“I realised that when things became difficult, I was trying to regulate the situation by taking control of it. The Inner Assembly helped me see that leadership isn’t always about having the answer—sometimes it is about creating enough safety for the answer to emerge between people. In a difficult conversation with a team member, I slowed down, stayed connected rather than moving into solution mode, and gave them space to disagree with me. What could have become a difficult conversation instead became one of the most constructive conversations we had. I left with a very different understanding of what it means to lead: not to have all the answers, but to create the conditions for better creative thinking, relationship, and human intelligence to emerge.”
“The Inner Assembly has changed the way I understand capacity. I used to think being a good leader meant being able to carry more, and I would often take that pressure home with me. Learning to listen to my body, recognise the emotional debt I was carrying, and notice what my nervous system was asking for has helped me understand that leadership isn’t something I can separate from the rest of who I am. I now finish the day with a clearer sense of what is mine to hold, and more capacity left for my family and for myself.”
“The types of issues that I face as a leader myself often have to do with that sort of thing: how am I making sure that I am taking care of the basics of self-care enough that I’m showing up well for everyone and everything in my life?”
Practice, not performance
Insight matters when you can still access it under pressure.
Inner Assembly brings a consistent cohort together for twelve months. We meet online once each month for approximately 90–100 minutes, alternating between thematic sessions and integration circles.
One month introduces a lens, practice, or leadership inquiry. The next asks what happened when the work met your actual life.
You may bring a team that is losing trust, a reorganization you need to lead, a senior colleague you cannot reach, a decision analysis has not resolved, or a familiar response that returned the moment the pressure did.
A session may include teaching, embodied practice, individual reflection, work in pairs, a difficult-conversation rehearsal, or close examination of a live leadership situation. Nobody is required to manufacture vulnerability. The depth comes from continuity, honest participation, and a group that learns how to see one another clearly over time.
Between sessions, the work continues in a private Slack community, through a monthly commitment to apply the work in real life, and in regular office hours. Participants receive module workbooks, a community resource library, client-portal exercises, recorded centering practices, playlists, and additional supporting material.
Six arcs across the year
The capacities beneath consequential leadership.
- 01
Leadership begins in the body
Recognize the signals that appear before thought becomes reaction. Learn how urgency, uncertainty, identity, and responsibility register in the nervous system—and create enough space to choose how you want to lead.
- 02
Capacity before strategy
Examine what you are carrying and how that load shapes your judgment, attention, communication, and team. Make limits visible before they become rupture, resentment, or a constraint on the organization.
- 03
Emotional debt
Work with the unfinished conversations, avoided conflict, disappointment, broken agreements, and accumulated tension that quietly continue shaping how people work together.
- 04
Leading nervous systems through change
Understand how activation moves between people and through teams. Practice creating conditions for steadiness and candor without taking responsibility for every emotion in the room.
- 05
Acting without false certainty
Meet ambiguity without forcing resolution. Practice communicating what is known and unknown, listening for what is trying to emerge, and moving with discernment rather than control.
- 06
Relational courage and repair
Tell the truth, receive impact, use power responsibly, and remain in relationship when things become uncomfortable. Learn how repair can deepen trust rather than merely return things to normal.
Why this room exists
A note from Franzi
Leadership is often described in terms of strategy, vision, and execution. But the leaders I meet rarely struggle because they have no frameworks. They struggle when the room is tense, the stakes are real, and their own nervous system has joined the meeting.
I created this cohort for people who are expected to know what to do. Here, you do not have to perform certainty. You can bring the decision you keep circling, the conversation you are avoiding, the responsibility that has followed you home, or the moment when your impact did not match your intention.
We will not ask you to become softer or slower in the abstract. We will practice staying present enough to use power well, tell the truth without abandoning relationship, let other people think instead of supplying every answer, and discern what is actually yours to carry.
My hope is that the work becomes visible not in how well you can describe it, but in the next meeting, the next difficult conversation, and in whether there is still something of you left when you return to the people you love.
If that sounds like the kind of room you have been looking for, I hope you will experience it for yourself.
Franzi
Held with depth, care, and lived experience
Inner Assembly was created by Franziska Gonder and is held with Camilla Ricoveri, Ted Gonder, and Chris Scott. Franzi, Camilla, and Ted are the co-founders of Unreasonably Human. Chris is an executive coach, co-facilitator, and advisor to Inner Assembly.
Franziska Gonder
Creator and lead facilitator
Franzi works with founders, executives, and leadership teams carrying consequential responsibility. Her approach brings together neuroscience, somatic practice, trauma-informed leadership, relational work, and deep respect for the intelligence already present in each person.
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Franziska Gonder is the creator of Inner Assembly and a co-founder of Unreasonably Human. She works with founders, executives, and leadership teams who carry a great deal of responsibility and want to meet it without losing contact with themselves or the people around them. Her approach brings together neuroscience, somatic practice, trauma-informed leadership, relational work, and a deep respect for the intelligence already present in each person. Franzi has worked with senior leaders from Fortune 100 companies, major technology and AI organizations, the World Bank, the University of Chicago, high-growth startups, and mission-driven institutions. She is known for naming what is happening clearly, making room for what is difficult, and holding people to the truth of what they say matters.
Camilla Ricoveri
Leadership advisor and somatic coach
Camilla brings more than a decade of experience across startups and venture capital, including advising leaders working in conflict-affected environments. She joins strategic understanding with close attention to the body, relationship, and context.
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Camilla Ricoveri brings more than a decade of experience across startups and venture capital to her work with leaders. She has advised leaders working in conflict zones around the world, including Ukraine and Chad, where decisions are made amid profound uncertainty and real human consequence. As a somatic coach, Camilla helps people notice what pressure is doing beneath the surface and find a steadier, more honest way to respond. Her work joins strategic understanding with close attention to the body, relationship, and the realities of the environment a leader is operating within.
Ted Gonder
Founder, operator, and leadership advisor
Ted has built and led organizations through growth, change, and acquisition. His work centers on responsible power, institution building, and the human development required to lead well.
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Ted Gonder builds institutions and communities that develop people and make society better. He co-founded Moneythink as a teenager and led it for a decade, served as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the White House, and later helped scale Getro from roughly 50 to more than 1,000 customers. Both Moneythink and Getro were subsequently acquired. Today, Ted works with founders and senior leaders navigating high-stakes seasons and is the co-founder of Atlas Forum, a private community for men seeking to lead, build, and live with greater honesty. His work centers on responsible power, institution building, and the human development required to lead well.
Chris Scott
Executive coach and Inner Assembly advisor
Chris brings two decades of senior leadership experience in complex organizations and five years as an executive coach. As an advisor and co-facilitator for Inner Assembly, he helps people recognize what pressure is activating and respond with greater choice.
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Chris Scott is an executive coach who helps leaders move toward what they want by understanding what may be getting in the way. For more than twenty years, he has partnered with senior executives to pause, notice what is happening beneath the surface, and make sense of their next move. He brings a distinctive perspective shaped by five years as a coach and two decades as a senior leader in workforce intelligence, where he helped executives navigate complex organizational and human questions. Chris’s work draws on somatic awareness, developmental psychology, and nervous-system regulation to help leaders recognize the conditioned habits shaping their choices and respond with greater intention. As an advisor and co-facilitator for Inner Assembly, he helps hold a rigorous peer room in which people can see themselves and their situation more clearly.
The Leaders cohort
- Dates
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February 2027–February 2028
- Cohort
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Up to 12 executives and leaders
- Live rhythm
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One 90–100 minute online session each month, alternating between thematic sessions and integration circles
- Between sessions
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A private Slack community; a monthly real-life practice commitment; regular office hours; module workbooks; client-portal exercises; recorded centering practices; playlists; and a growing resource library
- Dates and time
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The recurring day and time will be finalized with the cohort before enrollment is confirmed.
- Investment
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$4,000 for the year. Payment plans are available. Some participants use an employer learning or professional-development budget; we can provide an invoice or supporting program information on request. Self-employed participants should ask their own tax adviser whether the investment may qualify as a business expense in their jurisdiction.
- Attendance and missed sessions
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Participants are expected to attend at least 90% of live sessions. Sessions are recorded and shared only within the cohort. If someone misses a session, they may watch the recording, bring questions to office hours, and reconnect with peers between sessions.
- Annual commitment
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Enrollment is a 12-month financial commitment. A payment plan divides the investment into installments; it does not create a month-to-month cancellation option. If a participant withdraws, the remaining balance is still due unless exceptional circumstances are reviewed and agreed in writing.
- After the year
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Participants join the alumni community and retain access to the community platform.
- Application deadline
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Fit conversations close December 18, 2026.
FAQ
Is this executive coaching?
Inner Assembly is a facilitated group experience. It addresses many of the live leadership challenges that arise in executive coaching while adding a consistent peer cohort and shared curriculum. Participants interested in individual support can ask about combining the Assembly with one-to-one coaching.
Is it therapy?
No. Inner Assembly is a leadership and personal-development experience. Emotion and therapeutic insight may arise, but the program does not replace individual therapy or mental-health care.
Do I need experience with somatic work?
No. You need openness to practice, willingness to receive reflection, and enough commitment to protect the time.
Is the experience confidential?
Yes. Participants may speak about their own learning, but may not identify or retell another person’s story outside the cohort. Session recordings are available only to enrolled members and may not be forwarded, excerpted, uploaded, or shared with third parties.
What happens if I miss a session?
You can watch the cohort recording, bring questions to office hours, and reconnect with other members between sessions. The expectation remains that participants attend at least 90% of the live sessions.
Can my employer sponsor my place?
Yes. Some participants use an employer learning or professional-development budget, and we can provide an invoice or supporting program information. If you are self-employed, ask your tax adviser whether the investment may qualify as a business expense in your jurisdiction.
What does the annual commitment mean?
Enrollment is a 12-month financial commitment. A payment plan divides the investment into installments; it does not create a month-to-month cancellation option. If you withdraw, the remaining balance is still due unless exceptional circumstances are reviewed and agreed in writing.
What if I am both a leader and a practitioner?
You may be a plausible fit for either cohort. The fit conversation will help determine which peer room, examples, and casework will be most useful for the year ahead.
Experience the room
Before deciding whether to join for a year, come experience the work.
A Salon is a live, one-hour introduction to the questions, practices, and quality of conversation that shape Inner Assembly. You will leave with something useful whether or not you ultimately join the cohort.