Honoring Henry Kimsey-House

When Henry, Karen, Jim and the CTI community said yes to supporting our new systems coaching work, a door opened.

On June 29, 2002, the first Fundamentals of Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching course was offered in San Rafael, California, under the CTI banner.

But their gift to us went far beyond that first course.

Because CTI was already deeply connected with coaching communities in different parts of the world, Henry and Karen’s generosity and trust gave our emerging work something we could never have created alone: relationship, belonging and pathways into communities across countries and cultures.

We were welcomed because trust had already been built.

Many of the students, colleagues, faculty, and friends who became part of the ORSC journey first encountered us through those relationships. They did not simply become part of the reach of the work. They became part of our lives.

We could not have known where those early steps would lead. But we know this: we did not travel alone.

Perhaps what we treasure most is not only what was built, but the relationship that carried us.

Between Henry and Karen, and the two of us, there was a Third Entity — a living relational field larger than any one of us. Across the years, it held friendship, challenge, fierce belief, laughter, creativity and a shared devotion to human possibility.

There is an African wisdom that says: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

We went together. And because we went together, all of us were carried farther than we could have imagined.

Today, we feel the grief of that larger field.

We know that across the world, many of our own students, faculty, colleagues and friends are grieving Henry too. Some knew him personally. Others know him through the lineage of a profession he helped shape, through the communities he helped seed and through work that traveled because he and Karen were willing to open doors and share relationships.

His passing moves through all of us.

Henry’s legacy lives not only in the institutions he helped build, but in lives changed by a conversation, in people who discovered they had choice, in leaders who learned to create more human workplaces and in countless ripples of impact none of us will ever fully see.

For us, his legacy is profoundly personal.

Henry was our friend. Our colleague. Our mentor. Our fellow traveler.

One of those rare companions with whom we shared not only history, but the audacity of imagining that something new might be possible — and then spending our lives helping to bring it into being.

Our hearts are with our beloved Karen, with Henry’s family, with the entire Co-Active community and with the global community now grieving his passing.

Thank you, Henry.

For your friendship.

For your courage.

For your belief.

For the doors you opened.

For the relationships you shared.

For the roads we traveled together.

And for the Third Entity between us that kept whispering: Go together. Go far.

We will carry you with us.

With profound love and grief,
Faith Fuller & Marita Fridjhon, co-founders of CRR Global