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Nelisha Wickremasinghe

Nelisha Wickremasinghe

Associate Fellow

Saïd Business School
University of Oxford
Park End Street
Oxford
OX1 1HP

Profile

Nelisha Wickremasinghe is a psychologist, entrepreneur, educator and international leadership/organisational change consultant who has worked in the field of human development for 25 years.

She has postgraduate degrees in psychology and family therapy, a Master’s in public sector management and a Master’s and Doctorate in organisational change.

Her work at the boundary of psychotherapeutic practice and management development has taken her across the globe to support organisations like Fujitsu, Thomas Cook, Amec Foster Wheeler, Nielsen, Lloyds Banking Group, Aviva and BT to develop their leaders and implement complex change.

She also developed and ran a successful organic food business and restaurant and, for ten years, was a clinical and management lead in the mental health and social care sector.

Dr Wickremasinghe works internationally with large corporates teaching and consulting on healthy growth. She is a senior client director at Oxford Saïd Business School, an associate consultant at Ashridge Hult Business School and managing director of  her own practice, The Dialogue Space, which provides unconventional, whole-person facilitation and coaching for individuals, groups and organisations.

Her professional practice combines brain science and developmental psychology to develop individual, team and system resilience and collaboration in increasingly volatile times.

Research

Nelisha undertook her Doctorate in Organisational Change at Ashridge Hult International Business School.

The focus of her research inquiry was whether greater self-compassion might increase personal resilience, collaboration with others and sustainable performance in organisational life. Applying insights from neurobiology, developmental and depth psychology, Nelisha created a pilot Compassionate Leadership Development programme to explore changes in how participants experienced themselves and others as they learned about and practised self-compassion, and the changes this triggered in their work place behaviours and relationships.

You can read the abstract of her thesis.

Articles:

Engagement

As well as her work at Saïd Business School, Nelisha is the founding director of the consulting practice The Dialogue Space Limited.

This is an agile consultancy that engages with a international network of consultants to deliver unconventional whole person coaching and development for individuals, teams and organisations. 

Teaching

Nelisha’s areas of teaching expertise and interest are:

  • personal resilience
  • team collaboration
  • working with and through conflict
  • using creative methodologies to support deep personal inquiry
  • performance and impact coaching