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Feel resilient, inspired, purposeful & connected in turbulent times

We nurture you as a changemaker to feel resilient, inspired, connected & purposeful in turbulent times, so that you can lead yourself well and create ripples of wholeness across our world.

Futurists talk about us living through a change of era, rather than an era of change.

Now, more than ever, are we invited to do what we can to navigate these turbulent times from a rooted place within, and make a lasting positive contribution – even when the going gets tough.

Our times call for an embodied, resilient and vibrant changemakership. This rests on our ability to lead ourselves well.

Self-leadership rests on the principle that change ‘out there’, begins with change ‘in here’ – in ourselves: in our minds, hearts and behaviour.

When we decide to strengthen our self-leadership, not only do we set ourselves up to thrive – we also take radical responsibility for who we want to be and how we want to show up, for ourselves, people and planet at this pivotal time.

This is the birthplace of a changemakership guided by integrity.

Learn more about what we offer

In Wish Tree we gather changemakers from all walks of life and nurture you through a diversity of life-giving opportunities such as online & in-person immersions, courses, workshops & coaching designed for you to experience a strengthened self-leadership and greater sense of wholeness.

Learn more about our offerings

A changemaker is anyone who raises their hand with a desire to make a positive difference in the world - however small or large - wherever they may find themselves.

You are either someone who has been guided by a sense of purpose for a long time, or you may be re-evaluating what your purpose is now.

You may be new to the idea of having purpose but know that you want to contribute in any way you can to a better future for people and planet.

You may be feeling alone, depleted or burnt-out by tirelessly working on your mission, or leading and motivating others for a long time.

You may be passionate about one or many causes, or you are wanting to find yours.

You may be starting or developing a new business as a consultant or facilitator, artist or creative that seek to raise awareness, activate shifts in minds, hearts and behaviours.

You may lead a team of people, manage processes or strategies or be responsible for implementing new ways of thinking, being and doing in a corporation or public sector organisation and find it lonely, frustrating, exhausting more often than not. 

In Wish Tree, we work with changemakers everywhere.

Join our monthly membership: The Glade

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A glimpse of what we offer

Wholeness

Immersions & Courses

Courses, workshops, retreats & events to nurture your whole being in turbulent times.

Self-Leadership

Coaching

Strengthen your self-leadership, heal and get creative in our safe, brave & loving 1-2-1 nurturing.

Life-giving

Collaborations & Partnerships

We collaborate with leading-edge changemakers to nurture high-impact, creative offers.

Free

Resources

Our no-cost resources are crafted with as much tender love and acre as all other offerings. All you need is a willingness to receive and take action.

We don’t just live in times of change, but in a change of era.

The moment we say yes to self-leadership, we become a changemaker in our own life, in our business or organisation.

As a result, we shift our ways of being and doing.

Resilient, inspired, connected and purposeful changemakers everywhere are better equipped to create conditions for a thriving world.

In Wish Tree we work with our own self-leadership model based on the concept of wholeness. This underpins everything we offer.

learn more about self-leadership

Wish Tree's 4 Pillars for Leading Ourselves Well

CORE ALIGNMENT

BIGGER PICTURE AWARENESS

SELF-NOURISHMENT

COMMUNITY

What our clients say

★★★★★ 5/5

A lot of people talk about authenticity, but Emily Johnsson really walks her talk.

Lori Morin
Lawyer & Founder, Writing for Empowerment
★★★★★ 5/5

This has been an amazing journey for me. You have created such an amazing platform and I am so very humbled and inspired by everyone I’ve met here!

Khairun Butt
Founder, Hope Inspired
★★★★★ 5/5

Wish Tree offered me an opportunity to deeply explore who I am and how I want to be in the world. It was the place of integration.

Christine Lord
Somatic Psychotherapist & Clinical Social Worker
★★★★★ 5/5

Wish Tree allowed the space for me to transform in ways I did not even know were imaginable.

Leanne Evans
Wellbeing Entrepreneur

About Wish Tree

Wish Tree was founded in 2011 and exists because of our commitment to wholeness. Whole humans, whole communities, whole organisations, whole ecosystems. A whole world.

Wholeness is essential to our ability to thrive as individuals, teams, neighbourhoods, families, businesses, and organisations. It is key to resilience, harmony, creativity, innovation and aliveness: it is intrinsic to how life itself works.

Yet, instead of wholeness, many of us experience a sense of separation, fragmentation, segregation, polarisation, disconnect, overwhelm, stress and burn-out.

Wish Trees can feel like sanctuaries as they invite us to step out from the busyness of our everyday lives, and into a space where we intentionally connect with our inner knowing. They are places where people – across cultures and traditions – have come throughout the ages to voice their inner longing to thrive.

learn more about wish tree

Hi! I'm Emily, Founder of Wish Tree. I am so glad you are here.

I’M A LIFELONG CHANGEMAKER, INTUITIVE SPACE HOLDER, SYNTHESISING THINKER, LOVING DISRUPTOR, CREATIVE FACILITATOR, DEEP FEELER, ROOT WORKER, COMMUNITY NURTURER, RITUAL DESIGNER AND HEART-FELT WRITER.

To Wish Tree, I bring more than 20 years experience in the fields of human development, learning and growth. I am a tree-lover and have been a protector of forests since I was a young child. I listen deeply to Nature’s wisdom, seasons and cycles.

FOR THE PAST TWO DECADES, my life journey has taken me from learning research, to psychosocial work in disaster zones, to trailblazing in Arts & Culture – to complete surrender during a significant dark night of the soul some 13 years ago. A deep wintering that eventually led me to open the doors to the Wish Tree Academy: a place where for the past eight years, changemakers from all walks of life come to heal deeply, learn soulfully and grow collaboratively in global community around virtual and real-life fires.

WARMEST OF WELCOMES TO WISH TREE.

learn more about Wish Tree & Emily

"Leading with integrity and empathy requires vision and a connection to your deepest self."

KARLA MCLAREN

From the Blog

What is Wholeness? Embracing the fullness of life in all directions

Wholeness is a process that can support our capacity to lead ourselves well and move through life feeling more connected, resilient and free.

read more >>
Emily Johnsson | November 25, 2023
Self-Leadership
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About Emily & White Supremacy

Emily is a space holder and self-leadership coach to changemakers. She has over 20 years experience in the field of human development, learning and growth, and leads the coaching and consultancy company Wish Tree since 2011. Her work centres around wholeness – whole humans, whole communities, whole organisations, whole ecosystems. A whole world. Her changemakership is therefore dedicated to clearing distortions and fragmentations that relate to our perceptions of separation.

Emily has been exposed to and ‘sat with’ systemic issues around race, racism, privilege and injustice her whole life. She was born in Camden, London, in the late 1970s to a Swedish immigrant single mum and spent her first formative years in a highly culturally and ethnically diverse setting. As a baby, Emily and her mum lived in a bedsit in a shared house with a Black British family. Her first memory of Father Christmas was of him as a Bangladeshi man. Emily’s mum worked with refugee families and in Children’s Homes in inner city London, and since she had no access to child care opportunities, Emily joined her at work. For a while, Emily had an older Black British foster sister called Debbie. She was very often the only white child in the community of children of which she was a part.

Emily moved to Sweden with her mum as a child and as a teenager became involved with, and led, antiracism youth work in her local town through her school and council-initiated networks in the 1990s.

Her mum, who was active in the peace-and- environmental movement and who had been involved as an ally in the civil rights movement in the US on her travels there, introduced her to Black feminist and activist writers such as Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and Audre Lord, and actively taught her about white privilege, white supremacy and the truth of colonialism. She was also taught about the importance of learning from Indigenous wisdom keepers in order to heal and evolve as humanity, and to (in those days) stop climate change.

In contrast, on her father’s side, Emily is of British Colonial descent. Emily’s grandmother was born in Zimbabwe to Scottish sheep-farmers. Her grandfather came from a poor English background but won a scholarship to Cambridge University to study law. As many young British men of his time who sought “adventure, a good job and travel”, Emily’s grandfather joined the colonial service in the final days of the British Empire, and served in several African countries as a high-ranking colonial officer. He spoke Zulu and Emily’s father spoke Swazi and Swahili before being sent to Britain as a child to attend boarding school, thousands of miles away from his parents.

Although Emily did not grow up with her father or his family, she eventually came to know them and have a relationship with them, which involved taking responsibility for understanding and healing her own familial and ancestral relationship to colonialism and white supremacy.

In this process, she came to see, feel and understand first hand and close up, the deeper psychological workings of the system of white supremacy, the colonial mind and its intimate links with narcissism, perfectionism, patriarchy and extractive economies and behaviours.

Between 2003-2015, Emily worked as a learning researcher and Access, Diversity and Inclusion enabler in the Arts & Cultural Sector, deeply rooted in the Convention of the Rights of the Child and the Human Rights Convention. She worked across the U.K and Scandinavia contributing to a number of large scale change projects, self-evaluation initiatives, conferences and trainings such as “Access for All”, “Inspiring Learning for All”, “Belonging – the Voices of London’s Refugees”, “The West Indian Front Room”, “Kultur och Fritid för Alla”, “Vidgat Deltagande”, “In this curriculum I don’t exist”, “In between two worlds – London teenagers’ ideas about Black History, Belonging and being British” to name a few. She worked with a wide range of marginalised communities as well as with leaders and directors holding white privilege, facilitating necessary and brave conversations challenging the status quo.

Emily has worked across many cultures and languages around the world from Sri Lanka to South Africa, Costa Rica and India to Romania and Denmark, continuously reflecting on and challenging white saviour tendencies. In this process has come to observe how white supremacy and racism works differently in different countries depending on context and history.

In 2020, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, Emily became a loud voice in the Wellness industry by calling in leaders bypassing white supremacy through ‘love and light’ rhetoric, exceptionalism, colourblindness and virtue signalling. She closed down several online coaching circles because white participants were unwilling to dive deeper into their own internalised white supremacy, and rendered the spaces not only additionally unsafe, but traumatising for BIPOC clients. Her platform and large facebook community for coaches and wellbeing facilitators centred BIWOC-led anti-racism conversations as a response.

Emily is a skilled and fiercely loving coach and space-holder with many years experience of creating safe spaces for accountability, healing, integration and growth to take place.

She is dedicated to her own ongoing learning, healing and unlearning of covert white supremacy. Examples of this are continuous learning from a wide range of anti-racism educators, authors and activists from around the world.

This bio has not been written with the intention of centring Emily in the context of Me & White Supremacy, but to transparently share about her background, values, skills and experience in order for you to make a conscious decision to choose her as a space-holder, or not.

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