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Strengthen your self-leadership, heal and get creative

Feel resilient, inspired, purposeful & connected in turbulent times

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.

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

Becoming an agent for change calls us to strengthen our capacity to lead ourselves well in life and at work, so that we can feel more resilient, inspired, purposeful and connected, even when the going gets tough.

This is how we create ripples of wholeness wherever we go. This is how we prepare the soil and plant the seeds for a thriving future for us all and our planet.

We offer 4 types of 1-2-1 coaching:

Get in touch

You can book standalone sessions and coaching packages

Strengthened self-leadership can only come about in a nurturing environment where you are seen, heard, empathetically felt and emotionally held. A space where you are safe to bring all of yourself and what’s alive for you here and now. To us, safety feels like belonging.
In Wish Tree, we are devoted to being this space for you.

Your Coaching Experience

Wish Trees can feel like sanctuaries as they invite us to  step outside the busyness of our lives and into a space where we intentionally connect with, and listen to, our inner knowing. We begin each session by allowing ourselves to take some deep breaths, quiet our minds and tune into what is alive for you right now. The guiding words for our coaching are GROUND, CONNECT, ACT.  We also allow the 4 pillars of the Wish Tree self-leadership model to underpin our work together. You leave every session with a series of aligned steps to move forward with.

In our 1-2-1 sessions, we will create an environment that nurtures you to feel more connected and whole.

Connected to your own inner compass, sense of purpose and values. Connected to what matters to you and how you want to show up here now.

Connected to a bigger awareness of how your contribution fits into a bigger movement for change, and how it may impact future generations.

Connected to the ripples you are creating through your being, doing and working, and for whom and what. Connected to your story and the wisdom it has brought you as a human being. Connected to how you can bring this wisdom into your work as a changemaker.

Connected to your courage and sense of direction. Connected to your personal sense of expression. Connected to your own inspiration and motivation. Connected to your yes-es and no-s. Connected to ways in which you can respond instead of react, navigate tension and not betray yourself. Connected to your own inner world.

Connected to working, living, creating, communicating in ways that feel good and true. Connected to others in nourishing relationships. Connected to self-compassion and kindness and ways of looking after yourself well. Connected to a sense of greater wholeness in yourself. Connected to aliveness. Connected to life.

When we feel connected in this way, we will live and lead ourselves with a greater sense of wholeness.

Our space-holding is loving, grounded, nurturing, informed and intuitive.

This creates the safety needed to let go of pretending and adapting, so that you can hear your inner voice of personal truth.

It is our belief that safety in a space feels like being seen, being heard, and being felt empathetically. To us, safety feels like belonging.

When we create spaces for learning, unlearning, healing, transformation and growth this is our brief: to create a space where you can bring all of yourself, no matter who you are.

In Wish Tree, we devote ourselves to becoming that space.

"We are all in our own ways dying, becoming and re-birthing ourselves right now. Just like a sea of butterflies. And as such, we know that when we flap our wings, there will be a ripple effect that carries across the globe. We are here to make a difference at this time. Not simply to hold space for change. But to be the change too."

Emily Johnsson

What our clients say

Emily is an intuitive listener that guides you to find your own solutions. I was most impressed by her warmth and her gentle but acute intelligence. Sessions can be playful, nurturing, calming or energising, depending on your needs. She is a fantastic coach that will help you move in the direction your heart really wants to.

Dr Miriam Fornells-Ambrojo
Associate Professor, Psychology

It’s amazing how deep we managed to go in such a short time

Mohit Mukherjee
Founder, UPEACE Centre for Executive Education

I learned more in that conversation in one hour than any therapy that I’ve had for over 20 years. For the first time I started to understand myself and to finally “get” what I am really here for… and to do.

Learning Facilitator, U.K.

The best thing about the programme was to experience the space Emily created for us to be able to show up with everything. To experience the love and patience she holds us with. This space of appreciation so that my joy and true self could dare to show up more and more.

Katharina Oberlik
Performing Artist & Liberation Activist

Your dedication and commitment to empowering others to step into their power and authenticity is just wonderful. I never knew I’d be able to achieve and change so much in such a short space of time! You’re an inspiration and a blessing.

Su Orosa
Councillor & Founder, Personal Growth Hub

Emily, you have literally changed my life! This programme and you have given me the life lessons that I’ve needed to learn and blocks I’ve needed to clear. I knew I wanted to shift from corporate to a more holistic career, but this has opened up a whole world I didn’t think I could be a part of . It’s made me more confident that I have a gift to share with the world.

Malina Horbury

I could explore really painful and scary life experiences and come out the other side of this process with really meaningful stories that I can share with others and that I will use to build and support my heart-led business.

Participant
Get Trued Up Programme

All of the support has been incredible. Emily – your care, support, championing and presence has been amazing.

Suzie Vaughan

Emily has encouraged and has given me the confidence to be ME.

Marcia Hylton
Life Inspired Wellness

"Authentic leadership is the full expression of “me” for the benefit of “we” "

Henna Inam

Wish Tree's 4 Pillars for Leading Ourselves Well

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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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