Dr. Cari Leyshon offers a Doctoral level of business management and marketing expertise with over 30 years of entrepreneurial consultancy experience in the UK, Canada, USA and Europe. Creating alignment between individual stakeholders and organisational objectives using expert change management skills combined with cultural intelligence. Managing diverse stakeholders' needs so a collaborative effort is achieved through authentic communication, leadership development and action research. An expert in confronting acquisition apathy and internal conflict preventing engagement with a unique approach that motivates stakeholders to realise their innate wisdom. Cari is a Certified Facilitator in both Cultural Intelligence (CQ) and Discovering Unconscious Biases within stakeholder groups to improve the mental wellbeing of individual stakeholders within the organization to improve retention so objectives are achieved. An experienced action researcher using both qualitative and/or quantitative methodologies, developing, and managing businesses and/or investments for commercial opportunities. Strong investment liaison skills with a transcultural approach to build profitable partnerships in a diverse range of projects internationally. 

In the last ten years I have been an Engineering, Manufacturing and Projects consultant. My educational background entails a first degree in Mechanical Engineering (Ahmadu Bello University, Nigeria, 1995), an MSc. in Engineering & Management (University of Exeter, UK, 2003) and a Doctorate in Business Administration (University of Liverpool, UK, 2019). I am a member of these professional bodies: the Nigerian Society of Engineers, (NSE), Nigeria Institution of Mechanical Engineers (MNIMechE), Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN) and Fellow Institute of Corporate Administration (FCAI). This 25 year career has seen me span the engineering, manufacturing, consultancy and project management sectors.

I have always focused on asking questions that will assist me in making positive contributions to organisations that are interested in growth and broad based development – hence the transition from a purely technical background into the management and leadership sphere. The transition has been keenly assisted by the process of using programmed knowledge to resolve problems in addition to asking insightful questions (derived from the DBA study) to reveal a solution procedure for wicked problems – the type that have no right answers.

My research interests hence lie in seeking ways to make positive contributions through a rigorous and carefully planned collaborative process with the owners of wicked problems. That is the process used to complete a doctoral thesis called “A method to support Leadership effectiveness in a construction project organisation in Nigeria”. While it was specifically directed at a unique case, it holds a lot of potential for guiding the thinking of leaders willing to improve their effectiveness in any sphere. Currently, I still provide consultancy services to the project organization in addition to working in a Nigeria-Brazil bilateral development programme in agriculture that involves the transfer of a complete technology package from Brazil to Nigeria.

In addition to these diverse roles I am also seeking to contribute to research processes that involve collaboration, stakeholder management and leadership effectiveness all directed at making superior judgments in problematic situations.

Currently working as Professor, Faculty of Business, Humber College; and Professor, Centre of Professional & Part-time Learning, Durham College - Toronto, Ontario 

Since 2012, I have tutored, mentored and coached beyond 500 professional doctoral students (mid to seniors, aged 35 to 70) both with the University of Liverpool Management School’s Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA) program (UK), and since 2016 also with DoctorateHub. This allowed me to understand how to tackle problems at scale, be it the tame, the complex, or the wicked.

500+ students also implies 500+ workplace-based problems which I had the chance to look at. And while working with such an array of problems allows for quite some learning, it also has shown to me that very often it is quite exhaustive for such grown up and seasoned research novices. In response to this, we thus decided to set up the DoctorateHub, so to provide training, mentoring, and coaching services to all those that struggle to get their workplace-based issues identified, analysed, understood, written up in a thesis, and ultimately resolved. 

I am also one of the DoctorateHub’s Co-founders with a particular focus on strategic development and building up of the various DoctorateHub support services that we provide. 

With this I am looking forward to work with you, wherever you are in your doctoral research journey.