Malika Virah-Sawmy

I began my career as a conservation biologist and park ranger before completing a PhD at the University of Oxford on human–nature conflict. For the past 20 years, I’ve worked across four continents as a sustainability practitioner and systems thinker, supporting organisations and communities on challenges in agriculture, mining, and natural resource management.

Noticing how organisational culture stalls when mindsets, leadership values, and structures are misaligned, I retrained in generative, systemic, and decolonial practices. Today, I work as a systemic coach and facilitator, helping people examine their beliefs, foster inclusion, enable collaboration, and unlock creativity and organisational potential. My approach integrates somatic and ancestral wisdom with systems change, human-centred design, and futures thinking to help teams achieve meaningful, sustainable impact.

I am the founder of the Sensemakers Collective working on co-creation, generative facilitation, learning, and organisational development for clients; an Associate with Endeva on systems innovation; and a co-creator with Ubuntu Cocreate on systemic and decolonial capacity building and coaching