In her popular leadership workshops, Samreen Khan ’96 McGregor asks high-powered CEOs to do something unexpected: nothing.
No goal setting, no whiteboards, no performance metrics. Instead, she starts each session by inviting her clients to close their eyes, breathe deeply, and just be.
It’s a rare moment of stillness for business leaders whose self-worth “is often defined by speed and output,” says Khan McGregor.
“Most of us take for granted that we’re human beings, not human doings,” she adds. “Real leadership starts with presence, and presence requires space.”
That philosophy is the heart of Khan McGregor’s work as a leadership coach and consultant. As founder of the Turmeric Group, a London-based leadership firm, Khan McGregor draws on neuroscience, organizational psychology, and somatic methods like breathwork to help senior executives navigate their high-stakes roles with clarity and compassion — and, most important, vulnerability, which she calls “the core prerequisite for effective leadership.”
It’s a sharp departure from the future Khan McGregor envisioned when she arrived at Colgate in the early ’90s. Khan McGregor, who was raised in Venezuela and later attended the American School in London, thought she might follow in the footsteps of her engineer parents. But at Colgate, she found herself drawn to philosophy, political science, and international relations — fields that spoke to her natural curiosity about people and systems. “I was very qualitative in my mindset,” she says.
After earning a degree in political science, Khan McGregor returned to the U.K. and spent several years in financial services before earning a master’s in business systems analysis and design from London’s City University. The coursework fueled her interest in organizational behavior, the study of how people operate within teams, cultures, and systems. She soon took a position with Ashridge Consulting, a leadership development firm based in Hertfordshire, England, where she spent nearly a decade immersed in psychotherapy training, systems theory, and business performance frameworks like the Theory of Constraints, a method for identifying what limits performance in an organization.
By the mid-2000s, Khan McGregor, now a mother of two, joined and helped build a consulting start-up. But when the travel demands became unsustainable, she launched her own leadership practice, working independently with clients across sectors while raising her young family in London.
“It was a very flourishing time for me,” she recalls. “There was a lot of interesting work, and I was able to build a client base and be a mother.”
Then, suddenly, Khan McGregor’s world came to a halt. In 2017 her 9-year-old son was diagnosed with a brain tumor. For more than a year, “life was upended,” she says, with treatment spanning hospitals in the U.K. and in Boston. “It was awful. And it was wonderful,” she recalls. “It transformed everything inside me.”
Her son went on to make a full recovery, but the experience reshaped how Khan McGregor approached life, both personally and professionally. “I don’t think I truly understood my purpose until I woke up and realized I have agency and choice in what I do and why I do it,” she says. “What happened gave me the courage to ask my clients the really hard questions about emotional regulation, suppressed grief, burnout, even questions of purpose and identity.”
That perspective shift led Khan McGregor to launch the Turmeric Group, a boutique consultancy built around the conscious, human-centered leadership she had come to believe in deeply. With her team, Khan McGregor partners with organizations to design leadership programs, facilitate team development, and guide culture change, often working with companies navigating major transitions or rapid growth.
Her son’s cancer battle also inspired her first book. In Leader Awakened: Why Accepting Adversity Drives Power and Freedom (2022), Khan McGregor details how her son’s experience and its impact on her family changed her understanding of power, presence, and identity. Part memoir, part leadership guide, the book encourages readers to learn from adversity and lead with greater self-awareness, curiosity, and authenticity.
“[Writing the book] was cathartic,” she says. “It enabled me to articulate my identity, my purpose, and the essence of my contribution to clients, and even as a friend and family member.”
Today at Turmeric, Khan McGregor is especially focused on helping clients build what she calls “spaciousness” — the intentional stillness required for reflection, regulation, and connection. “The biggest constraint on leadership,” she says, “is how well or how ineffectively someone manages their energy.”
And as Khan McGregor emphasizes to clients during team sessions and one-onone coaching, leadership isn’t about having charisma or exerting control; it’s about consciousness. “When people feel truly seen and safe, they can step into a deeper level of honesty and connection,” she says. “And from that place, everything changes.”
Khan McGregor was named 2024’s National Coach of the Year by Paseda360, a U.K.-based personal development firm, for her innovative approach to executive coaching.