Susanna Kislenko

Adjunct Professor in the MPNL program

• IBBA from the Schulich School of Business (York University, Canada). MA in Political Science (McGill University, Canada). PhD in Organizational Behaviour from IESE Business School (University of Navarra, Spain).
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Susanna Kislenko was born in Odessa, Ukraine, and as a young child, her family immigrated, as refugees, to Canada to begin a new life. She moved back to Europe 25 years after completing both business and political science degrees and spending the first part of her career working in the nonprofit sector in Canada.

In holding formal leadership roles herself and being part of organizations led by founders, she experienced and witnessed many kinds of leadership styles and became interested in why founders appear to not always be the best leaders for their own organizations. In 2025, Susanna created The Founder Leadership Research Lab at the University of Oxford (Kellogg College), which she also directs. As a social psychologist, she studies leadership in the entrepreneurial context in both the nonprofit and for-profit sectors. Using qualitative research methods, her work pulls back the curtain on the challenges and potentially darker organizational consequences of long-term founder leadership, including Founder’s Syndrome.

In 2025, she and Cathy Barr (former Senior Advisor of Research & Data at Imagine Canada) published Good Governance and Leadership in Founder-led Organizations, which offers guidance for building effective boards, managing founder transitions and avoiding Founder’s Syndrome.