Nisha Sanghani’s Journey to Building Businesses that Make an Impact 

Leadership is most valuable when it brings clarity to complexity, and creates the confidence to do things differently. Across the Middle East, ambitious economic agendas, technological disruption, and rapid transformation are reshaping how businesses operate. Nisha Sanghani has built her career at this intersection: helping organisations navigate complexity while building businesses and solutions designed for what comes next.

With over two decades of consulting, commercial, and entrepreneurial experience, Nisha’s career encompasses risk management, corporate governance, regulatory transformation and business strategy. Today, as Partner and Head of Risk Advisory Middle East at Ashurst Perkins Coie, she leads Ashurst Perkins Coie Risk Advisory across the region.

Entrepreneurship has been a consistent thread throughout her career. Nisha co-founded and spent more than a decade building Rosediem Consulting, which was recognised as the UK’s “Best Specialist Financial Regulatory Consulting Firm.” During this period, she was also named one of the UK’s Top 20 Dynamic CEOs. Her wider career includes senior roles at KPMG UK, a global investment bank and a FTSE 250-listed wealth manager — giving her the perspective of founder, adviser and executive.

In 2022, Nisha became a founding partner of Ashurst Risk Advisory UK, helping to build the firm’s consulting business. Less than two years later, she relocated to the UAE to do it again; this time building Ashurst Perkins Coie Risk Advisory’s Middle East practice from the ground up.

The model is deliberately different. Ashurst Perkins Coie is the only international law firm in the Middle East offering standalone consulting services alongside its legal capabilities, allowing clients to access each independently or through integrated multidisciplinary teams.

Under Nisha’s leadership, Ashurst Perkins Coie Risk Advisory’s work in the region spans corporate governance, enterprise risk, regulatory transformation, crisis and resilience, technology and AI, geopolitical risk and complex business transformation. Rather than replicating a traditional consulting model, the business brings together senior practitioners across disciplines to tackle challenges that increasingly cut across conventional professional boundaries.

That approach reflects Nisha’s broader view of innovation. For her, innovation is not confined to new technology or products. It is about challenging established ways of working, creating new business models and finding better ways to solve difficult problems.

It is a philosophy that has characterised her career. From founding her own consultancy to building businesses within Ashurst Perkins Coie, Nisha has repeatedly gravitated towards creating something new. She also continues to support entrepreneurs, founders and emerging businesses, applying her experience in governance, risk and business building to the next generation of companies.

Her vision is closely connected to the extraordinary transformation taking place across the Middle East. As governments pursue ambitious national agendas and capital flows into new industries and technologies, Nisha believes progressive governance, technological advancement and sophisticated risk management can become powerful drivers of competitive advantage; enabling organisations to innovate, grow and navigate change with greater confidence.

Her influence extends beyond Ashurst Perkins Coie. Nisha serves on the Global Corporate Governance Committee of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), contributing to wider thinking on the future of corporate governance and best practice.

Her journey is also a reminder that innovation is not only about inventing the next technology. It can mean building new businesses, challenging established professional models and creating better ways of working.

As the Middle East continues its economic transformation, leaders able to connect international experience with regional ambition will play an increasingly important role. Nisha’s career has been shaped by that combination. From entrepreneur to executive, adviser and business builder, the common thread is a willingness not simply to navigate change; but to create through it.