About
Dr. Marcelle Crinean
Hello! I'm Marcelle
I’m Dr Marcelle Crinean, a Clinical Hypnotherapist & Psychotherapist, and Certified High Performance Coach™️.
Originally from London, I’m now based in the Cotswolds. It sounds idyllic – and it is – but I’m still trying to get used to being a city girl living in the countryside!
I’ve spent the best part of 30 years in and around the world my clients operate in. First in corporate, now in coaching and clinical practice.
I specialise in working with ambitious executives, leaders and business owners who want to perform at their best without paying an unnecessary price for it.
I know and understand your world intimately. The pressure, the pace, the expectations, the relentlessness of operating at a senior level.
The difference is, I didn’t just live it. I went on to study it. So, I'm better placed to help you.
Why My Approach Is Different
My work sits at the intersection of high performance coaching, psychology and neuroscience.
That combination is unusual, but it's also intentional.
Over the years, I've found that performance problems are rarely just performance problems.
They're often influenced by how we think, how we respond to pressure, the habits we've developed, the environments we operate in, and the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what we're capable of.
That's why I draw on multiple disciplines rather than relying on a single approach.
It allows me to see the bigger picture and work with the whole person, not just the problem they're presenting with.
The depth and breadth of my experience and training also means I both understand and see things other coaches simply don’t recognise.
Uniquely Qualified To Help
A brief overview of my experience:
-
20-year career in IT Software in various senior positions
-
Ex-CEO of a mental health CIC
-
Ex-CEO and COO of a management consultancy firm
-
Mentored hundreds of small business owners
-
An external coach for the UK Government’s AI Apprenticeship for Leaders
-
For the last 10 years I’ve run my own practice coaching and advising leaders and business owners as a trusted partner
I completed my PhD in Experimental Psychology at The University of Sussex, and then spent almost 20 years in senior roles in the IT software industry. Training, pre-sales, sales and product management.
I loved my job and I understood the environment: high stakes, high pressure, high expectations. The kind of world where performance isn’t optional, but you were heavily rewarded.
Over time, I became stressed, tired, and heading towards burnout. And I wasn’t alone. I watched the same thing happen to the people around me. Smart, capable, successful people who, from the outside, looked like they were coping and happy. But the inside told a different story; many were privately struggling – often with addiction, broken relationships and poor health.
Prompted by an illness, I left the corporate world in 2016 to retrain as a therapist and coach. I wanted to understand what actually drives performance, what gets in the way, and what it takes to perform at your best over the long term without paying an unnecessary price for it. That’s been my focus ever since.
I’m passionate about working with people and companies like you for good reason. I’ve worked in senior positions in corporate IT Software, I was the CEO of a mental health CIC, and for the last decade I’ve built and grown my own business. I understand your world because I've lived and worked in it for most of my career.
My Coaching Credentials
My qualifications span several disciplines, which is unusual, and deliberately so. Understanding performance at the level I work at requires more than one lens.
PhD in Experimental Psychology
The scientific foundation behind everything I do. Cognition, mindset, decision-making and behaviour.
Certified High Performance Coach™️
One of fewer than 800 certified coaches worldwide – and only a fraction of those in the UK – trained in the science of sustained high performance personally by Brendon Burchard. This is not a generic coaching qualification. It’s the world’s highest rated coaching program, sought after by Fortune 500 CEOs and Pro Athletes alike.
Clinical Hypnotherapist & Psychotherapist
A neuroscience-based, clinical-grade qualification combining solution-focused psychotherapy and hypnotherapy. I work directly with how the brain processes thoughts, experience, habit and change.
CBTi Trained
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia – the evidence-based clinical approach to sleep disruption. Because sleep and performance are inseparable.
Beyond Leadership & Performance
Alongside my work in leadership and performance psychology, I’m also recognised for my work in identity disruption following unexpected DNA discoveries – in particular those navigating a Non-Paternal Event: NPE.
I'm an NPE myself, so I know and understand what that world feels like. It led me to create UnexpectedDNA – a specialist platform providing structured support, guidance and resources for those affected by DNA surprises, as well as training and education for therapists, organisations and partner organisations working in this space.
You can find more information about UnexpectedDNA here.
Whilst my Performance Under Pressure© work and my identity disruption work may seem disconnected, in the end it's really the same underlying question ... who are you when everything you thought you knew shifts?
If you’d like to have a conversation about working together, please get in touch.