Cian Weeresinghe, Chief Marketing Officer at Wise, is known for prioritizing clarity over complexity, especially when the pressure mounts. At Wise, where autonomous teams are a core part of the company culture, Weeresinghe sees leadership not as rigid authority, but as responsive direction-setting. When a crisis strikes, he’s quick to “take the handle of the tiller” and make confident, transparent decisions. His approach hinges on balancing accountability with autonomy. Teams at Wise share quarterly plans and retrospectives openly, while being empowered to adjust based on feedback and performance. Weeresinghe insists on frameworks, forcing both himself and his team to ground big bets in measurable outcomes.
Born in the UK, Weeresinghe earned his bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Cambridge. His marketing career began at Capital One, where he first developed the long-term professional relationships that have defined his career path. Before Wise, he held leadership roles at eBay, where he honed a bottom-up approach to marketing spend, at The Guardian, where he led post-migration growth efforts, and at Secret Escapes, where he served as CMO. At Wise, Weeresinghe is responsible for setting the company’s marketing strategy across channels, balancing short-term performance with long-term investment in areas like SEO, which he sees as a compoundable asset. He’s a firm believer in cross-functional thinking, often drawing analogies between product, engineering, and organic content strategies.
What ties his career together is a willingness to stretch into unfamiliar territory. “Somewhere between accident and being deeply thoughtful,” he once said, he deliberately chose roles that forced him out of his comfort zone. Whether experimenting with SEO mechanics, interrogating growth assumptions with a “sniff test,” or helping his team dissect marketing ROI with surgical precision, Weeresinghe has built a career on curiosity, camaraderie, and calculated judgment. For those just starting out, his advice is pragmatic: stay connected, be precise in your requests, and never hesitate to ask people further ahead in their careers for five minutes of their time.