Bio
Fatima Hamdulay is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Leadership and Character in Entrepreneurship at Wake Forest University’s Centre for Entrepreneurship. She has degrees in Chemical Engineering and Social Science, as well as an MBA, all from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Her PhD, completed in Brunei Darussalam, pursued an Islamically indigenous construction of personal excellence and involved an extensive series of case studies of award-winning public-school educators and leaders throughout Brunei Darussalam’s public schooling system. Fatima also has extensive work experience as both a Chemical Engineer and as an Operational Excellence consultant in a range of major industries in South Africa, including hospitality, finance and manufacturing. Additionally, she worked for a period of more than ten years as a teaching-focused Senior Lecturer in Operations Management and Operational Excellence at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business.
Both in her earlier work as a Chemical Engineer, and her current work as an academic, Fatima’s focus has always been on making the world of work more humane for all involved. Whether in the classroom or in the field, she works at expanding thinking to a more thoughtful and systemic level of understanding of our impact on others, to improve not just ourselves, but also the world around us. Her research engages ways of unlocking a range of masteries within ourselves – from functional to purpose mastery and personal to interpersonal mastery – and bringing these to bear in meaningful enterprise.