STORY
You can’t always make the right decision. But you can make a decision and then make it right.
Hamza Khan’s story is about finding your place and thriving in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world.
Early Life, Education, & Military Service
Hamza Khan was born in a rough-and-tumble neighborhood in the borough of Queens, New York, to loving and hardworking South Asian immigrant parents. He grew up shy, introverted, and socially awkward. And like his parents, he struggled to find his place in the world. Disillusioned by their hard life in New York, Hamza's family moved North of the 49th Parallel to Canada and settled in Scarborough, Ontario—a once thriving but now neglected borough saddled with the nickname "The Forgotten City." While his parents diligently worked and provided for Hamza and his young sister, Hamza attended school and developed a keen interest in visual and written communication. Guidance counselors at his high school encouraged Hamza to pursue post-secondary education that would lead to a career in the communication industry. However, Hamza's father had entirely different career visions for his son. Having fled abject poverty back home to pursue The American Dream, he urged Hamza to pursue a career within the "Holy Trinity" of "respectable" and "essential" professions: doctor, lawyer, or engineer—three options that couldn't have been more divergent from Hamza's passions and aspirations. Overwhelmed by such a difficult decision to be made at the tender young age of 17, Hamza, to everyone's surprise, enlisted as a Reservist with the Canadian Armed Forces. There, Hamza learned an invaluable lesson that he carries with him to this day: "You can't always make the right decision. But you can make a decision and then make it right."
An Eye-Opening Internship
Hamza's formal foray into the communication industry began long before he had the vocabulary to articulate what he was working on precisely. From high school through post-secondary, at the dawn of social media (and even YouTube, for that matter), Hamza and his closest friends created music videos and comedy sketches. To promote their work to wider audiences, Hamza leaned into his passion for visual and written communication and self-taught himself an array of technical skills, including graphic design, website development, and social media marketing. And after winning a case competition hosted by Sony Music Entertainment while completing a business certificate at the Rotman School of Management, Hamza landed a coveted internship position at the record label. Working in the industry during this time was deeply insightful as the company navigated seismic consumer behavior and technology shifts. The internet and social media disrupted the company, the communication industry, and the entire global music business. At the end of his internship, Hamza's supervisor pulled him aside and said, "You might want to stick around for a few more months and watch what happens to this company & industry from the inside." To this day, Hamza credits his extended internship at Sony Music Entertainment with opening his eyes to the power of disruption and the importance of resilience and leadership to navigate the future of work. During this time, Hamza learned new, honed old skills, and received a masterclass in change friendliness. From there, Hamza returned to the University of Toronto Scarborough, inspired to help his alma mater change before change was required (or before it was too late).
Higher Education & Student Affairs
Hamza nearly dropped out of the University of Toronto Scarborough. The culture clash of being a South Asian first-generation student in North America hampered Hamza's ability to confidently articulate his desire to pursue a communications-focused education to his parents. So Hamza reluctantly dragged his feet through three years of post-secondary, half-assed ambitions of becoming a lawyer while growing increasingly disillusioned and resentful. As such, Hamza became the last student to show up to classes and became the first student to leave them. His marks dropped to C's and D's. It wasn't until Hamza's enticement by a beautifully designed poster advertising a leadership workshop for students anxious about life after graduation that his story would take its next turn. Hamza attended the workshop and became inspired by the words of a keynote speaker who would later become his dear friend, and mentor, Drew Dudley, who said: "You don't just go to post-secondary to get a job. You go there to become a full person, to maximize your potential. You go there to engage in personal, professional, and academic development. You go there for holistic development." These words were music to Hamza's ears. The next day, Hamza switched programs to honor his passion for communication and restarted the journey to discover his place in the world—to find his gift and live his life through it. Thus began a journey through the wondrous world of Student Affairs—the divisions of educational institutions responsible for programs, services, and events aimed at supporting student transition and belonging—a space that allowed Hamza to use his burgeoning communication proficiency to deliver the right message to the right audience at the right time. All in the hopes that others like him didn't fall through the cracks.
Thought Leadership & Academia
Hamza worked on flagship, innovative, and nationally recognized programs at the University of Toronto Scarborough, including one of Canada's largest and most comprehensive leadership development programs. After briefly cutting his teeth as a communicator for a publicly-traded communication technology startup, Hamza re-entered the world of Student Affairs, but this time at Toronto Metropolitan University. In under two years, Hamza has helped establish the institution—Canada's leader in innovative, career-focused education—as a national leader in online student engagement. Soon, Hamza's models were replicating at institutions worldwide—from New York to Australia—and earned him and his team numerous awards. It also enabled Hamza to hit the conference circuit and share his ideas across North America. Hamza's speaking journey began with departmental roadshows, association meetups, and regional presentations. In due time, Hamza began delivering talks to packed auditoriums, guest lectures to MBA classrooms, workshops to Fortune 500 companies, and keynote addresses at global conferences. During this ascent, Hamza also became an instructor at Seneca College, playing a critical role in developing Canada's first accredited social media certification. Following this stint, Hamza became a top-rated instructor at Toronto Metropolitan University, teaching courses on professional communication.
Splash Effect
With the wind in his sails from his leadership and communication experience in the Canadian post-secondary education sector, Hamza co-founded a boutique communication agency, Splash Effect, with another dear friend and higher education professional, Kareem Rahaman. They hit the ground running by doing for other education institutions what they did for Toronto Metropolitan University: create online communities to enhance communication with students. But soon, the scope of their services and clientele would expand. Within two years, Splash Effect became a full-service communications agency with clients spanning the not-for-profit, government, and healthcare sectors. And within four years, they had built another award-winning team. They earned the business of notable clients such as Hootsuite, The City of Toronto, Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, Rotman School of Management, Ted Rogers School of Management, and more. During his ride with Splash Effect, Hamza also created and sold a publication—Year One—which helped to refine much of Hamza's beliefs about resilience and other positive leadership values. Hamza organized the lessons from building and leading award-winning teams, as well as the Year One project, into his first TEDx talk, "Stop Managing, Start Leading," which went viral and has amassed more than 2 million views to date.
SkillsCamp
While working at Splash Effect, Hamza, Kareem, and their colleague Bailey Parnell began to notice a growing market need for soft skills training. It started with clients requesting out-of-scope workshops and training for those skills that members of the Splash Effect team exemplified. With one industry report after another stressing the importance of soft skills such as resilience, leadership, productivity, and change-friendliness in the future of work, the Government of Canada prioritized bridging the skills gap to future-proof its economy. The "aha moment" for the Splash Effect trio was a pitch to a conglomerate of businesses, government agencies, and educational institutions, Magnet. Researching a solution to Magnet's problem inspired the team to spin off Splash Effect's workshop & training activities into another company, SkillsCamp. They began by transitioning some of Splash Effect's clients and Hamza and Bailey's speaking clients into SkillsCamp clients. Bailey took the reins as CEO and created a pedagogy and structure that became SkillsCamp's core business model. Under Bailey's leadership, SkillsCamp grew to work with notable clients such as L'Oreal, Ubisoft, General Motors, General Electric, and Mercedes-Benz. Today, SkillsCamp teaches the "missing curriculum" to help people thrive in the future of work.
The Burnout Gamble
Hamza experienced a destabilizing bout with burnout during his transition from Toronto Metropolitan University to Splash Effect, which prompted him to reevaluate his entire approach to work and life. Documenting his research and distilling wisdom from doctors, mentors, and peak performers into actionable insights, Hamza began compiling writings that would eventually form his second TEDx talk and first book. This discovery process compelled Hamza to confront the reality that he had burned out several times earlier in his career, as far back as his time at Sony Music Entertainment, where he once worked nearly 72 hours straight as an overachieving intern and fainted from exhaustion. Time and again, similar manifestations of overwork would appear, but Hamza would ignore them. The wear and tear on his well-being were unavoidable in the winter of 2014 when Hamza suffered a panic/anxiety attack that sent his body into shock and plunged him into a month-long illness which resulted in him being isolated and recovering at home for more than a month. In 2017, Hamza published "The Burnout Gamble: Achieve More by Beating Burnout & Building Resilience," which immediately became a best-seller. It opened doors for Hamza to share his story with other overachievers caught up in similar patterns of overwork.
Student Life Network
Though Canada's post-secondary enrolment rates are among the highest in the world, youth unemployment in 2017 plunged to an all-time low. Canadians hand as much money toward education as any country, as a percentage of GDP. Still, they continue to experience high youth unemployment and the urgent need to import skilled workers. Hamza's education and career odyssey exposes a misallocation of education dollars. It validates the need to respond better to students' changing behaviors & expectations. And when you zoom out and get a sense of just how many students are falling through the cracks like Hamza back at the University of Toronto Scarborough, there can be no doubt that the existing education systems are not adequately meeting the challenges of the complex modern world. Once Splash Effect and SkillsCamp were cruising, Hamza grew restless. He wanted to solve the intertwined communication problem that set him down the path to this emotional headspace: communicating the right message, to the right person, at the right time. But this endeavor would require a bold action: a shift from working with brands to reaching and engaging students directly. This approach prompted Hamza to exit Splash Effect, take a back seat at SkillsCamp, and join Student Life Network—Canada's largest and most comprehensive student resource hub. There, as Managing Director, Hamza helped grow the community to nearly 3 million student members while facilitating their transition from high school through post-secondary to their dream jobs. The Student Life Network has been since reproduced to serve communities of new and expecting parents and immigrants.
Ideas Into Action
Life works in mysterious ways. Hamza wholeheartedly believes in the saying, "You can't always make the right decision—but you can make a decision and then make it right." Hamza's journey to find his place in the world was anything but straightforward. It was a messy, iterative process governed by a desire to help people like himself to get out of survival mode and to thrive in the future of work. Over the past decade, Hamza gradually refined his focus, consolidating his portfolio of work and thoughts into organized, streamlined expressions of insight and wisdom. His career afforded him opportunities to learn, unlearn and relearn; it afforded him opportunities to articulate and refine his philosophies about leadership, productivity, resilience, and change into unique products and services—books, keynotes, workshops, coaching, and more. Looking to new horizons, Hamza launched "Ideas Into Action," a podcast series that reverse-engineers the careers of various high performers down into actionable insights that can help listeners navigate the future of work. In many ways, this podcast is the crown jewel of the first "arc" in Hamza's relatively short but storied career. It's a collection of conversations with like-minded people who've strived to scale and maximize their impact, with the dual goal of extending the runway of possibilities for future generations. In the end, Hamza transformed his ideas into action and found his "place" in the world—where his unique skills and passions were nurtured and rewarded. Hamza re-committed to tirelessly helping people to thrive in the future of work. But little did he know that this was just the start of a new arc with higher stakes.
Leadership, Reinvented & Speakers’ Spotlight
Just as Hamza was gearing up for another worldwide speaking tour, the world abruptly shut down. And during the eerie early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Khan's father suffered a near-fatal experience. His brush with mortality showed Hamza a portal into the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous "new abnormal"—a rapidly shifting reality where failure is imminent, and change is inevitable. The lockdowns offered Hamza time to process this near-tragedy, observe global leaders stumble through the crisis, and experience the following epiphany: traditional leadership has long been overdue for reinvention; we need a reinvented system that transcends shareholder value. We need a reinvented system focused on people and the planet. Hamza immediately got to work on his second book, "Leadership, Reinvented"—described as "one of the most important leadership books written in the 21st century." Motivated to reach as many leaders as possible and as quickly as possible, Hamza partnered with the world-class team at Speakers' Spotlight. Together, they've helped tens of thousands of leaders (and counting) worldwide—from AT&T to Accor and from Mondi to Microsoft—to thrive in the future of work. And in doing so, accelerate the shift to a more inclusive and sustainable planet of plenty.
Rehumanizing Workplaces
Every change journey involves a literal or metaphorical return to the journey's starting point, possessing newfound wisdom. Emerging from the chaos of the pandemic, a newlywed Hamza Khan returned to his birthplace of New York. It's where both he and his parents once felt out of place, neglected, and disillusioned. These feelings are familiar to most employees in the world. That's right—Gallup's most recent "State of the Workplace" report found that nearly 80% of employees worldwide are disengaged. In other words, the workplace is not working. With his birthplace of New York as a new base, the Scarborough-made and globally-refined Hamza intends to rehumanize workplaces to accelerate humanity's evolution beyond fear, chaos, and survival into an age of compassionate leadership and human-centric organizations. And in doing so, he begins a new life/career arc focused on galvanizing the global workforce towards a shared higher purpose of serving people and the planet so that no person has to merely survive and needlessly struggle to find their place in the world ever again.
Put people first. It’s always the right decision to make. And it’s never too late to make it.
Let’s co-create a better future for people and the planet. It’s the winning strategy for the future.
