Assad Schuitema, PhD, is a philosopher, organisational culture consultant and CEO of Schuitema Group, whose work explores the relationship between human excellence, leadership and the pursuit of the good life.

Assad has worked with Schuitema Group since 2014, primarily consulting to executive and senior leadership teams on organisational culture, leadership and transformation. His work is grounded in the Care & Growth framework and focuses particularly on the role of human intent in shaping leadership relationships, organisational culture and sustained performance. Over the course of his career, he has worked across a range of industries and organisational contexts, combining consulting, facilitation, executive coaching and the development of leadership and culture interventions.

Alongside his organisational work, Assad has maintained a longstanding academic engagement with philosophy. He has lectured first- and second-year philosophy at the University of the Witwatersrand, teaching across areas including ethics, logic and critical thinking, epistemology, metaphysics and classical philosophy. He recently completed his PhD in Philosophy, in which he undertook a comparative study of classical and modern conceptions of the human good. His research focuses particularly on happiness, virtue and human flourishing, challenging modern subjectivist accounts of well-being and reconsidering the classical idea that living well cannot ultimately be separated from being good.

Assad’s philosophical and organisational work is also informed by a longstanding engagement with the spiritual tradition of Tasawwuf. He is a student of the Darqawi-Shadhili tradition associated with Zawia Ebrahim in South Africa, founded by Shaykh Ebrahim Schuitema. His engagement with this tradition has reinforced a central theme running through both his academic and professional work: that human excellence ultimately requires a movement beyond self-interest towards service, contribution and the cultivation of character.

These three domains — philosophy, organisational practice and spiritual tradition — converge in Assad’s particular interest in intent. His work examines the distinction between living primarily to acquire, consume and secure outcomes for oneself, and living from an intent to give, serve and contribute. He applies this distinction both to the ancient philosophical question of what constitutes a good human life and to the practical challenge of creating organisations in which people willingly take responsibility, exercise autonomy and contribute to something beyond themselves.

As CEO of Schuitema Group, Assad continues to develop and apply these ideas with leaders and organisations internationally, with a particular focus on creating cultures characterised by trust, accountability, contribution and human excellence.