Shahida Cassim

Shahida Cassim has officially retired from her full-time position at the GSB&L at UKZN. She does however work for the University and several other organizations since.

Professor Cassim has worked, conducted research, taught and consulted in the field of Marketing in her early career. She moved on to specialize in Entrepreneurship and more recently in Social Entrepreneurship in which she developed programmes, short practical interventions, academic courses. She has contributed to policy development in the country and beyond. Her particular interests are in creativity and innovation, entrepreneurship education, entrepreneurship policy, business incubation, enterprise support, and entrepreneurial finance for both commercial entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship. She has published in the field and has developed a range of practical interventions in entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship. Among them is the popular Startup Weekend Durban.

She serves on national and international bodies in entrepreneurship. In South Africa, she served as Deputy Chair on the Forum for Entrepreneurship Development at Centres in Higher Education Institutions (FEDCI); served the Human Resources Development Council (HRDC) in the Office of the Deputy President of South Africa. Locally she has been involved in many initiatives of the Provincial Department of Economic Development (EDTEA-KZN) and on Innovation with the Ethekwini Municipality. Internationally she serves on STEP (Successful Transgenerational Entrepreneurship Practices) and on the World Entrepreneurship Forum’s ThinkTank.

Since 2014, she has dedicated her time to the development of cohorts of social entrepreneurs in an innovative programme which she calls the Champions Programme. The programme runs at the GSB&L in partnership with the Provincial EDTEA. These amazing community changemakers are involved in a development intervention that helps formalize their ventures and move them to “ready to scale”. In 2018 this programme and others in the Local Economic Development initiative earned a Global Best Award at the IPN in the United States.

In 2016 Professor Cassim embarked on a large study examining youth entrepreneurship across Africa and in particular in fragile states. The research informs policy discussions in many parts of the continent.
In addition, Professor Cassim has been involved in a number of small to medium sized businesses in various capacities. She is also involved in a large number of social organizations on which she serves in various roles.