Bubbly, personable, and intelligent, Khadijah Shamsul has made change-making a personal mission from the very start of her career.
In 2015, driven by a passion to instill confidence, self-worth, and identity in the next generation, Khadijah and her husband, Sheikh Faizal, founded NOUS Academy. As debaters in university days who have won awards and travelled the world, their mission was to equip youth and young adults with critical thinking and public speaking skills.
Since NOUS Academy’s inception, she and her team have trained over 8,000 students across various educational institutions.
But Khadijah’s impact isn’t confined to the classroom or the debate stage. She understands that true influence often happens in quiet, personal moments. Many of the students she mentors come from broken homes, where love and security are scarce.
Recognising this, Khadijah opened her home to these young minds, inviting them to share meals and engage in meaningful conversations, offering them the warmth and understanding they so desperately need.
A simple gesture like having a meal can really change someone’s life. Sometimes my students come to me and share problems they are facing at home. – Khadijah Shamsul
During the same time, Khadijah actively supported a friend leading Migrant 88, an NGO advocating for migrants’ and refugees’ rights. In 2018, she successfully fundraised RM25,000 in collaboration with the Azadi Association (a Swiss NGO) and delivered humanitarian aid to a new Rohingya refugee campsite in Teknaf, Bangladesh.
It was there that Khadijah witnessed period poverty firsthand.
While on a mission to build toilets in rural villages—where women were vulnerable to assault when going to the river at night—she noticed bloodstains on floors, mattresses, and chairs. When she asked about them, the response was stark:
Women here don’t have menstrual pads. If they have cloth, they use it. If not, they use newspapers.
After three years of running NOUS Academy, Khadijah felt it was time to focus on her personal growth and how she could bring greater impact to the community. Although she graduated with an accounting degree and is now a co-founder of a startup, she was unsure how to elevate her organisation to the next level—until she discovered the Asia School of Business (ASB) MBA programme, a collaboration with MIT Sloan.
Defining Moments In Changemaking
The 20-month full-time MBA at the ASB was intense and demanding. Khadijah, along with 41 classmates, immersed herself in the programme, diving deep into Action Learning projects that took them to organisations across the globe.
Working with different teams while navigating different multicultural contexts and time pressure to meet deadlines, Khadijah had the opportunity to travel to Singapore, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia, consulting and learning on the go. The experience was challenging, but it taught her a crucial lesson:
You can’t change yourself unless you embrace discomfort. At MIT, we say that learning there is like ‘drinking from a fire hose.’ The steep learning curve sometimes felt overwhelming, but once you embrace it, you gain immense benefits. – Khadijah Shamsul
This period of discomfort also prompted Khadijah to reevaluate her career goals for NOUS Academy. As she embarked on her MBA journey, it became clear that scaling her education startup wasn’t enough.
To make a bigger impact, she needed to rethink how she combined her passions for data, education, and development. This insight drove her to find new ways to merge these interests and drive meaningful change.
In 2020, Khadijah graduated with an MBA and began searching for a role where she could make a meaningful impact – one that would marry her newfound love for data and her drive to make an impact.
Making Data Work For Changemaking
After months of searching for a way to merge these interests, she discovered LeadWomen, a consultancy dedicated to increasing female representation in senior leadership and on corporate boards in Malaysia, during a meet-and-greet session organised by ASB.
According to the latest data from the Securities Commission (SC), female representation on boards in Malaysia’s top 100 publicly listed companies (PLCs) has nearly doubled since 2016, rising from 16.6% to 31.4% in 2024[1].
As the Diversity Officer and Board Services & Digital Transformation Manager at LeadWomen, Khadijah played a pivotal role in training and developing female director members to be board-ready for Malaysian companies, significantly advancing equality and diversity in high-level decision-making.
During the pandemic lockdowns, Khadijah worked tirelessly at several organisations, deepening her passion for learning and development while continuing to merge data with social impact.
After a series of job iterations and 11 interviews, Khadijah found her perfect match at Teach For All, a global network dedicated to ensuring every child has access to an equitable and quality education.
As the Chief of Staff for the Communications team, Khadijah works behind the scenes to improve systems and processes, enabling changemakers on the ground to work more effectively and leveraging data to amplify the impact of their efforts.
Data is incredibly powerful. When we can extract it, make sense of it, and communicate it, we can turn good work into great work. That’s the kind of impact I’m making. – Khadijah Shamsul
Khadijah is driving positive change at Teach For All, using data to enhance global education equity.
Learning never stops
As a lifelong learner, Khadijah continues to embody the values she absorbed at ASB: to innovate, keep learning, and give back.
They (ASB) don’t believe in the idea that if something isn’t broken, don’t fix it. Instead, they say, if it’s not broken, let’s make it better! – Khadijah Shamsul
Now a newly minted mom, Khadijah seeks out bite-sized courses to further enhance her impact as a changemaker. She balances this with her dedication to motherhood, ensuring she remains present for her baby, even when schedules are unpredictable and the demands are high.
Khadijah is gracefully balancing her new season as a mother, lifelong learner, and changemaker.
Despite completing her MBA in 2020, Khadijah still cherishes the lessons from her time at ASB, often reflecting on this thought:
There are always teachable moments, no matter where you are. You can learn from the highest positions or the lowest. The only thing worse than death is living without learning to better yourself. You are your best investment, so never stop learning. – Khadijah Shamsul
Our sources:
- Tee, K. (2024). Malaysia leads Asia with 31.4pc female board members in Top 100 publicly listed companies, SC data reveals. Malay Mail. Link.
This article was originally published on Wiki Impact, an online platform dedicated to the impact industry in Malaysia. They share stories and data on social issues that matter.