AUTHOR. SPEAKER. EDUCATOR. MARKETER. CREATOR.
Hamza Khan is a multi-award winning marketer & entrepreneur. He’s the Managing Director of Student Life Network, Canada’s most comprehensive resource hub dedicated to helping and empowering millions of students across the country. He co-founded both Splash Effect, a boutique marketing & creative agency, as well as SkillsCamp, a soft skills training company. He is an instructor at Seneca College and Ryerson University, teaching courses on digital marketing and social media. Through his consulting, writing, teaching and speaking, Hamza empowers people and businesses to transform ideas into action.
2009
A nervous, insecure, and terrified graduate of the University of Toronto Scarborough, Hamza Khan struggles to read off a piece of paper at his mentor Drew Dudley’s farewell party.
2019
A calm, confident, and composed international keynote speaker delivers a moving convocation address for graduates of the University of Toronto Scarborough.
2009
A nervous, insecure, and terrified graduate of the University of Toronto Scarborough, Hamza Khan struggles to read off a piece of paper at his mentor Drew Dudley’s farewell party.
2019
A calm, confident, and composed international keynote speaker delivers a moving convocation address for graduates of the University of Toronto Scarborough.
Speaking
INTERNATIONAL KEYNOTE SPEAKER
From TEDx stages and national conferences to MBA classrooms and Fortune 500 boardrooms, Hamza is regularly invited to deliver keynotes and workshops around the world.
Writing
BEST-SELLING AUTHOR
In 2017, Hamza published his first book, “The Burnout Gamble: Achieve More by Beating Burnout and Building Resilience” which instantly became a bestseller.
Writing
BEST-SELLING AUTHOR
In 2017, Hamza published his first book, “The Burnout Gamble: Achieve More by Beating Burnout and Building Resilience” which instantly became a bestseller.
MILESTONES
Early Life & Education
Hamza Khan was born in Queens, New York, to devoted and hardworking South Asian immigrant parents. Dazzled by pop culture—blockbuster movies, video games, comic books, wrestling, and cartoons—Hamza quickly developed a love of all things media. Inspired by his similarly enamored uncles and aunts, Hamza also developed an early fascination with music, music videos, and hip-hop culture. From New York, Hamza’s family moved North of the 49th Parallel to Canada and settled in Scarborough, Ontario. While his parents diligently worked and provided for the family, Hamza attended school and developed a keen interest in English literature as well as the visual and creative arts. Guidance counsellors at his high school encouraged Hamza to pursue post-secondary education that would lead to a career in the media industry. However, Hamza’s father had entirely different career visions for his son. Having escaped poverty to pursue American Dream, he urged Hamza to pursue a career within the Holy Trinity of “respectable” and “essential” jobs: doctor, lawyer, or engineer—three options which couldn’t be more divergent from Hamza’s passions aspirations. Overwhelmed by such a heavy 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! It was there that Hamza learned an invaluable lesson that he carries with him till this day: “You can’t always make the right decisions. But you can make a decision, and then make it right.”
Social Media & Digital Marketing
Hamza’s foray into the world of digital marketing began long before he even had the vocabulary to articulate what it was exactly that he was working on. From high school through post-secondary, at the dawn of social media (and even YouTube, for that matter), Hamza and his closest friends began creating music videos and comedy sketches. In order to promote their work to wider audiences, Hamza 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. It was an interesting time to be working in the industry, as it was desperately reacting to seismic shifts in consumer behaviour and technology; The internet and social media were changing the world, along with it the very discipline of marketing itself. 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 industry, from the inside.” Till this day, Hamza credits his extended internship at Sony Music Entertainment with opening his eyes to the power of digital disruption and the importance of attunement, resilience, and creativity in the future of work. It’s at Sony Music Entertainment where new skills were learned, old skills were honed, and multiple lessons about business and marketing clicked in. From there, Hamza returned to the University of Toronto Scarborough, inspired to make a change.
Higher Education (Student Affairs)
Hamza nearly dropped out of the University of Toronto Scarborough, an institution he didn’t want to attend in the first place. Culture clash hampered Hamza’s ability to confidently articulate his desire to pursue a creative arts education at the college level, and so Hamza reluctantly dragged his feet through three years of post-secondary, half-assed ambitions of becoming a lawyer, all the while growing increasingly disillusioned and resentful. As such, Hamza became the last student to show up to class and the first student to leave. His marks dropped to C’s and D’s. It wasn’t until Hamza’s eye was caught by a beautifully designed poster advertising a leadership workshop for students anxious about life after graduation that his story would take a dramatic turn. Hamza attended the workshop, and was inspired by the words of a man who would later become his 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 engage in personal, professional, and academic development…holistic development.” The very next day, Hamza switched programs to English Literature and began a long journey to rediscover his gift and live his life through it. This began with a journey through the world of Student Affairs, the divisions of educational institutions responsible for programs, services, and events aimed at supporting a complete student experience (but especially outside of the classroom)—a space that allowed him to use his marketing abilities to deliver the right message to the right student at the right time—so that others just like Hamza 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 leadership development programs. After cutting his teeth as a marketer for a publicly-traded tech startup as well as a freelance marketing & creative professional, Hamza re-entered the world of Student Affairs, but this time at Ryerson University. In under two years, Hamza has helped establish Ryerson University—Canada’s leader in innovative, career-focused education—as a national leader in online student engagement. The model Hamza pioneered was replicated at institutions around the world and earned Hamza and his team numerous awards. It also afforded Hamza the opportunity to hit the conference circuit and share his thoughts. It began with local presentations, then regional presentations, then national presentations. Soon enough, Hamza was delivering TEDx talks to packed auditoriums, guest lectures to MBA classrooms, workshops to Fortune 500 companies, and keynote addresses to audiences around the world. Around this time, Hamza also became an instructor at Seneca College, playing a critical role in the development of Canada’s first accredited social media certification. Hamza then went on to become a top-rated instructor at Ryerson University, teaching courses on social media, digital marketing, and professional communication.
Splash Effect
With the wind in his sails from his marketing experience in the education sector, Hamza co-founded a boutique digital marketing agency, Splash Effect, with his friend Kareem Rahaman (from whom Hamza inherited the position of Digital Community Facilitator). The former President of Ryerson University, Sheldon Levy, had created a culture of entrepreneurship and innovation at the institution which enabled Hamza and Kareem with the confidence to start up a company. As student staff at their respective alma maters, Hamza and Kareem had used their marketing abilities to raise the profile and awareness of their schools (both even led campaigns to galvanize support for the construction of world class athletic facilities). They hit the ground running with the two of them doing for other education institutions what they did for Ryerson University—create social media and digital marketing strategies 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 marketing & communications agency with clients spanning the not-for-profit, government, and healthcare sectors. And within four years, they’d go on to build another award-winning team and earn the business of notable clients such as Ted Rogers School of Management, Hootsuite, Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, Rotman School of Management, City of Toronto, and more. During his ride at Splash Effect, Hamza also created and sold a publication—Year One—which helped to refine much of Hamza’s beliefs about resilience and other leadership values.
SkillsCamp
While working at Splash Effect, Hamza, Kareem, and Bailey Parnell (then a Digital Marketing Specialist) began to notice a growing market need for skills training. It began with clients requesting workshops and training for those skills that were exemplified by members of the team, but outside the scope of Splash Effect’s core business. With report after report stressing the importance of such skills as leadership, communication, emotional intelligence, creativity, productivity, resilience, etc. in the future of work, the Government of Canada began to prioritize bridging the skills gap in order to future-proof its economy. The “aha moment” for the Splash Effect team was a big pitch to a conglomerate of businesses, government agencies, and educational institutions, Magnet. The process of researching a solution to Magnet’s problem inspired the team to spin off Splash Effect’s workshop & training division into a full-fledged company, SkillsCamp. They began by transitioning some of Splash Effect’s clients as well as Hamza and Bailey’s speaking clients into SkillsCamp’s 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 would go on to work with notable clients such as Microsoft, LinkedIn, PepsiCo, Deloitte, and more. Today, SkillsCamp teaches the “missing curriculum” to help people become more employable and more effective leaders and contributors.
The Burnout Gamble
Hamza experienced a destabilizing bout with burnout during his transition from Ryerson 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 into a TEDx talk and a book. This process of discovery compelled Hamza to confront the reality that he has burned out several times earlier in his career, as far back as his time at Sony Music Entertainment. There, as an overachieving student and intern, Hamza had worked nearly 72 hours straight and fainted from the exhaustion. Time and again, similar manifestations of overwork would appear, but Hamza would ignore them. The wear-and-tear on his well-being was unavoidable in the Winter of 2014, when Hamza suffered a panic/anxiety attack which 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 an Amazon 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 recently hit a 40-year low. Canadians hand as much money toward education as any country, as a percentage of GDP, but they continue to experience high youth unemployment and the need to import skilled workers. Hamza’s education and career odyssey exposes a misallocation of education dollars. It validates the need to better respond to students’ changing behaviours & expectations. And when you zoom out and get a sense of just how many students are falling through the cracks, 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 motivated once again. He wanted to once-and-for-all solve the intertwined marketing & education problem that set him down the path that brought him here in the first place: getting the right message, to the right student, at the right time. This would require a bold action: a shift away from working with brands, to reaching and engaging students directly. This direction prompted Hamza to exit Splash Effect and join Student Life Network—Canada’s largest and most comprehensive student resource hub—as Managing Director. Today, he works with top brands like Amazon, Spotify, H&M, and others to help students successfully make the transition from high school through post-secondary all the way to their dream jobs.
Ideas Into Action
“You can’t always make the right decision. But you can make a decision and then make it right.” The path for Hamza to get here was anything but straightforward. It was a messy, iterative process governed by a singular desire to help youth and early talent make transitions along the education continuum. Life works in mysterious ways. Over the past decade, Hamza has been gradually refining his focus, consolidating his work and thoughts into organized, streamlined expressions. His journey has gifted him opportunities to learn, unlearn, and relearn. It has given him opportunities to articulate and refine his philosophies about productivity, marketing, communication, leadership, resilience, and other things into distinct products and services—books, communities, online learning, keynotes, workshops, and more. Most recently, Hamza launched “Ideas Into Action,” a podcast series which 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 a 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 as well as advancing the starting line. In the end, Hamza transformed his ideas into action, and continues to work tirelessly to help people maximize their potential. In the grand scheme of things, this is the start of Hamza’s journey.