Founder of Belong & Lead
AI & Future of Work Strategist | People Strategy & Analytics Leader
Culture Change Broker | Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Belonging Leader

Shujaat Ahmad is a trusted strategic advisor to global business and talent leaders, with a focus on demystifying the key driver of competitive advantage: talent. 

Shujaat spearheaded building an innovative people analytics team at LinkedIn to be in the business of mythbusting through actionable insights and driving executive decisions in the face of technological and social-cultural disruption. Shujaat has led the strategy for the Who, Where, What, How of AI & Future of Work - both what we need in the present as well as long-term future to fuel business strategy with the right culture.

As an eternal learner and unlearner, the seed of Shujaat’s vision for starting Belong & Lead was planted several years back while conducting research and personal soul searching in the unlikely soils of post-apartheid South Africa and in the hills of post-genocide Rwanda. He embarked on a personal journey that saw him pivoting from strategy consulting at Deloitte to focus on the crucial role that diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) play in business , and the role of business in society.

Shujaat is leading a movement towards a personal vision that organizations can unlock their innovation, financial, and social impact potential by making the workplace an inclusive platform for all talent to build purposeful lives, not just resumes.

  • Shujaat is a Director of People Analytics, leading the Future of Work team at LinkedIn. The FoW team is in the business of leveraging actionable insights to mythbust and drive executive decisions related to embracing the Who, Where, What, How of Future of Work - both what we need in the present as well as long-term future to fuel business strategy.

    • The Who: Where is the talent market headed and what is the value proposition for talent

    • The Where: Making hybrid and remote effective for productivity, innovation, and culture

    • The What: Embracing AI's impact on how we work, what we will need, and how to get there

    • The How: Driving culture change for outcomes through actionable insights

    Shujaat envisioned and built this pioneering team to mythbust through the crisis of the pandemic and beyond, simultaneously applying a lens on the present and the future, enabled by expertise in strategic foresight on leading in uncertainty, coupled with causal analytics across sentiment, behaviours(collaboration, connectivity, leader and team effectiveness), and outcomes (business and talent). The team successfully guided high-profile strategic transformations related to flexible work effectiveness for productivity, innovation, culture, critical talent investments, and geo-location strategy. Shujaat is now also leading the strategy on AI’s impact on work flows and talent readiness. The team also serves as “Customer Zero” for products.

    Shujaat teaches DEIB Analytics to the MBA class at the Wharton School of Business. In parallel to his day job, Shujaat has championed his passion for DEIB by co-leading the Embrace ERG (employee resource group) focused on globally embracing multiple cultures, ethnicities, and nationalities to drive enterprise as well as locally relevant inclusion and belonging for underrepresented minorities. Shujaat’s leadership efforts as an ERG leader earned him a unique award twice from LinkedIn’s CEO, particularly for driving connectivity and belonging during the unprecedent era of Covid-19 with virtual work and events of systemic racial injustice.

    Shujaat joined LinkedIn almost 7 years ago after a radical mid-career pivot from being a strategy consultant to disrupting the talent space for social good. Shujaat has previously worked in consulting and industry, his portfolio spanning across industries (Tech, Telecom, Retail and Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), and Energy) and markets (US, Canada, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Middle East). He holds a MBA from the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania, with a specialization in strategy and organizational effectiveness, and a BASc in Mechanical Engineering (Mechatronics) from the University of Toronto.