About Faisal

Welcome.

I am a student of life, entrepreneurship, and humanity. As a child, I lived through war and famine. In college, I worked as a graveyard shift janitor where I was introduced to mindfulness. A serial entrepreneur since the early 90s, I have been traveling the world of innovation, cutting edge technology, and global businesses.

Founder & CEO

Two of the companies he founded became the “Fastest Growing North American Technology Companies” according to the “Deloitte Technology Fast 500” where he served as the Chairman and CEO.

Founder & CEO

He is the founder of SHADOKA, NextChapter, and other companies. He also serves as a transformation and an innovation partner for CACI, a $6.7B company focused on U.S. national security.
He volunteers for several organizations, including MIT IDEAS Social Innovation Program. He is also a contributor at the Swiss business school IMD, Thinkers50, the Project Management Institute (PMI), and others.
As a founder and CEO of multiple companies, he is a three-time winner of Deloitte Technology Fast 50™ and Fast 500™ awards. He has developed more than 20 commercial platforms and worked with leadership at the U.S. DoD, DHS, GE, MasterCard, American Express, Home Depot, PepsiCo, IBM, Chase, and others. For their innovative work, he and his team have been awarded several provisional patents in the areas of user authentication, business rule routing, and metadata sorting.

#1 Wall Street Journal Best-selling Author and Award-winning Though Leader

He is a three-time Wall Street Journal bestselling author for his books: REINVENT (#1), Everything Connects (#2), and LIFT (#1).

His next book, TRANSCEND: Unlocking Humanity in the Age of AI is scheduled to be released in 1st quarter 2025 by Post Hill Press, and distributed by Simon & Schuster.
He has authored 10 award-winning books (published by Cambridge University Press, Financial Times, Harper Collins Leadership, McGraw Hill, Fast Company Press, and others; his 30 plus awards include Axiom Gold, Nautilus, Foreword, Book Excellence, Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Awards 2023 Shortlist, and others) on humanity, business, and technology.

#1 Wall Street Journal Best-selling Author and Award-winning Though Leader

“We’re delighted to share the news that Faisal Hoque has earned a spot on the Shortlist for the Thinkers50 2023 Strategy Award. This biennial award highlights the best strategic thinkers in their field, by answering the question: “If you were a business leader looking for strategic guidance, who would you turn to for advice?” It recognizes the most exceptional contributions to the world of strategic management and leadership – shaping the journey and outcomes for organizations.
Faisal Hoque is an entrepreneur and thought leader known for his dedication to enabling sustainable and transformational changes. His contributions epitomize the innovative spirit that defines excellence in strategy and leadership.”

Entrepreneur and Innovator

“Talk about a trip: entrepreneur Faisal Hoque started his career in the U.S. as a “janitorial engineer,” but eventually went on to raise millions for his businesses, despite setbacks like being ousted as CEO of his own company (sound familiar, Apple?).”

Entrepreneur and Innovator

At the age of only 14, he began what would be the first of many businesses; cobbling together stereo components to sell from his father’s home in Dhaka, Bangladesh in order to save the money he would need to support his plan to study in the United States.
He built his first commercial software product at the age of 20 while studying at the University of Minnesota, and went on to hold management positions in Pitney Bowes and then Dun and Bradstreet. In 1991, Pitney Bowes recruited him to join one of their R&D groups before he finished his undergraduate degree. At Pitney and Dun and Bradstreet, he worked on cutting-edge analytics and decision support methods and systems for customer intelligence, sales effectiveness, and revenue optimization before CRM/ERP, Sales Automation, and Business Intelligence were hardly concepts.
As a serial entrepreneur, he has raised venture capital from angels, strategic partners, and institutional investors to fund his innovative business-to-business startups. Over the decades, his companies innovated products and solutions that: provided middleware software for complex, secure transaction processing; created industry’s first set of re-usable software components for integrated B2B e-commerce; and pioneered comprehensive business value management frameworks and platforms.
“Faisal Hoque, the entrepreneur and innovator, was born in Bangladesh and found himself in the boardrooms of Fortune 100s by the time he was 27.”
“#1 Leadership Thinker in the World”
Faisal has been named among the Top 100 Most Influential People in Technology by the editors of Ziff-Davis Enterprise in 2008.
Trust Across America-Trust Around the World (TAA-TAW) named him one of their Top 100 Thought Leaders.
CIO Quarterly magazine designated Faisal Hoque as “Mr. Convergence” in 2008 for consistently advocating and developing methods to integrate business strategies with technology decisions.
His books include the #1 Wall Street Journal best-seller “REINVENT – Navigating Business Transformation in a Hyper-Digital Era” published in association with IMD (Institute for Management Development) (Fast Company Press, 2023), the #1 Wall Street Journal and USA Today best-seller “LIFT – Fostering the Leader in You Amid Revolutionary Global Change” (with Jeff Wuorio and Shelley Moench-Kelly, Fast Company Press, 2022), and the #2 Wall Street Journal and USA Today best-seller “Everything Connects – Cultivating Mindfulness, Creativity, and Innovation for Long-Term Value” (with Drake Baer, 2nd Edition, Fast Company Press, 2022). His ground-breaking first book “e-Enterprisewas released by Cambridge University Press in 2000.

Raised in Bangladesh, his approach to leadership, innovation, and business is deeply rooted in Eastern philosophical principles, particularly those emphasizing connectivity, mindfulness, the collective good, and constant transformation. He believes that sharing knowledge and experiences can provide clarity on improving our collective future.

He has a profound passion for travel, which he views as a multifaceted journey encompassing cultural, spiritual, intellectual, and culinary experiences. His travels have taken him across the globe, allowing him to immerse himself in diverse cultures and traditions. His visits to a Zen monasteries in Japan had significant impact on him, triggering an internal transformation that influenced his outlook on work and life life.

His love for cooking began out of necessity when he started college at 17, and it has since evolved into a joyful and creative pursuit.  He believes that the ritualistic nature of cooking enhances one’s ability to be mindful, which in turn improves focus and awareness in other areas of life.
His work has appeared in Fast Company, Business Insider, The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, Fox, CBS, The Financial Times, Forbes, Inc., and others.
An engaging and popular global thought leader, Faisal has 40,000 followers on X. Faisal also speaks on a wide range of topics and has very active engagement, with over two million content impressions annually from more than 15,000 LinkedIn followers.
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