Gerard van Hoek

Gerard van Hoek is an affiliate with Schaffer Consulting. Before starting Schaffer Consulting Southern Africa in 2005, Gerard practiced as a consultant focusing on change management and organization development in both the private and public sectors of the South African economy. Clients included government at national and local levels, SASOL and ISCOR in petrochemicals and steel as well as technology and communication companies such as Oracle and AT&T. His work also took him into entrepreneurial ventures in other Southern African countries.

From 2000, he started to collaborate with Schaffer Consulting and has helped clients produce major performance gains through working with reliability engineers in petrochemical plants and helping design high-impact projects in professional services and high technology firms.

During the early part of his career, Gerard gained his Masters of Commerce degree while being project leader of a three-year change effort in the IT division of Transnet-responsible for South Africa's rail system and South African Airways.

He started a school for young entrepreneurs north of Pretoria in 2004. It is part of the practice and uses rapid-cycle projects to educate and equip young people to become self-employed after leaving school.

Gerard has written a number of articles that have appeared in local publications and is a guest lecturer at number of universities.