Global frameworks are built on Western data, then travel South. Sarah Khan Associates is reversing that direction, using social-emotional learning as a lever for human capital development.
Sarah Khan · Founder
Sarah Khan Associates works at the intersection of social-emotional learning research and applied human capital development. We translate rigorous behavioural science into instruments and interventions that work in real organisations, and we generate the data that the field in this region has never had.
Our founder is a PhD scholar at the University of Karachi and serves as Anchor Organisation Lead for the PSS-SEL Toolbox Phase II at Harvard’s EASEL Lab. The frameworks behind our work are grounded in the ExploreSEL taxonomy developed at Harvard, adapted through a commissioned research partnership, nine years of field implementation in Pakistan, and ongoing doctoral research.
We treat social-emotional learning as core infrastructure for workforce development, not a soft add-on. The capacities the World Economic Forum names as defining for the coming decade, resilience, adaptability, collaboration, are foundational behavioural capacities. SEL is how they are built, and measurement is how they are managed.
Waqar brings over a decade of corporate experience across leading multinationals, including Philip Morris International, Abu Dawood Group, and Maersk. He leads SKA’s corporate partnerships, translating behavioural science into real organisational adoption, and bridging the gap between what the research shows and what businesses can actually act on.
Contact: waqar@sarahkhan.co
We build the measurement layer beneath people development in the Global South, so that organisations can invest in behaviour the way they invest in anything else they take seriously: with a baseline, a method, and evidence of change.
Pakistan’s first National Workforce Behavioural Intelligence Index. Norm-referenced. Built from local data. Designed to stand alongside the global benchmarks, rather than borrow from them.