Jan van Schalkwyk

About Jan van Schalkwyk

Jan van Schalkwyk is an institutional capacity-development practitioner, facilitator and co-designer with close to thirty years of experience at the Auditor-General of South Africa. His career has crossed auditing, audit methodology, training and development, human-resource management, strategy, international affairs, donor funding, stakeholder engagement and external partnerships. One of the defining projects of his career was helping establish AGSA’s fully in-house trainee auditor scheme. The work began in the late 1990s and developed into an accredited professional pipeline capable of recruiting and developing young professionals internally. His later work extended into the international audit community through INTOSAI, where he chaired the Task Force on INTOSAI Auditor Professionalisation and led work connected to competency frameworks, professional-development pathways and auditor competence. Jan also helped lead the team that drafted ISSAI 150 on Auditor Competence and its related guidance. His experience has given him a distinctive perspective on the relationship between developing individuals and building institutions: capability requires an appropriate environment, credible standards, a pipeline of competent and empowered people, and willingness to submit performance to meaningful evaluation. After concluding his approximately thirty-year AGSA career in 2025, Jan established Uadilifu Consult. He is now selectively applying his experience to leadership development, institutional capacity development, facilitation, mentoring, cross-sector collaboration and the co-design of interventions that move organisations from identifying problems towards building solutions.

Key message

Strong leaders matter, but strong institutions matter longer. Leadership shortages rarely appear suddenly; organisations often discover too late that they stopped building leaders years earlier. Professionalisation requires more than training: institutions need an enabling environment, clear norms and standards, a pipeline of competent and empowered people, and credible internal and external evaluation. Sustainable institutional capability is created through systems, partnerships and long-term development rather than isolated interventions. Public, private, academic and civil-society actors can collaborate without sacrificing their distinct roles or independence. Institutional problems need to move beyond diagnosis towards practical solutions.

Speaking topics and expertise

• Leadership pipelines and succession
• Professionalisation and institutional capability
• Building sustainable institutional capacity
• Cross-sector collaboration between public
• private and civil-society actors
• Moving from diagnosis to delivery
• Integrity as institutional practice
• Developing competent and empowered professionals
• Public accountability
• Institutional leadership
• Capability versus compliance
• Building professional pipelines from the ground up
• Mentoring and leadership-transfer strategies

Achievements

Approximately thirty years with the Auditor-General of South Africa (AGSA) across auditing, technical methodology, training, HRM, strategy, international affairs, donor funding, stakeholder engagement and external partnerships; Helped establish the AGSA’s fully in-house trainee auditor / young-professional scheme; Helped the AGSA achieved accreditation with the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA) and others to provide a full three-year trainee auditor programme ("articles") following the capacity-building work begun in the late 1990s; Headed the content-development team for the 2010 INCOSAI (a once-in-three years congress for INTOSAI members) held in Johannesburg; Contributed to the drafting of INTOSAI-P 12, a global public sector auditing standard on organisational capacity for Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) / national audit offices; Chaired the INTOSAI Task Force on INTOSAI Auditor Professionalisation; Led the team that drafted ISSAI 150 (and its two related guides, GUID 1950 and 1951), a global public sector auditing standard dealing with auditor competence; Contributed to international competency frameworks and professional-development pathways for public-sector audit professionals. Headed up the secretariat of the INTOSAI Capacity Building Committee (CBC); Involved arrangement and development of content for the 2025 SAI20 (the national audit office equivalent of the G20 mechanism) project; Awarded the Deputy Auditor-General Certificate of Excellence, AGSA, 2024, for his role in AGSA successfully bidding to become external auditor to UNESCO; Awarded the (SA) National School of Government Certificate of Appreciation, 2022, for service on the Ministerial Task Team reviewing the draft National Framework towards the Professionalisation of the Public Sector; Obtained recognition as the AGSA's Most Transformed Leader in 2013; Obtained AGSA's Young Leadership Award within the specialised audit service grouping during 2010; Continued post-AGSA contribution through civil-society engagement, mentoring and Uadilifu Consult.

Education

B Com (Hons), CTA, University of Pretoria, 1990. B Com, University of Pretoria, 1989, completed cum laude. Chartered Accountant, CA(SA), South African Institute of Chartered Accountants. University of Pretoria merit bursary holder. Standard Bank merit bursary holder.

Talks and speeches

Capacity Before Succession Organisations rarely discover a leadership shortage on the day a senior executive leaves. The shortage was usually created years earlier. Drawing on his experience building a professional pipeline inside AGSA, Jan examines where leadership pipelines break, why technically strong second layers do not automatically become strong executive layers, and why succession should be treated as an institutional-capacity system rather than a recruitment event. Ideal audience: boards, HR and People leaders, executive teams, HiPo and succession programmes. Format: facilitated session, masterclass or selective keynote. What Professionalisation Actually Means Professionalisation is frequently reduced to training, qualifications and certificates. Jan uses the framework developed through his international work to show four connected requirements: an appropriate environment; credible norms and standards; a pipeline of competent and empowered people; and internal and external evaluation against meaningful criteria. The session allows organisations to distinguish genuine capability-building from development activity. Ideal audience: professional bodies, regulators, public-sector organisations, leadership academies and institutional-development teams. Format: masterclass, executive briefing or facilitated workshop. From Reporting Failure to Building Solutions For much of Jan’s AGSA career, institutional independence meant identifying weaknesses without becoming part of the implementation that might later be audited. That tension eventually helped shape his interest in civil society and his post-AGSA work. The session examines the gap between accurately diagnosing institutional failure and creating the conditions to solve it. Ideal audience: governance forums, civil society, public-sector leaders, development partners. Format: fireside conversation, panel or keynote. Breaking the Barriers Jan examines collaboration between public and private institutions, academia and practice, civil society and government, and challenges assumptions surrounding the distinction between “developed” and “developing” systems. Drawing on practical partnerships used to build professional capability, he shows how organisations can work together without losing their independence or identity. Ideal audience: cross-sector forums, development organisations, government, corporates and professional bodies. Format: facilitation, roundtable or keynote. Building a Pipeline From Scratch A practical examination of the process behind developing AGSA’s professional trainee pipeline: recruitment, professional accreditation, standards, institutional patience, partnership and the time required before the system began producing capability at scale. Ideal audience: HR, organisational development, leadership-development and professional-development teams. Format: masterclass or workshop. Integrity as Institutional Practice Uadilifu means integrity. This session moves integrity away from statements of organisational values and towards the structures through which conduct, competence, governance and accountability are reinforced. Ideal audience: boards, audit and risk committees, ethics functions and public-sector leadership. Format: executive briefing, facilitated discussion or keynote. The Institution That Can Deliver An integrated discussion of why individual excellence cannot compensate indefinitely for weak institutional systems. Jan connects governance, capability, leadership, professionalisation and evaluation into a practical picture of institutional health. Ideal audience: executive teams, leadership programmes and boards. Format: programme opening or closing session, executive briefing or selective keynote. Target Audience Board of Directors / Board Committees | C-Suite / Executive Leadership Team | Development / NGO / Multilateral Teams | Finance / Strategy | Government Executives / Public Sector Leaders | High-Potentials / Emerging Leaders (HiPo) | HR / People & Culture | Leadership Development | Middle Management (People Managers) | Municipal / Local Government Leaders | People & Culture Leadership | Senior Leaders (VP/Director) | Senior Leadership Performance | Strategy Rollout | Universities / Business Schools / Educators | Youth / Graduates / Early Career

Delivery style

Measured, thoughtful and practitioner-led. Jan is strongest in facilitated conversations, executive discussions, masterclasses, panels, fireside conversations and co-designed institutional interventions. He brings complex institutional questions back to practical systems, lived experience and the choices organisations actually make. His approach is collaborative rather than performative, with particular strength in helping groups think across organisational and sector boundaries. His authority comes from having built capability and professional systems over decades rather than from conventional motivational speaking.

Why audiences listen

Jan has spent close to thirty years working inside one of Africa’s major public-accountability institutions and has personally participated in building professional capability rather than merely studying it. He helped create AGSA’s internal professional pipeline, worked across organisational functions ranging from auditing and methodology to HR, strategy and international affairs, chaired international work on auditor professionalisation and led the development of international standards on auditor competence. He therefore connects leadership development with the institutional systems that allow capable people to perform and progress.

What the talks address

How institutions create sustainable professional and leadership pipelines; why succession problems usually begin years before a vacancy appears; the distinction between training individuals and professionalising an institution; the four components of professionalisation; converting technical capability into institutional capability; building partnerships across public, private, academic and civil-society boundaries; moving from reporting failure towards constructing solutions; institutional integrity; capability versus compliance; mentoring and learning transfer; and the conditions required for organisations to remain capable beyond individual leaders.

What participants will learn

Participants will learn how to distinguish training activity from genuine institutional capability; identify weaknesses in leadership and professional pipelines; apply a four-part professionalisation framework; understand why environments, standards, competent people and evaluation must reinforce one another; assess whether succession systems are actually producing future leaders; recognise barriers that prevent productive cross-sector collaboration; and identify where an institution needs to move from diagnosis towards implementation.

What audiences take home

A practical way to examine whether their organisation is genuinely building capability or simply running development activities. Participants leave with sharper questions about succession depth, professional standards, talent pipelines, accountability and institutional design, together with a framework for connecting individual competence to organisational performance.

Benefits for individuals

Greater understanding of how personal competence develops within an institutional system; clearer appreciation of the transition from technical expertise to broader leadership responsibility; improved ability to work across professional and sector boundaries; stronger understanding of professional standards, accountability and continuous development; and a clearer view of how individuals contribute to institutions that outlast any one leader.

Benefits for organisations

Stronger leadership and professional pipelines; better succession depth; improved connection between learning investment and institutional capability; greater clarity around professionalisation; more productive collaboration across organisational and sector boundaries; reduced dependence on isolated individuals; stronger institutional memory and continuity; and more credible systems for developing, empowering and evaluating professional talent.