Dr. Julia Kukard is a founding partner of Aephoria and a leadership and inclusion professional.

With almost 30 years of experience in learning and development, she has worked globally including in South Africa, UK, Lesotho, Ghana, France, Uganda, Netherlands, Brazil, India, UAE and China with multinationals, nationals, governments and NGOs. Julia’s experience includes working with individuals and groups as a coach, psycho-educator and more recently as a psychotherapist.

Over the years I have moved from content interventions focussed on sustainability, governance, product development to process based interventions such as strategic problem solving, leadership development and inclusion.

She graduated from University of Cape Town (UCT) with an Honours degree and MA in Art History, an MBA from the Graduate School of Business (GSB) and a BA in Psychology and Art History. Julia is currently holds a Doctorate in Existential Psychotherapy at the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling in London in conjunction with Middlesex University. My doctorate in existential psychotherapy focusses on leadership stuckness using the work of Steve Biko.

During the past nine years, Julia Kukard has run the Advanced Leadership elective on the UCT GSB MBA. Her research focus is on supporting the development of mature leaders and cultures that can enable human maturation. Julia has co-written a book on this with Dean Kai Peters from Ashridge University and Professor Kurt April from the GSB.

My focus is on adult development, particularly ego development through the eyes of African existential philosophy particularly the work of Steve Biko. The business I co-own with Simon Kettleborough and Lucille Greeff, Aephoria Partners, has developed an assessment of vertical and horizontal development (the enneagram and maturity) which provides a really good baseline for individual and group development.