Dr Mariette Frazer

Dr Mariette Frazer is a leadership scholar, curriculum innovator and retail specialist at the University of Johannesburg, where she has taught since 2006 and becomes a Senior Lecturer in May 2026. She holds a PhD in Leadership (University of Johannesburg, 2025) and is Director of IBE Leadership. Her work develops future-ready leadership capability through evidence-based curriculum innovation, experiential learning, and collaboration between universities and industry.

Her 2025 doctoral thesis, 'A Leadership Pedagogy for Advanced Retail Curriculum Offerings at Public Higher Education Institutions', presents a curriculum framework that shows universities how to develop the self-leadership, adaptability, interpersonal and practical skills the workplace demands. It was completed at the University of Johannesburg under Prof Magda Hewitt, and applies to retail, entrepreneurship and consumer industries.

Retail leadership pedagogy is an approach to teaching that deliberately develops leadership capability in retail and consumer-industry students, rather than technical or product knowledge alone. Dr Frazer's framework organises it around four capabilities — self-leadership, adaptability, interpersonal skills and practical skills — supported by twelve experiential, practice-based teaching methods.

Dr Frazer provides curriculum consultation, workshops and masterclasses, mentoring of academics, leadership development programmes, AI-in-education advisory, and the design of industry–university collaborations. Enquiries are made through the contact form at frazer.co.za.

Her publications — a PhD thesis, journal articles, book chapters and conference papers — are listed on the Publications page at frazer.co.za, and indexed on ORCID (0000-0001-9379-8557) and Google Scholar. She is co-editor of 'Retail Management: A South African Perspective' (Oxford University Press Southern Africa, 3rd edition).

Dr Frazer has been at the University of Johannesburg since 2006 and previously worked at ABI (SAB Ltd) in sales and market development — commercial experience that shapes her insistence that education must translate into workplace capability. She is Director of IBE Leadership and has held sector leadership roles in South African wholesale and retail education.