CEO of Freedom Holding Corp. Timur Turlov has joined the Scientific Council of the international company AWE Consulting. Together with leading global management theorists, including professors from Stanford, Harvard and creators of modern marketing concepts, the head of the holding will engage in transforming global business education. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Kursiv Media.
The main goal of the partnership is to bridge the gap between academic theory and practice, as well as to integrate the unique digital experience of emerging markets into the curricula of leading world universities.
AWE Consulting, which works with governments and corporations around the world, relies on an innovative management model 'People, Meaning, Planet'. Within this concept, the activities of large businesses are evaluated through the prism of solving specific societal problems, where financial income is a natural result of fulfilling a higher mission.
Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University Philip Kotler notes that global education needs to overcome the dominance of exclusively Western business examples. Central Asian countries have accumulated unique experience in building ecosystems that need to be structured into research cases for future leaders.
Co-author of the Enlightened Management concept Gabriele Carboni said that Timur Turlov's entry into the AWE Consulting Scientific Council is a significant example of the practical application of enlightened management principles.
'Through the 'People, Meaning, Planet' model, we emphasize that technological innovations create genuine value when they are guided by a clear purpose and put people at the center. Freedom Holding's experience shows that digitalization can go beyond operational efficiency and create new levels of trust, transparency and institutional value for society,' he said.
The practical demand for Kazakhstani approaches has already been confirmed at the global level. A case study about Freedom is taught to students at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business. Future global business leaders analyze the holding's experience as a benchmark example of achieving Product-Market Fit and phenomenal digitalization opportunities. For example, processing a digital mortgage in four and a half hours or a car loan in 53 minutes.
Timur Turlov explained his mission on the Scientific Council.
'We decided to join the project because we know the power of technology from the inside and at the same time clearly understand the importance of adapting education to the new times. Artificial intelligence is changing the very logic of learning, but it cannot independently solve the main question: how to turn valuable local experience into global knowledge that will be in demand both today and for many decades to come. (...) Today we already know for sure that our intellectual capital is really interesting far beyond our country. Therefore, I see my personal mission on the Scientific Council exactly like this: to help turn this experience into useful knowledge at a global level,' said the CEO of Freedom Holding Corp.
The key task of the Scientific Council is to solve the systemic problem (The Knowing-Doing Gap), where traditional corporate training and lectures at business schools do not prepare specialists to work in conditions of real uncertainty.
President of AWE Consulting Tata Choleria describes the mechanics of the upcoming work.
'Knowledge transfer between business, government institutions and the education system is exactly one of those issues: countries and organizations can accumulate unique managerial, technological and institutional experience, but without mechanisms for its preservation, structuring and transfer, this experience remains within individual teams, managers or companies. (...) We connect this local understanding with the international framework of the problem and create a format through which the unique experience of a country becomes a genuine educational value,' noted Tata Choleria.
International expert on the case method William Ellett emphasizes that theoretical models do not work without a practical foundation.
'It is impossible to mechanically transfer theoretical models into practice. The very fact that theory points to a certain solution does not mean that its automatic application will be correct or lead to the desired result. (...) Real transformation occurs when teams work with real dilemmas and 'gray zones' that their own organizations and other organizations have faced, situations at the intersection of financial results, values and high stakes, where there is no single objectively correct answer,' he stressed.
Summarizing the project's mission, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business Jeffrey Pfeffer notes that business education becomes stronger when it is connected to real organizational experience. The task is to make this experience visible, structured and useful for learning.
Freedom Holding Corp. is an international financial technology holding company registered in the USA (Nevada), with headquarters in Almaty. The company was founded by Timur Turlov and has been traded on the Nasdaq exchange since 2019. Through its subsidiaries, the holding provides brokerage, banking, insurance and investment banking services, and also develops a digital ecosystem including payment services, telecom, e-commerce and a SuperApp. The main market for the group remains Kazakhstan, while the business is represented in more than 20 countries in Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East and North America.
In Kazakhstan, the holding's ecosystem includes Freedom Broker, Freedom Bank, insurance companies Freedom Insurance and Freedom Life, as well as a number of digital services. For the fiscal year ended March 31, 2026, the group reported revenue of $2.19 billion and net profit of $153.3 million. The holding's shares are traded on Nasdaq under the ticker FRHC, as well as on KASE and the Astana International Exchange (AIX).