Education
Pietersen attended Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, where he earned a Bachelor in law and economics and an Bachelor of Laws in law and was chairman of the Students Representative Council.
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Career
Willie Pietersen is an international businessman and author He is six feet, four inches tall and of Dutch, German and French ancestry. He was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University in England where he received an Master of Arts in jurisprudence.
After practicing law, he embarked on an international business career.
By 1974, at age 36, Pietersen had become one of the youngest Managing Directors in the history of Unilever. Over a period of twenty years he served as the Chief Executive Officer of multibillion-dollar businesses such as Lever Foods, Seagram United States of America, Tropicana and Sterling Winthrop"s Consumer Health Group.
Pietersen has served as a director on several boards including the Institute for the Future (IFTF), a think tank based in Silicon Valley. In 1998, Willie was named Professor of the Practice of Management at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business.
He specializes in strategy and the leadership of change, and his methods and ideas, especially Strategic Learning, are widely applied within Columbia"s executive education programs, and also in numerous corporations.
Willie is the author of two books: Reinventing Strategy, published in 2002, introduced the underlying principles and application tools for Strategic Learning. Strategic Learning, March 2010, builds on these ideas and more extensive practical guidelines. Articles about business strategy by Willie have appeared in the award-winning journal Leader to Leader.
