Pierre-Jean (PJ) Hanard is an Associate Professor (Education) and Module Leader of the Customer Development and Lean Startup module (MSIN0086) for the MSc Entrepreneurship. He also leads and oversees the delivery of enterprise education for the School of Management.

Previously, PJ was a lecturer at the London College of Fashion (MA Fashion Entrepreneurship and Innovation), a coach at the Advanced Leadership Initiative Program of Harvard University with Professor Marshall Ganz and assistant to Professor Otto Scharmer for the course “U-Lab: Transforming Self, Business and Society” at MIT Sloan. He also served as an expert and judge in startup competitions, mainly at MIT Delta V / GFSA, the Harvard Business School New Venture Competition, Accelerate Cambridge (Judge Business School) and MassChallenge Boston.

Prior to academia, PJ was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Citi Ventures, Citibank’ innovation arm, and was a 2-time entrepreneur, having co-founded a FinTech startup and an accelerator for early-stage sustainable ventures (first of its kind in French-speaking Switzerland in 2011). He also spent over 10 years at HSBC Private Bank, his last role being Chief of Staff to the COO of HSBC Private Bank where he acted as a banking intrapreneur. 

PJ earned an MBA as a Sloan Fellow from MIT (USA) and also holds a Bachelor degree in Management Science from HEC School of Management - University of Liège (Belgium), a Master degree in Marketing Management from Vlerick Business School (Belgium) and a Master in International Economics and Management from SDA Bocconi (Italy). Outside of UCL, PJ is an Entrepreneurship Expert at the Saïd Business School - University of Oxford and pursues a PhD at King’s College London where he focuses his research on entrepreneurs’ mental health and well-being. In his spare time, he enjoys coaching entrepreneurs from a variety of sectors.