Biography
Jan is Managing Director of Three Hands (www.threehands.co.uk), a small company that links businesses with community organisations and social issues, for shared benefit. Three Hands' work is based on the premise that business gain and society gain go hand in hand; that creating value for shareholders and for communities is not mutually exclusive.
Three Hands work includes the design and implementation of learning & development programmes based on real-life community projects, charity projects to address HR-related objectives and programmes that bring people in work closer to the social issues that matter to their businesses.
Jan has been with Three Hands since 2005, before which he spent three years at Business in the Community, where he worked with member companies on corporate community engagement initiatives. Before this he completed his MBA at IESE Business School, Barcelona. It was his summer internship in La Paz, Bolivia, where he volunteered with NGOs dedicated to assisting orphaned and deaf children, that sparked his interest in community engagement and the role that business plays in society.
In a previous life he graduated from Edinburgh University with an MA in geography and spent seven years as a director of a successful start-up student publishing business. Nowadays he loves running a small business that touches people's hearts as well as their minds and that delivers value for both business and society.
Jan writes a regular column for HR Magazine on community investment and the interface between HR and CSR.