Our ambition
The major challenges of exceeding planetary boundaries, increasing inequalities and finally, the rapid rise of artificial intelligence, profoundly question the future of our economies and our humanity, as well as our way of deciding, governing and training those who exercise responsibilities.
This shared observation between the leaders of HEC and Jean-Noel Thorel, founder of the altruistic organization NAOS, as well as Alexandre Dhueige, president of the Jean-Noel Thorel Foundation, led us to structure an ambitious project together in 2025, and to provide generous support for its emergence and deployment.
Through the creation of a foundation hosted by the HEC Foundation – a recognized public utility foundation dedicated to academic and scientific excellence – Jean-Noel Thorel Foundation was able to make a multi-year structuring donation of 4 million euros from 2026 to 2028, with the ambition of fostering, studying and equipping powerful, lucid and altruistic leadership, based on intuition, empathy, courage, critical awareness and discernment in the face of complexity and uncertainty.
This donation enabled the creation of the “NAOS Lab for Leadership” within HEC, which will deploy its activities on a triptych “Think Teach Act”: research on the future of leadership, new educational content for existing courses and creation of a certificate, dissemination of new practices and imaginaries of leadership in and outside the world of business schools.
To give this project its full power, we also facilitated the establishment of a partnership between HEC and Heart Leadership University, a non-profit educational and scientific organization dedicated to sharing knowledge, content, and complementary and joint initiatives.
“As part of its New Responsibilities strategy, HEC Paris intends to contribute to redefining what it means to train leaders today, by combining academic rigor, transforming practices, and societal impact. It is now key to reconcile academic excellence with leadership based on intuition and empathy.”
“The crises our world is facing cannot be resolved by the same forms of leadership that partly created them. Faced with the unlimited and uncontrolled development of artificial intelligence, I have decided to donate all the shares of the NAOS company to the Jean Noël Thorel Foundation, a philanthropic organization whose primary responsibility is to develop human potential. With the creation of the NAOS Lab for Leadership, the aim is to foster new forms of leadership based on emotional intelligence. I am deeply convinced that it will bring immeasurable value to those who choose this training, as well as to recruiters seeking individuals capable of listening to their hearts to profoundly question current economic models.”
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