ESSEC Business School announces three key changes to senior leadership

As the new academic year begins, ESSEC announces three key changes to senior leadership. Two people have joined the school’s executive committee for a three-year term: Julien Malaurent has been appointed Executive Vice-President of Post-Experience Programmes and Corporate Relations, and Roméo Tédongap has been elected Dean of Faculty. Additionally, Ha Hoang has been elected Dean of Research for a three-year term.

Julien Malaurent is Professor of Information Systems, in the Information Systems, Decision Sciences and Statistics department. He joined the ESSEC faculty in 2013. He is a graduate of ESSEC’s PhD programme (2011).

He has been involved in executive education for many years and is the academic co-director of Metalab and ESSEC Online. He also directed the Executive Master Leading International Industrial Projects, and founded the Executive Master in Digital Transformation. He is a regular speaker and consultant to numerous companies on issues relating to technology adoption and governance. In 2023, he led the French part of an OECD global study on the adoption of artificial intelligence in organisations. His research is regularly published in leading academic journals.

He will retain his role as Academic Director of ESSEC Online, in line with the development, digitalisation and hybridisation of all ESSEC’s programmes.

Roméo Tédongap, Professor of Finance, joined ESSEC Business School in 2016 as an Associate Professor. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Fundamental Computer Science from the University of Dschang in Cameroon (2000) and an engineering degree in Statistics and Economics from ENSEA in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire (2003). He completed his PhD in Economics at the University of Montreal (2008).

Before joining ESSEC, he began his academic career in 2007 as an Assistant Professor in Finance at the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE), where he was promoted to Associate Professor in 2013. At SSE, he led the PhD program in finance and distinguished himself through his research in nonstandard empirical asset pricing and portfolio choice.

At ESSEC, he was promoted to Professor in 2017 and coordinated the Finance specialisation of the doctoral programme from 2018 to 2021. He also served as Associate Dean and Director of Research from 2018 to 2024 before being elected Dean of Faculty. His research focuses on asymmetric investors’ attitudes toward risk in the presence of macroeconomic uncertainty and systemic changes. His leadership of the ESSEC faculty is expected to be centred on academic excellence and institutional cohesion.

Ha Hoang, Professor of Entrepreneurship in the Management Department, joined ESSEC after holding several academic positions in the United States and France. A graduate of the University of Chicago, she earned her PhD at the University of California, Berkeley.

She began her academic career at Case Western Reserve University in 1996, where her work focused on entrepreneurship and strategic alliances between startups and established companies. She later continued her career in the Entrepreneurship Department at INSEAD, studying the performance factors of strategic alliances and the development of entrepreneurial identity.