Welcome to the professional portfolio of Dr Jack Tsao.
About Me
I am a Senior Lecturer and the Associate Director at the Common Core Office, at The University of Hong Kong, with responsibilities as a teacher, researcher, and leader and administrator.
As a Principal Fellow of Advance HE (formerly Higher Education Academy), I am passionate about implementing strategic initiatives to drive undergraduate teaching innovation and professional development of teachers. I experiment with pedagogies around gaming, storytelling, creative art, and artificial intelligence to push the boundaries of teaching that can cultivate greater agency. My research explores Education Futures primarily through a sociological and philosophical lens, asking critical questions about where learning is headed next.
I earned my PhD in the sociology of education and a Master of Applied Finance from the University of Queensland, with degrees in biochemistry and economics.
The page introduces my research, teaching and learning initiatives, and projects.
Here are my ResearchGate and Google Scholar profiles listing my scholarly works.
Professional Experience
Before finding a home in academia, I spent over 15 years in banking, corporate learning and development, and entrepreneurship. My early career was grounded in both the business/financial analysis and relationship management side of commercial banking, before transitioning into a facilitation role training bankers in the corporate university. Moving to Hong Kong, I worked in consulting for a global firm, focused on sales and leadership execution, mainly for multinational investment banks, insurance firms, and government organisations.
One of my most defining and formative experiences was co-founding a luxury distribution and design business in Hong Kong. Leading that company from a startup to a pre-IPO enterprise with over HK$300 million in annual sales taught me enormously about people leadership, profit and loss responsibilities, digital technology implementation, and supply chain management in a fast-moving and high-stakes environment. While the journey was intensive, I am grateful to my former co-founder and talented staff for working alongside me in building such a spectacular enterprise during its peak.
Personal Interests
I love video games, making art, walking, dabbling in creative technologies, building apps with AI, and playing the piano.
Favourite games: Cyberpunk 2077, Death Stranding, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Rimworld.
Reach out and say hello, especially if I haven’t heard from you in a while. You are likely in my thoughts.