Hans Chr. Christiansen finished his Graduate Diploma in Business Administration – Sales Administration and Marketing in 1933, won the Tietgen Gold Medal in 1935, and became the business school’s first master’s degree holder in 1938. His early career balanced between academic and business life, and he went on to become both a lic.merc. (the closest approximation of a PhD-degree that existed at that time) in 1959 and later — as a good example of lifelong learning — a PhD from the Business School in 1988.

Hans Chr. Christiansen wrote his dissertation at the same time as he was Managing Clerk in the trading company Christian Criiger & Co. in Copenhagen. After he finished his education, he became Sales Manager at the Royal Porcelain Factory (Royal Copenhagen), a position he retained until 1946. From 1947 until 1956, he was the director of the Provincial Chamber of Trade, after which he was the director of the Royal Greenland Trading Department until 1976.

Parallel to these activities, he taught at the business school, first as a teaching assistant in 1940, then as an external lecturer in business organization until 1947. In addition, he sat on countless important Danish and international commissions, councils, and committees, particularly within the area of international trade, including the export committee of the Industrial Council, the Danish National Committee of the International Chamber of Commerce, and the Business Export Council as well as the Foreign Ministry’s Committee for the Promotion of Exports and the Committee on the Revision of the GATT.

Hans Chr. Christiansen sat on the board of directors of the Association for the Advancement of Business Education and the supervisory committee for Denmark’s business schools in the early 1950s and became the chairman of the Association of Danish Business Economists in 1957. He was made a Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog in 1953, a Knight First Class of the Order of the Dannebrog in 1961, and a Commander of the Order of the Dannebrog in 1974