Hans-Jaap Moes grew up in the village of Heemskerk near the North Sea. His father worked at Tata Steel, his mother was a teacher. He has two brothers, an older and a younger one. In his childhood he practiced (a lot of) tennis, baseball, skiing, and ice-skating. He loved reading; fiction, poetry and philosophy. After his secondary education at the Gymnasium Felisenum in Velsen, he left for Enschede in 1977 to study Public Business Management and Philosophy at the Technical University. During his studies he earned money as a tennis-teacher and spend time in the Alpes mountaineering and skiing. Hans-Jaap moved to Amsterdam in 1982 where he lives to this day with his partner Sijke and his son Joost.

After his graduation in 1984, Hans started his career at AT&T and Philips Telecommunications as the secretary of the VP of HR. Ambitious to become an entrepreneur, he left Philips at 1987 and founded Socrates Consulting. Focus was on Recruitment, Training and Consulting. Challenging projects were carried out for different clients, local, small and large, in different industries, f.e. development of an HRM-program for the University of Amsterdam, training and mentoring of 100+ start-ups for the Institute for Small and Medium size Enterprises and many many trainingprograms. Extraordinary Leadership programs were organized in Nepal, the Himalayas. In 1998, Socrates Consulting and its employees were acquired by Deloitte & Touche Consulting.

Hans-Jaap became Senior Director HR EMEA for Deloitte Consulting, leading a European team with 25+ HR professionals. He supported growth of Deloitte in Europe from 500 to 3000 SAP-consultants. He left Deloitte in 2001. After another adventure as an HR-Director at California based Quest software from 2003, Hans-Jaap returned to Socrates in 2008 and started focusing on coaching. He incorporated the Socratic dialogue and elements into his coaching and consulting methodology. In 2016 he started a Masters program in Executive coaching at Ashridge, UK, In 2018 he was accredited by Ashridge and EMCC as a Senior (Executive) Coach.

In 2020 he was certified as Positive Health Coach, to coach (cancer) patients and their loved ones. Since 2020 new partnerships he has established new partnerships to grow his coaching practice. In 2024 Hans-Jaap graduated MSc. as a Master in Executive Coaching at Hult/Ashridge Business School in the UK. He studied and applied many coaching instruments and skills. His approach is direct, open, loving, honest and provocative. Coaching to him is about listening to the other, and exploring together to understand the client’s situation and what’s a meaningful and lasting understanding or change. His expertise is on leadership and Organisational Development. He coached numerous leaders, entrepreneurs, executives and teams.