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Luc Hardy (born May 9, 1956) is a French-American Tech entrepreneur and angel investor, author, photographer and film producer, explorer, adventurer and environmental advocate.

Active in the technology industry for over 30 years, he is the president and founder of the advisory and investment firm, Sagax Development Corp in Greenwich, CT, USA.

Luc Hardy is the founder of the environmental initiative, Pax Arctica, and vice-president of Green Cross France & Territoires, the French branch of the environmental NGO founded by Mikhail Gorbachev and headed by Jean-Michel Cousteau.



Early life
Luc Hardy was born on May 9, 1956 in Lyon, France. From of a family of three children, his true origins are in Brittany, near Saint Malo, where he spent most of his childhood summers.

He studied mathematics and physics at one of the foremost science high schools in France, The Lycée Louis-le-Grand before enrolling in the prestigious French engineering school, École Centrale Paris, in which he majored in Mathematics, Computer Science and Economics.

Luc Hardy is the author of several published books including Antarctic Adventure – Explore Dream Discover (2005), Greenland Impressions – Arctic Adventure: Realities of global warming (2007), Arctic Transitions (2008) and The Pursuit Of Endurance – On the shoulders of Shackleton (2015).

In 2015, Sagax Entertainment produced a documentary on Luc Hardy’s expedition to the Antarctic Ocean, called The Pursuit of Endurance - On the Shoulders of Shackleton. This ode to human adventure, history and the sheer beauty of our environment was shown in numerous festivals and events, such as the COP21 and COP22.

Luc Hardy is deeply involved in the movie industry, not only producing films of his own adventures but also investing in projects he believes in. He is developing projects exposing environmental causes and social issues, inspiring solutions and compelling change. As a member of The Explorers Club of New York, member the Société des Explorateurs Français and fellow of The Royal Geographical Society, he has led more than 10 eco-scientific expeditions, traveling extensively to remote corners of the world – particularly in Polar regions – to raise awareness of global causes.

He is also a member of science committee of The Bruce Museum since 2018 and a member of support committee of the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques.

The Frenchman immigrated to the United States 37 years ago and has lived in Cos Cob, CT, USA with his wife and two daughters for 30 years. Luc Hardy stays in expedition shape with runs, pilates, yoga, sailing and the occasional polo match. He is registered at the Fédération Française de polo and at The United states polo Association (USPA). He is also registered at the Fédération Francaise de voile.

He hoped to continue his eco-adventures for many years yet. “I have another 10 years doing that kind of stuff,” he said.

Vocation & Professional activities
After his graduation, he started to work for Colgate Palmolive, as a product manager before joining Mars & CO - a strategy-consulting boutique - spin off of the BCG GROUP. He contributed in opening and developing its US and London offices and thereafter resigned to pursue other activities, which he considered more challenging and participative.

In 1986 he founded Sagax, a venture capital seed fund and start-up advisory firm based in Greenwich, CT, USA. Throughout the years, Luc Hardy has partnered, advised and invested in over 100 companies in the US and Europe, such as Finexkap, Customermatrix now known as Oppscience, Younited Credit, Wit.ai, eDevice, ClarityAd, Dashlane etc.

The fund focuses its investments in information technology and emerging technologies at every stage from seed to growth.

The most successful company and largest exit is Lending Club, which success was considerable after its IPO in 2014.

Environmental activism & advocacy
Along its main venture-capitalist activity, Luc Hardy is a relentless eco-adventurer and environmental advocate, he has been travelling around the globe, photographing, recording remote places in order to raise awareness on global causes, and among them global warming.

Over the years, he has organized, financed and led many though-provoking expeditions with scientists, specialists and athletes as well as youth ambassadors, to share its passion for incredible landscapes and risky adventures, as well as the obvious necessity for the world to deeply realize the fragility of its own ecosystem.

As of 2003 he went to Antarctica in order to highlight the region’s importance as a regulator of global weather systems. In 2007, Luc Hardy has led a team of scientists to Greenland to explore the effects of climate change on local wildlife. Additional expeditions have included: The Pax Arctica Himalayas Expedition in 2009, the Pax Arctica North Pole Expedition in 2011, Focus on Greenland in 2011 and finally Rwenzori, Uganda in 2013.

In the fall of 2014, Hardy led an expedition in the heart of the Antarctic with nine adventurers. They came from very different backgrounds, but one thing brought them together, a passion for adventure and testing the limits. Their goal was to follow in the footsteps of one of the greatest legends of the golden age of polar exploration: Ernest Shackleton, who had come to the same region exactly one century ago, and succeeded in surviving – him and some of his vessel’s crew – after having being trapped by the ice.

Based on this expedition, Luc Hardy co-authored and produced a documentary The Pursuit of Endurance, which premiered at the Focus on French Cinema Festival in Greenwich, CT, USA in 2015 and was screened at several film festivals such as Angoulême, La Rochelle, New York Polar Film Festival, at the COP21, at the UN in New York on the eve of the opening of the General Assembly in September 2015 and at the Embassy of France in Washington, DC in February 2016.

In 2017, Luc Hardy decided to explore two hitherto unseen destinations: Cuba and Russia. As of July of the aforesaid year, his path to Cuba enabled his global team – involving scientists and scuba divers – to discover and document the one of the most likely preserved coral reefs, during the so-called “Coral Libre Expedition”. Pax Arctica – under the flag of the Explorers Club – but also the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of Sydney have taken part into this adventure under the sea. Philippe Azoulay, French director, also enables the co-production – with Sagax Entertainment – of a movie about this unfortunately not enough know part of the world, nevertheless still remarkably shielded from the trade and human flows.

Meanwhile, Pax Arctica’s Russian Arctic Expedition has been prepared. In September of the same year, this new eco-scientific adventure will follow the footsteps of – this time – three notable explorers of the19th century: Eduard Von Toll, Boris Vilkitsky, and George W. De Long, whose vessel, the USS Jeannette, shrunk near the New Siberian Islands. Involving the chief scientist Alexei Tikhonov and the scuba champion Alexey Molchanov during the Russia’s year of ecology, this adventure will enable to document the remote islands, a part of Russian large history. Also, treasures of science, archaeology, ethnology and paleontology are part of the adventure, as ice-melting the region is suffering from is unearthing mammoths’ bones such as the ones of the nicknamed Lyuba, but also serious diseases which had been frozen so far. A movie production is also forecasted to share this new experience.

Between August and September 2018, the Coral Reef expedition, a team composed of scientists, explorers and members of 12's crew went to explore the largely unexplored deep ocean reefs surrounding the uninhabited island of Klein Curaçao. This expedition was organized by Uncharted Blue, a non-profit organization connecting adventure seekers with world-renowned scientists and marine technology to fuel exploration and conservation. Marine scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, and Naturalis Biodiversity Center lead a scientific mission using a state-of-the-art manned submersible, the Curasub, to explore the islands' uncharted depths of up to 1000ft and collect baseline observations to inform continued research. Luc Hardy produced with Sagax Entertainment a short documentary, At the Edge of Light, explaining all the research works that were made during this expedition which serve as biodiversity hotbeds and could hold the answers to many unanswered scientific questions. At the Edge of Light provides a better understanding of the lesser studied deep-sea reefs and their unique ecosystems with hundreds and maybe even thousands of species yet to be discovered.

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Distinction & Awards
On July 7, 2016 Luc Hardy received the distinction of Knight of the French National Order Of Merit, and was decorated by French representative to the UN, François Delattre.

Photography
Luc Hardy is also an avid photographer and sells some of his photos through the websites YellowKorner and GettyImages.

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Social Medias

 * Luc Hardy on LinkedIn
 * Luc Hardy on Twitter
 * Luc Hardy on Facebook
 * Luc Hardy on Instagram
 * Luc Hardy on Flickr
 * Youtube Channel
 * Vimeo Channel
 * Pax Arctica Facebook page