[3] Earlier in his career, he was the principal founder and first Managing Director from 1990-1999 of Shared Interest, the British co-operative society that provides a large part of the finance behind the global Fair Trade movement.
[4][5] Educated at Stonyhurst College and Clare College, Cambridge, where he read Economics, Mark Hayes began his working career as a banker (1978-1988) with the Industrial and Commercial Finance Corporation that became 3i in 1984.
[6] After a brief period in 2001-2002 at Triodos Bank as UK Managing Director,[7] he switched to an academic career, earning his doctorate at the University of Sunderland in 2003 under the external supervision of Malcolm Sawyer, University of Leeds.
From 2003-2006 he was a visiting fellow at Northumbria University, during which time he wrote his first book The Economics of Keynes: A New Guide to The General Theory.
In 2014, he moved to Durham University to become the inaugural holder of the St Hilda Chair in Catholic Social Thought and Practice in Durham's Centre for Catholic Studies, before early retirement in 2016.