Austrian born, Georg Musil studied law in Vienna before moving to the Netherlands to continue the discipline, after which he was a Stagiaire for the European Commission in Belgium. Georg then made a transition into finance, working for Citigroup in New York and London before returning to Vienna, where he completed his law PhD. Germany was Georg’s next move, where he remained with Citigroup for seven years working first as Relationship Manager and then as Senior Banker at Citigroup's Corporate & Investment Bank.
During the financial downturn, Georg found career opportunities diminishing. “Offices were closing down, everything was shrinking,” he says. “And I wasn’t prepared to shrink with the market.” Georg moved to London in 2010 to work in a new role as a Senior Corporate Banker for Bank of America Merrill Lynch, after having started the EMBA course at Oxford. “It had always been in the back of my mind to do an MBA to round up my education and skill set. The markets were so uncertain I knew this was the time to invest in myself.”
Georg chose Oxford because of Saïd Business School’s teaching practices. “I was very taken with how teaching and education happens here. The way it empowers the individual and helps them grow as a person rather than simply filling them up with data. On a personal level, the history of the University and city was very appealing to me.” Georg was also drawn to Saïd Business School because of its focus on entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial students it attracts, something he found unique to Oxford’s Executive MBA programme.
Finance and economics classes are particularly relevant to Georg professionally but he is also finding the focus on marketing and leadership skills to be enormously useful. “The knowledge and experience I have gained during teamwork exercises is a big highlight of the programme for me,” says Georg. “There are a lot of interesting people in the class whom it would be impossible to reach out to usually. It is a demanding, yet cooperative environment, and the conversations I have with co-students are very beneficial to me; something I hope is reciprocal.”
Georg is currently focusing on finalising his idea for the Entrepreneurship Project. “It would make a lot of sense to pick a project that is close to what I’m doing at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, most likely to do with financial markets and the direction in which my company is moving.” Eventually he hopes to move into a management position. “The programme is giving me a lot of tools, skills and knowledge that I believe will create the exact mindset I need to achieve this.”