Professor Andrew Hamilton, Vice Chancellor of the University of Oxford, announced on 6 December 2010 that Professor Peter Tufano of the Harvard Business School will be the next Peter Moores Dean of Oxford's Saїd Business School. Professor Tufano will take up his post in Oxford on 1 July 2011, succeeding the current Dean, Professor Colin Mayer.

Professor Hamilton commented:  ‘We are delighted that Peter will join Oxford to lead the Saїd Business School. To have such an eminent financial specialist and business school leader join us from Harvard is a great pleasure.

‘Peter has an outstanding academic reputation and a strong record of forging collaborations within a world-class University and beyond. These achievements, combined with his impressive teaching experience and commitment to use rigorous business research to improve business and regulatory practice, make him the ideal person to lead the School.’

Professor Tufano said: ‘I am thrilled to be asked to lead the Saїd Business School and to be joining the Oxford community. Society faces many problems today, and business, as the economic engine of society, has a critical and constructive role to play in addressing many of them.  The world looks to leading business schools for innovative ideas that inform action, and for well-trained and principled graduates.  Saïd Business School - a young, entrepreneurial school within one of the world’s finest Universities - is well positioned to excel on both of these dimensions. 

‘The School has been extraordinarily successful since it was established in 1996: it has a very highly-regarded undergraduate programme, one of the top MBA programmes in the UK which attracts people from all over the world, and a well-established and innovative suite of programmes for executives. It is served by an outstanding faculty, and attracts some of the most able and committed students internationally.  I am greatly looking forward to building upon this success, working with my new colleagues at the School and in the broader University to produce powerful ideas and outstanding graduates to strengthen both business and society.’ 

About Professor Peter Tufano
Tufano has spent over three decades at Harvard, earning his AB in economics (summa cum laude), MBA (with high distinction), and PhD in Business Economics degrees from the university, and has been on the faculty of the Harvard Business School for 22 years.  He is currently the Sylvan C. Coleman Professor of Financial Management at HBS.

Over the past decade, Tufano has worked to advance the field of consumer finance, with a particular emphasis on applying research insights to better meet the financial service needs of everyday households.  This work, blending finance, psychology, sociology, history, and management, has influenced businesses and policy makers, leading to two changes in US federal tax policy, new models for savings products, and new approaches to financial education.  To support other researchers in this nascent field, Tufano co-chairs the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Household Finance working group. He has brought consumer finance into the classroom, collaborating to create a joint HBS and Harvard Law School offering on the topic.  Finally, as a social entrepreneur, Tufano founded and chairs a nonprofit (Doorways to Dreams Fund, www.d2dfund.org) that works with partner organizations to test and promote innovations that better serve low income households’ financial needs.

Tufano’s other research focuses on risk management, financial engineering, and mutual funds.  This work has been published in top academic journals, as well as the Harvard Business Review, and a variety of books.  His paper on risk management practices in the gold mining industry shared the Smith-Breeden prize for the best paper published in the Journal of Finance.

As an educator, Tufano developed over 50 case studies, and created three new courses at Harvard, including the consumer finance offering, a revamped core MBA finance offering, and an advanced course on risk management and financial engineering.  He has assumed a number of leadership roles at Harvard, serving as department chair, course head, and Senior Associate Dean; he has overseen the school’s tenure and promotion processes, its campus planning, crafted a strategy for university engagement, and advised the University on financial and real estate matters. He is currently launching the Harvard Innovation Lab, a cross-university initiative to foster entrepreneurship. 

Tufano advises businesses and policy makers, and sits on a variety of advisory boards, including the US FDIC’s Advisory Committee on Economic Inclusion and the Global Association of Risk Professionals’ board. He consults to firms, nonprofits and governments; is a mutual fund independent trustee; and teaches in various executive education programmes.

Professor Tufano, 53, is married with one daughter, a student at Harvard College.  His wife, Mary Jeanne Tufano, is an attorney, arbitrator, and mediator.

About Saïd Business School
Established in 1996 the Saïd Business School is one of Europe’s youngest and most entrepreneurial business schools with a reputation for innovative business education. An integral part of Oxford University, the School embodies the academic rigour and forward thinking that has made Oxford a world leader in education and research.

The School has an established reputation for research in a wide range of areas, including finance and accounting, organisational analysis, international management, strategy and operations management. The School is dedicated to developing a new generation of business leaders and entrepreneurs and conducting research not only into the nature of business, but the connections between business and the wider world.

In the Financial Times ranking of MBA programmes (Jan 10) Saïd is ranked 16th in the world, and ranked 15th worldwide in its combined ranking of Executive Education programmes (May 10). In the UK university league tables it has ranked first of all UK universities for undergraduate business in eight of the last nine years in The Times.