Welcome from the Dean

Extraordinary school and community

Thank you for visiting our website. Some of you may be new to Oxford Saïd, while others are friends and alumni with long roots in Oxford. For new friends, I’d like to introduce the School first, and for returning friends, comment on the past year.

Of the thousands of business schools in the world, and even among the handful of elite schools, Oxford Saïd is an extraordinary School and community embedded in the world’s best university. Three elements drive our success: people, approach, and mission. 

People

MBA students

You’d expect to find extraordinary people at Oxford and you’d be right: from our award-winning faculty whose research is changing how businesses and governments do their work, to our global cosmopolitan student body, to our alumni who are changing the world, to our outstanding staff, including one of the best chefs in Britain. What makes them extraordinary is their curiosity, intelligence, challenging nature and tenacity. In a world sounding a retreat to national borders, we celebrate that we are unabashedly global. 

At Oxford Saïd, everyone is a minority, including me, an American in England. Also, while our community is ambitious and competitive – for example, winning the MBAT tournament for two years in a row, and winning scores of other competitions – we do so by working hard and playing hard, yet still being respectful, gracious, and collaborative.

Our community

Embedded approach

Many other elite business schools exhibit the hubris of thinking they know everything. We don’t. We acknowledge that the problems and opportunities facing business and the world are complex, multi-faceted, interdependent, and long on the horizon. Our best hope of understanding lies in cooperating with our colleagues across Oxford and beyond in our research, teaching, and engagement.

Our programmes are intertwined with other parts of Oxford, whether our Undergraduate Economics and Management Programme, our Masters in Financial Economics or Law and Finance, our Oxford 1+1 MBA programme, or our GOTO course and Engaging with the Humanities programmes in the MBA programme. If you are studying in one of our degree programmes, you will also be a member of one of Oxford’s Colleges, enjoying long dinners and conversations with colleagues from across all departments. At the Oxford Foundry, the University’s home for student entrepreneurs, you can find partners from medical sciences, engineering, social sciences, natural science, humanities and more for your ventures. 

Quite simply, we are stronger together.   

Peter Tufano, Kathy Harvey, and student

Mission

Like other business schools, we seek to improve the performance of the individuals, teams and organisations we serve, whether in our degree programmes, Open Enrolment programmes, digital courses, or Custom Executive Education programmes where we work with some of the leading business, governmental and civil society organizations in the world. But with the unfair advantage of being part of one of the world’s most elite, powerful educational institutions, we gladly bear the additional attendant responsibility of using our talents to improve the world.

We believe that business can play an integral part to address the systemic issues that will alter the future for generations to come: planetary threats; rising inequality; the mismatch of education, skills and employment opportunities; and growing nationalism and challenges to the institutions of democracy. As a community, we must commit to trying to use our wealth, power, and influence to make progress against these challenges, working across sectors, and mindful of the needs of others. We can do this in any sector or industry.

EMBA graduation

Simply put, Oxford Saïd is an amazing School in a historic and magical University.  However, to use British understatement, let’s just say that we are 'Not bad.' Whatever your language, come and find out yourself.

Cheers,

Peter

–––

Peter Tufano

Peter Moores Dean and Professor of Finance

Saïd Business School