Foundation Chair commends Saïd Business School graduates with call to meet challenges of a changing world

Saïd Foundation Chair Mr Khaled Saïd this week celebrated MBA students graduating from the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, saying that the complex changes the world is witnessing means that they “will be in even more demand to demonstrate leadership”, drawing on their ethics, character and judgement.

Speaking to the 332-strong class of 2025/26, Mr Saïd drew attention to the increasingly vital role that business leaders must play:

“In a world of AI, where businesses can automate so much, the role of humans becomes even more important. The skills we must bring to businesses have become increasingly complex, subtle, and refined. The changing political environment and its effect on international world order have massive implications for business and corporate behaviour. Again, this will mean people like you – with your ethics and character and judgement – will be in even more demand to demonstrate leadership in your future endeavours. I know every one of you is up for that challenge.”

Paying tribute to his father Mr Wafic Rida Saïd, whose generosity enabled the establishment of the Saïd Business School in 1996, Mr Khaled Saïd said that today more than ever, the unique advantages of a business school embedded within the University Oxford are clear:

“I am so proud of my father’s vision more than 30 years ago. He saw the value of building a business school at Oxford that was deeply integrated into the university and drew on its intellectual wealth, history, and radical innovation. He understood that 21st-century business challenges cannot be solved in a silo; they require economists to speak to engineers, entrepreneurs to scientists, and financiers to linguists and philosophers. Future successful business leaders must understand markets and organisations, as well as technology, geopolitics, climate science, ethics, and society. That is the extraordinary advantage of being a business school at Oxford. And that was precisely his ambition: to build a business school that could only exist at Oxford.”

Saïd Business School, University of Oxford’s MBA programme has risen five places from 12th to 7th globally in the latest QS Global Ranking, with an overall score of 97.6% – the School’s best performance yet. Oxford Saïd’s Executive MBA is ranked 1st in the world by QS and its Masters in Financial Economics 2nd in the world.

The full transcript of Khaled Saïd’s speech follows:

Standing before you all today, I feel a wide range of emotions. I feel immense admiration for you all for completing the MBA at Oxford, excitement and anticipation for the inspiring things you will achieve, and great pride in what the Said Business School has become.

Over the past year, you have worked tirelessly and diligently to reach this point. You have invested in yourselves, sacrificing your time and energy, with many of you far from your family and friends. It is no mean feat, and we applaud you.

In just twelve months, you have endured the intensity of a programme – the late nights, complex case studies, endless deadlines and group projects that tested your patience and diplomacy. There will have been moments of doubt, when it all felt just too much, and you wondered what on earth you were doing. You will also have experienced exhilarating moments of learning alongside brilliant classmates and inspiring professors. All part of the value of an MBA.

But the true value of your time at Oxford Said is not just in the classroom; far from it. You have forged new friendships, learnt about other cultures, immersed yourself in college life, and benefitted from the unique environment of this glorious city and all it has to offer. And this does not include your remarkable achievements on the sports field – once again, you were the winner of the 2026 MBAT. Looking at the medal list, I am awestruck and trying to work out where I could have at least contributed… I think my value-add would have been limited to Foosball and Ultimate Frisbee.

What a time to be graduating! The world is changing so fast. Despite the doom-and-gloom headlines, so many exciting opportunities need young, fresh minds; problems need solving, challenges need facing, and assumptions need questioning. You are prepared for this world. In fact, this is exactly the environment that makes people with your professionalism, ambition, determination, intellectual acumen, and, most importantly, integrity so vital. In a world of AI, where businesses can automate so much, the role of humans becomes even more important. The skills we must bring to businesses have become increasingly complex, subtle, and refined. The changing political environment and its effect on international world order have massive implications for business and corporate behaviour. Again, this will mean people like you – with your ethics and character and judgement – will be in even more demand to demonstrate leadership in your future endeavours. I know every one of you is up for that challenge. I know this because you are sitting here today. You are here because the university saw this potential in you, a potential to go on to do great things in your life. And you must rise to this because this Oxford degree is an extraordinary privilege, one that carries a responsibility to use your education, voice, and opportunities to make a meaningful difference in the world around you.

Now, this illustrious university, from which I graduated over thirty years ago, is not the same place I am standing in today. Yes, the buildings are the same and have been here, or at least some of them, for over a thousand years. Latin is sometimes spoken. But the university has evolved in ways I could never have imagined. It has built on its successes in countless ways, through its constant ability to attain the highest standards in its faculty, its graduates, its research and its resources. For an institution founded before the Aztec civilisation, before the printing press, before even the concept of Great Britain came to our consciousness, it has remained highly relevant and cutting-edge with every wave of global change and innovation – across all disciplines. And it is entirely for this reason that Oxford can achieve progress in areas where others lack the depth and the breadth. Take the faculty of Classics, for instance: for centuries, Oxford has led thinking on ancient languages and cultures. But in one’s mind’s eye, when you think about this department, you might think of dusty archives with cobwebs and manuscripts that have not seen the light of day in centuries. Far from it. In fact, Oxford’s Faculty of Classics has teamed up with computational scientists from inside and outside the university to build Ithaca, a state-of the-art deep neural network that can identify where ancient texts were written, fill missing gaps in texts and date to incredible precision the date it was written. This has already been used to resolve long-standing historical debates and test widely held assumptions about the past.

This is where Oxford Said sits, and why I am so proud of my father’s vision more than 30 years ago. He saw the value of building a business school at Oxford that was deeply integrated into the university and drew on its intellectual wealth, history, and radical innovation. He understood that 21st-century business challenges cannot be solved in a silo; they require economists to speak to engineers, entrepreneurs to scientists, and financiers to linguists and philosophers. Future successful business leaders must understand markets and organisations, as well as technology, geopolitics, climate science, ethics, and society. That is the extraordinary advantage of being a business school at Oxford. And that was precisely his ambition: to build a business school that could only exist at Oxford.

It was not easy; in fact, even the idea of business at Oxford met resistance. But through patience and perseverance, Oxford has risen to the challenge, and the result is something unique. With immense gratitude to the Deans, faculty, and admin teams past and present, as well as the leadership at Oxford University, this vision has become a reality. It sets us apart from other business schools in Europe and it will set you apart from your peers as you implement your learnings in your future endeavours.

Let me close by congratulating every one of you today. This is an incredible achievement, and we are incredibly proud of you. We wish you every success in the future and hope that you will remain close to the school for years to come.