hilary [trek]: press release, launch

For the past two-months I've been organizing a cross-Atlantic Trek to New York. Everything is now ready to go! We're visiting ten blue-chip companies in New York and Boston, and twelve MBAs are participating. While we're here, we're also attending alumni events in both New York and Boston. And we're going to meet our fellow MBAs at Columbia and Harvard. It should be great fun, and I'm going to blog about all of it! Let's start with the press release recently issued by the Oxford B-school Press Office:


Oxford Comes to Wall Street
MBAs on business trek to New York and Boston

9 – 18 April 2010

Saïd Business School, University of Oxford

A team of MBA students from Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford will be visiting the USA on a business trek organised by the School’s student network for Finance. The team will be visiting New York and Boston to meet with key companies from the financial sector in order to gain an insight into how business in the sector operates.

With participants from Europe, North and South America, and Asia the trek is an opportunity for students to increase their understanding of the financial markets and business developments in the US, to see firsthand how the financial sector is recovering, and to network with Oxford alumni and corporate contacts. The students also plan to meet with MBA candidates for the incoming class.

One of the organising students Justin Belkin said: ‘‘The MBA class at Saïd is very diverse with participants from around 50 countries worldwide and from a wide variety of different sectors. The School has an excellent finance faculty and many of the class, keen to pursue a career in that sector, expressed an interest in getting firsthand experience of American culture and trade so I decided to organise a trek focusing on different organisations on Wall Street and beyond. We could not have chosen a better time to visit. As the economy recovers, more employers are looking to recruit from the top business schools, and Oxford is a natural choice. This will be a good opportunity to highlight the USA as an attractive destination for a fulfilling post-MBA career.”

The 15 students undertaking the trek are all keen to forge strong connections and to learn from the companies they will meet on their visit including: Barclays Capital, CB Richard Ellis, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Fidelity Investments, Pfizer, Sanford Bernstein, SecondMarket, and State Street.

The Oxford students will also meet with fellow MBAs from both Columbia and Harvard Universities to network and build transatlantic relationships.

While the team is confident that they will hear practical wisdom from these interactions, they hope to reciprocate by engaging in meaningful dialogue and offering consultancy advice on specific opportunities and challenges for some of the organisation’s they visit.

Derek Walker, Head of Careers at Saïd commented: ‘It is good to see the strong interest among our students in working in the finance sector in the USA, and clearly the country presents good opportunities. The students have set up a series of valuable meetings and will also be working closely with our alumni there to maximise their opportunities. The visit is a good way for companies to meet MBA students who are highly motivated to work in the US, are geographically mobile, and who have a diverse range of cultural backgrounds, business specialisms and sector experience. We look forward to a successful visit.’