Alison Buckley
Templeton Management Scholarship
Over the last year, I felt honoured to receive a Templeton Management Scholarship, as I was very eager to become an active member of Green Templeton College.
During my pursuit of my MBA at Oxford, I achieved a measure of success and satisfaction in my academics, my professional career, and my college experience that far exceeded my expectations.
Academically, I was inspired in my studies both by the quality of many of my professors, as well as by my fellow students, whose varied business experience and depth of knowledge enabled me to learn as much from working with them in group projects as I learned in the classroom.
In Trinity Term, I made the Said Business School Dean's list, having earned three distinctions in my coursework for the term, a level of accomplishment that I was incredibly proud of given the high calibre of my fellow classmates. And while I await the final assessment results of my summer Strategic Consulting Project - during which I served on a team consulting for the Affordable Art Fair, an internationally-renowned contemporary art exhibition - I felt that the knowledge and experience I gained during my MBA studies was invaluable.
Professionally, I am delighted to report that through my MBA programme, I secured an excellent opportunity to work for The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) as a consultant. Over the past couple of weeks, I have been in the process of moving from Oxford to Sydney, Australia, where I will be based for the next few years of my career at BCG.
Without the resources of SBS and the opportunity to pursue my MBA at Oxford, I would never have had such an opportunity to move into a role at one of the top three consulting companies in the world.
I'm looking forward to beginning my work at BCG, and I am certain that the experience I will gain there will serve me well throughout the rest of my career -- whether I stay in consulting or I return to my previous sector, the hospitality industry, in the long term.
And in terms of my experience at Green Templeton, I am thrilled to report that my life within the College was incredibly rich and rewarding.
From my very first days at GTC through my final hours living in Oxford, Green Templeton occupied a huge part of my life, as it is at GTC that I formed some of my closest friendships, enjoyed some of my fondest Oxford experiences (eg Burns' night, the GTC ball, the black tie Christmas dinner, Torpids and Summer Eights' dinners, to name just a few) and had the most formative experiences of my Oxford career.
I joined the Green Templeton Boat Club at the beginning of Michaelmas Term as a novice rower, and I rowed and competed for GTC throughout the entirety of my life at Oxford, from Christ Church Regatta in the fall, through to Torpids and Summer Eights, and I even competed in external regattas with GTBC throughout the summer of 2011, which culminated in winning the Oxford City Royal Regatta in August as part of Green Templeton's First Womens' Eight boat.
Much to my delight, GTBC also welcomed my husband into the club, allowing him to row for the college as an associate member. His participation in GTBC became the primary point of his social life at Oxford, and a great source of fun and shared experience for both of us as rowers and as spouses.
I also had the pleasure of serving on the Green Templeton Boat Club committee, working as Development Officer, for which I developed communication between the Boat Club and our College's alumni rowers, writing newsletters and updates on the Boat Club's performances and activities throughout the year.
Overall, were I to attempt to fully describe the joy, life lessons, personal discovery, and friendships I made through my experience as a rower for Green Templeton Boat Club, I would write a very long report indeed, so I will say only that my life (and my husband's) at GTC was wonderfully enriched by my participation in the Boat Club, and that by being a member of such an active Boat Club, I was even more inspired to participate as fully in the life of the College as possible, attending as many dinners, bops, balls, talks, and other social events at the college as I could squeeze into my busy MBA schedule.
In short, Green Templeton College provided a crucial, formative keystone for my Oxford experience. As the College that has the most number of MBA members, GTC encouraged me to form close ties to my fellow GTC MBA classmates as well as many of the GTC DPhil candidates at the business school.
(Of note, several of my MBA classmates actually expressed sorrow that they were not GTC members, as they were sometimes jealous of my College experiences at GTC!)
Moreover, I greatly value the opportunities I had to converse with, and befriend, members of the college pursuing other academic interests, including in human welfare, medicine, and politics; it was refreshing and insightful to have non-MBAs to converse with and debate with!
I was also grateful to have GTC Fellow Jeff Burley as my advisor, for his wisdom, experience and advice - not to mention his excellent company at GTC dinners - helped me feel sure footed in my academic life. And I am equally grateful to have had the pleasure of getting to know many other members of GTC, including Sir John Hanson and Mike Dudley.
Thank you again for the honour of granting me a Templeton Management Scholarship. The culture and life of Green Templeton College is rich, welcoming, and inclusive, and for that, I am extremely grateful to have the pleasure of being a member of the college.
I truly look forward to continuing my ties to the college as an alumna, and to provide support to the college, and especially to Green Templeton Boat Club, in the coming months and years.
I (and my husband) cherish our experience as members of GTC, and we already miss our life at the College even as we look forward to launching our new life here in Sydney.