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Ownership Project Action Lab: from academic research to real-world impact

Over the last eight years, the Ownership Project at Saïd Business School has engaged global family wealth-holders to examine their preferences, frustrations, and aspirations regarding the use of their assets to achieve impact, broadly understood. The first phase of the project (2017-2022) focused on large family businesses with annual revenues above USD 1 billion and was funded by the Ford Foundation. The second phase of the project (2023-2026), housed within the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Saïd Business School, focuses on single family offices with assets under management above USD 100 million (median of 2 billion), and was funded by a single family office, NextWorld Philanthropies.

Ownership Project Action Lab (OPAL) responds to consistent need expressed by members of the Ownership Project’s network to focus more directly focus on real-world outcomes. As the next step in the Ownership Project’s evolution, OPAL translates our foundation in rigorous academic research into real-world outcomes via:

  • Reports, case studies, and benchmarking tools to guide decision making and highlight new opportunities
  • Collaborative research, with interviews tightly focused on real-world problems and solutions
  • Advisory and consultancy, grounded in research expertise
  • Building curricula for the education of family members, including next gens, and the professionals working with them
  • Curating peer convenings to build community around shared interests

OPAL is grounded in an anthropological approach to studying enterprising and wealth-owning families, focusing on behavioural particularities, cultural considerations, and levers for change of this often highly private demographic. Drawing on expertise across the University of Oxford and the resources of its home within Green Templeton College’s Global Philanthropy Initiative, OPAL focuses on overlooked and even uncomfortable topics that are central to succession, asset allocation, and the creation (or destruction) of business value.

Above all, OPAL supports families to understand how their unique attributes can be used so that their multiple forms of capital – social, philanthropic, and returns-seeking – can address urgent global challenges.

Meet the team

Alexander Hayward, Co-Founder

Alexander served as the Family Office Community Chair of Ownership Project 2.0: Private Capital Owners & Impact at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, and is an Executive Fellow at the London Business School

Since 2010, including whilst at EY’s Family Business & Family Office practice in London, Alexander has analysed more than 100 single family offices across the UK, Americas, Middle East, Europe, and Asia Pacific, examining their setup, structures and investment strategies. An expert in the management of complex, multi-generational family businesses, Alexander has also implemented comprehensive risk management frameworks that incorporate tax, mobility, financial controls, and succession planning.

Holding BA and MA degrees from the University of Oxford, he previously collaborated with Northwestern University to deliver coaching and training for Next Generation family members preparing to take up roles in family businesses and offices. His focus on strategy and governance aims to encourage Family Offices to embrace new opportunities and develop cultures of long-term sustainable growth.

Dr Bridget Kustin, Co-Founder

Bridget is an economic anthropologist (PhD, Johns Hopkins University) who studies family ownership and wealth, focusing on single family offices and large business-owning families. She served as of the Director of Ownership Project 2.0: Private Capital Owners & Impact at University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, and led the qualitative research during the first phase of the Project. She is a Senior Research Fellow at Said Business School, Research Fellow of Green Templeton College, and holds a visiting appointment (2025–26) at the Politecnico di Milano.

Bridget is a Co-Investigator of a UK Research and Innovation’s Future Leaders’ Fellowship grant regarding the use of trusts in the UK and is Academic Director of the Polycapital Academy at Green Templeton College for philanthropy professionals and wealth-holders. While completing her PhD, she was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow; Fulbright Research Fellow; and a Fellow of the Institute for Money, Technology, and Financial Inclusion. Her research has been supported by the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, Berlin’s Center for Social Science Research (WZB), and the Gates Foundation, and she has served on the World Economic Forum’s Global Futures Council for Development Finance.

At Saïd Business School, Bridget teaches Family Business and Capitalism in Debate to MBA students, and Impact and Major Programmes to MSc students. Her research on families and private wealth has been discussed in Bloomberg, Financial Times, WealthNet, and Crain Currency.