Alumni Profile: Gregg Robins

Alumnus Gregg Robins (DPhil Management Studies, Templeton College, 1991) is the founder of Robins Advising, which works with individuals, families and companies to protect and expand their personal wealth and business interests.

He has enjoyed a lengthy career in financial services, with a particular focus on wealth management, and is also an active singer-songwriter. Most recently, he has written a children’s book called ‘Silenzio, Sound the Alarm’. Here, he reflects on his time at Templeton College:

“My years at Templeton, from 1991-1995 were special for a number of reasons. I got to know Kennington, and to appreciate all the green outside of central Oxford, where I had spent prior years on my MPhil at St. Antony’s College, and prior to that at Lincoln for a year as a visiting student.

I appreciated greatly the management focus at Templeton and the opportunity to interact with the business world, including running a couple of mini-MBAs in Russian for senior Kazakh oil executives – not a standard part of most DPhil experiences.

While writing my dissertation, my first daughter, Gabriella, was born down the road at the John Radcliffe, and a Templeton flat was her very first home (she is now a student at the Royal Veterinary College in London).

In the end, I successfully defended my doctoral thesis and remember fondly my terrific supervisors: Nick Woodward, then at Templeton, with his dry humour and understatement, and Peter Oppenheimer, at Christ Church, who was effusive and anything but understated! I had the pleasure to see Peter recently and he has not changed a bit, thankfully.

I always said that Kennington was as far out of Oxford I could go before having to leave (at the end of my studies), and I am happy to share these thoughts of those happy and productive years.”

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