Firstly I’d like to say thank you to Owen, Pembroke College and SBS for this very warm welcome. It’s truly wonderful to be here this evening with EMBA VI, especially considering that next time we’ll be here in Oxford together, it will be farewell from EMBA V.

There’s an ancient Chinese saying, “when the student is ready, the teacher arrives.”

We all arrived here as students ready to learn about management and leadership, finance and economics, strategy and all of its flavours…

It’s also true that we arrived here as students ready to learn about ourselves, about friendships which transcend companionship and entertainment to those which nurture our greater capabilities and new ways of thinking… internal resources we may neglect or overlook under more comfortable circumstances.

Here in Oxford and especially with the EMBA, the distinction between teachers and students is often less defined than in a more ordinary class room.

Everyone in the class has been a teacher to me.

It’s also been said that an education is what you’re left with when you’ve forgotten everything you learned at university.

Thinking back to September 2007, when I attended an open evening at SBS and the formal college dinner at Worcester, I think that this must be what Stephan meant when he declared that the EMBA is transformational.

The data and information we may well forget, but the knowledge, wisdom and comradery will endure.

So as we begin to prepare for our next steps after we finish the EMBA, I challenge all of us to remember that we’ll always be both teachers and students.

We may be teachers in the board room, and students in the lunch room. We may be students in the lecture theatre, and teachers in the EMBA dining room or SR11…

After each module, we part and go our separate ways, back to our real lives which, in my experience, has departed every further from status quo with the conclusion of each module.

Let’s not forget, when we leave these ancient pillars of wisdom, when the curtain falls on our grande finale here as students, that Oxford and SBS have granted us with a most captivating opportunity for an even greater encore in the wider global theatre.

Indeed, that’s the very reason that we’re here… so that the channels of teaching and learning may flow distant from the fountain of education and leadership that Oxford is.

So Ladies and Gentlemen without further ado, please raise your glasses, to Teachers and Students…