A Yank at Oxford : Recent Episodes
Tom Fox
Tune in every quarter to learn how David Simon, a 53-year-old lawyer from the US, navigates the ancient world of Oxford University in pursuit of an MBA. In A Yank in Oxford, David and host Tom Fox will talk about what inspired his decision to pursue an Executive MBA, and his hopes for where the journey may lead.
Tune in every quarter to learn how David Simon, a 53-year-old lawyer from the US, navigates the ancient world of Oxford University in pursuit of an MBA. David is a Partner at the law firm Foley and Lardner, who has dedicated his career to white-collar compliance with a heavy international focus. In A Yank in Oxford, David and host Tom Fox will discuss what inspired his decision to pursue an Executive MBA and his hopes for where the journey may lead. In this Episode 5, David reflects on the one-year mark in his Oxford MBA Program. Reflections at the one-year mark. It has been amazing in so many ways. I love my classmates, and the core value proposition is my interactions with them. I love Oxford and feel lucky to spend time soaking up the atmosphere. Riding the bus into town makes me feel smarter. And I've learned so much – about technical business and commercial issues like accounting, finance, and statistics- but also about the macro-level, big-picture issues that drive society and thus drive business. Favorite courses so far. Governance and Ethics. Global Rules of the Game. Accounting was surprisingly good. M&A – mini-MBA in itself. The Physical Environment * Oldest coffee house in the UK is in Oxford. There's a theory about the coffee house's importance to the Enlightenment's emergence. Lots of people with different ideas bouncing around but similar themes. Brilliance of being immersed in an environment of smart, curious, open people. * Thinking about all kinds of issues in different ways and thinking deeply and reading deeply about big societal issues that massively affect business enterprise – my clients – and government and policy. * Presentations and Papers on:
Supply chain and geopolitical risk.
US/China relations and decoupling.
ESG – theory, and practice.
Human Rights – Forced Labor/Child Labor in Supply chains and the ethics and practical compliance challenges.
The Beatles and the Get Back documentary and leadership lessons learned.
Techniques for promoting virtue and ethics in organizations.
CSR is a means to develop a sustainable competitive advantage for a business.
What's coming up? Global Opportunities and Threats Oxford: Apply systems thinking too big complex problems. We're focusing on food security. Vietnam – Emerging Markets course
What has been some fun stuff?
Rowing
College dinners
Wimbledon
Queen's funeral – being in the UK
Tune in every quarter to learn how David Simon, a 53-year-old lawyer from the US, navigates the ancient world of Oxford University in pursuit of an MBA. David is a Partner at the white shoe law firm Foley and Lardner, who has dedicated his career to white collar compliance with a heavy international focus. “My practice touches a lot on some of the sanctions and international trade issues that typically come up on international matters,” he says. In A Yank in Oxford, David and host Tom Fox will talk about what inspired his decision to pursue an Executive MBA, and his hopes for where the journey may lead. In this Episode 4, David discusses beginning his academic journey through his third quarter in the Oxford MBA program. Highlights include: 1. You are now about 9 months into your EMBA program. How is it going? 2. Working with your classmates. Are you finding interesting collaboration opportunities? a. working with a classmate on a proposal to the State Department for an anti-corruption project in sub-Saharan Africa; b. some nascent legal tech projects involving AI; and c. required Entrepreneurship Project. 3. What substantive stuff what you been learning. a. Global Rules of the Game. b. Strategy Class. c. Accounting. d. Technology and Operations Management. 4. Fun stuff – matriculation The Ceremony was in the Divinity School, one of the oldest university buildings. Very formal – Latin incantations and subfusc? As Oxford as it gets.
Tune in every quarter to learn how David Simon, a 53-year-old lawyer from the US, navigates the ancient world of Oxford University in pursuit of an MBA. David is a Partner at the white shoe law firm Foley and Lardner, who has dedicated his career to white collar compliance with a heavy international focus. “My practice touches a lot on some of the sanctions and international trade issues that typically come up on international matters,” he says. In A Yank in Oxford, David and host Tom Fox will talk about what inspired his decision to pursue an Executive MBA, and his hopes for where the journey may lead. In this Episode 3, David discusses his academic journey through his second quarter in the Oxford MBA program. Highlights include: 1. Assessment or what we Yanks would call exams. Very open ended but designed to determine if you have done the assignments, participated and most importantly grasped the materials. 2. Analytics and Leadership Fundamentals. · In my Leadership Fundamentals assessment, David delved into lawyer decision making and team building. · Lawyers have a lot to learn here: § Can improve decision-making quality by building systems to slow down the process and to help recognize and mitigate against cognitive bias § Can also really improve the way we advise and otherwise serve our clients by being much more mindful of how we put together and manage our engagement teams · Don’t be reflexive and just build every team the same · Think about different functions needed and who can play them. · Beldin’s 9 roles – partners try to play too many roles. · Voice of the client? 3. Firms & Markets assessment · Market analysis of legal industry. · Industry dynamics are shaped largely by regulatory burdens to entry and other restrictions. · If and when those restraints loosen (and there are some signs they are starting to), industry is ripe for disruption § PE ownership § Investment in process and technology § Less “super-hero” lawyer based § Lower compensation for lawyers (with other trade-offs) 4. He concludes by detailing that the people he has met are really amazing. Faculty and staff have been terrific – responsive, engaged, open. Gotten so much value from my classmates. Smart, experienced, open. Getting to know people better and more people are now able to come in person. Explored Oxford, found a favorite pub – The Rickety Press – in Jericho and is now a member of the EMBA S 21 rowing club, thanks to my classmate Matthew. It is hard!
Tune in every quarter to learn how David Simon, a 53-year-old lawyer from the US, navigates the ancient world of Oxford University in pursuit of an MBA. David is a Partner at the white shoe law firm Foley and Lardner, who has dedicated his career to white collar compliance with a heavy international focus. “My practice touches a lot on some of the sanctions and international trade issues that typically come up on international matters,” he says. In A Yank in Oxford, David and host Tom Fox will talk about what inspired his decision to pursue an Executive MBA, and his hopes for where the journey may lead. In this Episode 2, David discusses beginning his academic journey in his first quarter in the Oxford MBA program. Highlights include: 1. His classmates, exactly what he expected and one of the core value propositions of enterprise. The group is interesting, accomplished, diverse, engaged, and learning a ton from them. 2. David found that he can still do math – sort of. He has completed his Analytics class, finding it tough, but useful to understand. He also discusses that he has already seen an improvement in his decision making. Cognitive bias that impacts our decision making. Lawyer decision making is particularly vulnerable to distortion via bias. Importance of slowing down, adding process. Inherently non-lawyerly. Poor team construction on legal matters. Ways to really improve it. 3. He has been exposed to some different perspectives on corruption, interesting from non-lawyers in emerging markets. 4. He concludes by detailing what he termed some “Fun Oxford stuff”; including the College system and experience at Keble, rowing on the Thames as a team building exercise, participating in a formal dinner at Balliol College, which he found like a scene from Harry Potter and concludes with some thoughts about an old guy living in a dorm.
Tune in every quarter to learn how David Simon, a 53-year-old lawyer from the US, navigates the ancient world of Oxford University in pursuit of an MBA. David is a Partner at the white shoe law firm Foley and Lardner, who has dedicated his career to white collar compliance with a heavy international focus. “My practice touches a lot on some of the sanctions and international trade issues that typically come up on international matters,” he says. In A Yank in Oxford, David and host Tom Fox will talk about what inspired his decision to pursue an Executive MBA, and his hopes for where the journey may lead.
The Concilium Network Tom asks David to talk about his work as cofounder of the Concilium Network, in particular concerning his practice in India. David responds that Concilium is a tight network of law practitioners from around the world with similar expertise in white collar compliance. They collaborate to handle matters for their clients, and he believes that they are “the best lawyers in this space in the world.” He shares that an Indian colleague and friend co-founded Concilium with him. “We've worked together ... where we've had US clients with matters that have come up in their India subsidiaries, and we've gone over to help investigate and remediate the problem and sometimes deal with regulators on their behalf.” Recently, they have started helping Indian companies do business in the US.
Why Oxford? David has dreamed of studying in the UK since his Pegasus scholarship days at Cambridge. It’s a seed that took 27 years to sprout: he will be joining the Executive MBA program at the University of Oxford Saïd Business School this fall. Tom asks him why this particular program and why now. He responds that he was only interested in programs with a global focus, and Oxford offered the best. “I really wanted to be exposed to the global market, the global economy, global business leaders,” he remarks. “...One of the things I really liked about the Oxford program [was that] it was a really meaty substantial program.” He also appreciates that the program is centrally based rather than itinerant, and that Oxford makes an effort to make students feel part of the university.
Goals Oxford’s Executive MBA program focuses on globalism, entrepreneurship and innovation, and public policy at its core, David tells Tom. These themes resonate with him and are relevant to his personal and professional goals. He shares that he defines success as more than just academic. Ultimately, it’s about the relationships you build. Meeting and bonding with the global community of accomplished persons who make up his cohort, is his number one priority. Tom comments on his decision to continue his law practice full time while he is studying. “How do you hope this academic experience will impact your legal services and perhaps even the firm's?” Tom asks. It will take a lot of teamwork, but they’ll make it happen, David responds. He sees it as an opportunity to broaden his network, and help business and political leaders achieve their goals. He enjoys being a strategic advisor to his clients, but thinks he needs to expand his knowledge base to be able to speak their language to serve them better. Tom asks him what he is looking forward to the most. He replies, “I love the idea of meeting new people, having an opportunity to do something that's fairly intense and fairly important and meaningful together and particularly at this stage of life...I'm also most excited about just pushing myself out of my comfort zone.”
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