The School had plenty of reasons to celebrate after the Vice-Chair of our Board, and two of our distinguished alumni, were named in the New Year Honours List.
Dr Vivienne Cox DBE, has expressed her pride after being named a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the New Year Honours List for 2022.
Dr Cox was awarded for services to sustainability and to diversity and inclusion in business - both issues of great importance to Oxford Saïd.
She said: ‘I am thrilled to be recognised in this way, and especially for making a contribution to issues which are very important to me. It [the recognition] reflects many years of work in renewable energy and on environmental and social issues, both in an executive and a non-executive capacity. The citation also referenced my role as Chair of The Rosalind Franklin Institute, a research institute working at the intersection of life sciences and the physical sciences.’
Dr Cox has been a regular listee of Fortune Magazine’s ‘World’s 50 most powerful women in business.’ and has deep experience of leading large-scale, multidisciplinary organisations including BP, GSK, Pearson, Rio Tinto plc, and Vallourec. She has also recently been named as chairwoman of Victrex, the supplier of polymers.
Among other roles, she was previously Executive Vice President and Chief Executive of BP’s gas, power and renewable businesses and its alternative energy unit.
As an independent non-executive director at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), she has helped to test, inform and shape the environmental, social and governance agenda, maximising the pharmaceuticals giant’s environmental and societal impact.
Her outreach to GSK’s employees and her discussion of the CEO's ambition to improve diversity and inclusion helped the publication of targets for female and ethnically diverse representation in senior roles and also greater transparency around the ethnic representation of GSK’s workforce.