Tom Ford

Cambridge Judge Business School

“Hardworking, dedicated, and ambitious.”

Hometown: Holmes Chapel, Cheshire, UK

Fun fact about yourself: Olympian – Gold medal Paris 2024 and Bronze medal Tokyo 2021

Undergraduate School and Degree:

Newcastle University, UK – Geography and Town Planning BA,

International Marketing MSc – Newcastle University, UK

Where was the last place you worked before enrolling in business school? British Rowing – Performance Athlete on the Olympic team for Team GB

Where did you intern during the summer of 2024? I was competing at the Paris Olympic Games 2024 and was thus busy in my role as an international athlete before joining Cambridge Judge Business School

Where will you be working after graduation? Not known

Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School: My community work is centred around giving back within the sporting community. This includes being part of the University of Cambridge rowing teams, but also engaging in talks with high schools at home in Cheshire and other locations across the UK as an Olympic representative of Team GB in rowing.

Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? I am extremely proud of securing a place on the MBA programme at Cambridge University. This is such a competitive MBA programme and is something very different from what I have been doing in professional sport. I hope to keep pushing myself and developing towards my future career, but I am very proud of pushing myself into this particular new challenge.

What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? Winning the Paris 2024 Olympics. This was the culmination of a lifetime’s work and was done so by implementing lessons I had learned from not quite achieving this at the Tokyo Olympics (I won a Bronze medal in the Eight boat in 2021). I am proud of the way that the GB rowing team learned and developed and became stronger than the sum of our parts.

Why did you choose this business school? I was really attracted to the chance to get some “real life” experience through the structure of the MBA programme at Cambridge Judge Business School. For example, I was impressed by the Cambridge Venture Project and the Global Consulting Project, as well as the opportunity for a summer work placement. These are areas of weakness I feel, having dedicated my life to date to a professional sporting career.

Furthermore, I was attracted to the diversity on the MBA programme at Cambridge Judge Business School. With many different nationalities and backgrounds, I was excited to learn and seek different perspectives from a wide range of people on the cohort.

In addition, to be in Cambridge at one of the best universities in the world, in such a historic city was such an amazing opportunity.

Who was your favorite MBA professor? Professor Mark De Rond – Mark was extremely kind and made time for me when I reached out before applying to the MBA programme. I feel like he was instrumental in helping me prepare for the application process to Cambridge Judge and guided me in what to expect.

Since joining the School, I have been taking his Negotiations core class which I find extremely interesting. The chance he gives us to negotiate topics and put classroom learnings into action is invaluable and really helps to cement the MBA teachings.

What was your favorite course as an MBA? I have found the Negotiation core course extremely interesting as highlighted earlier. I have enjoyed the practical nature of it. However, despite being a weak area of mine, I also enjoyed Corporate Finance teaching as a way of really pushing me out of my comfort zone and learning something that is completely new to me.

Looking back over your MBA experience, what is the one thing you’d do differently and why? Right now, I don’t think there is much I would have changed. I have loved the first couple of terms at Cambridge so far, and I am learning so much so quickly. The fast-paced nature of the MBA programme means you don’t have time to stop, and the time is flying by. In hindsight, I should have tried to attend more speaker events in the first Michaelmas Term. This is something I am doing more this term and is a very valuable resource within the Business School and the wider Cambridge community as well.

What is the biggest myth about your school? That everyone cycles in school. I have found this is to be more true than the myth even suggested!

What did you love most about your business school’s town? Cambridge is steeped in history. I love the College culture and set up whilst being able to feel part of something so historic.

The whole city is geared around the university and being a student here makes you feel so embedded in this community. College dinners are fascinating as you can be sat by some of the most interesting and talented people all studying amazing things.

What movie or television show best reflects the realities of business and what did you learn from it? It is Moneyball in my opinion, although not a business film as such, is one of the best movies that reflects strategy, innovation, and overcoming industry resistance to change. I also enjoy the parallels of how learnings within sport can be transferred to business and this is something that I am aiming to do. The film looks at Billy Beane disrupting Major League Baseball by using data-driven decision-making rather than traditional scouting methods. This demonstrates the importance of data analytics in decision making and shows its utility in disrupting markets.

What is one way that your business school has integrated AI into your programming? What insights did you gain from using AI? We have many different classes on AI within the Cambridge MBA and sessions about how AI can be implemented into businesses. This is something I hadn’t previously used much before, so being able to use it and see how it can be integrated in a strategic way, has been extremely eye opening.

Cambridge Judge Business School is doing a great job at making AI part of the everyday lectures and applications in business, to ensure they stay on top of the trend rather than playing catch-up.

Which MBA classmate do you most admire? Fernando Hanhausen.

Fernando is a very close friend of mine and has helped me think about my future career a great deal. He has also helped me where I might have struggled on aspects of the courses, as he has supported me to get up to speed.

We have plans to try and start a venture together and I am very thankful to have met someone like him on the MBA programme at Cambridge.

What are the top two items on your professional bucket list? I want to start my own company and to build on this to bring a new product to the market.

What made Tom Ford such an invaluable addition to the Class of 2024/25?

“Tom is a true gem. While having every reason to be boastful about his Olympic achievements, he remains so grounded, so down-to-earth, interested in others and keen to contribute to their experience of the Cambridge MBA. The world owes him nothing and so he set out about creating something in it that is at once beautiful and inspiring: one that allows those in his vicinity to be the best they can be. As in a rowing Eight, a fast-moving crew rely on their ability to create a space where all involved raise their game yet never ever at the expense of someone else. That, I think, is what I most appreciate about Tom – the appreciation that one’s success is rarely ever up to oneself alone and instead a collective effort. We talk the talk; he walks it too.”

Mark de Rond
Professor of Organisational Ethnography  

DON’T MISS: MBAS TO WATCH: CLASS OF 2025

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