Surayyah Ahmad: Where the Difficult Roads Lead

Last Wednesday, our new cohort of Women in Business Scholars gathered for their induction, the first step of the MBA year ahead. Among those who welcomed them was Surayyah Ahmad, Co-Chair of the Women in Business Board and an Oxford MBA scholar herself, who understands the journey they are beginning from the inside.

Surayyah Ahmad: "Run not from fear, but toward the future you deserve. Sometimes, the most challenging journeys lead to the most extraordinary destinations."

A Career Built in the Harder Places

Surayyah works where the challenge is greatest and the support is thinnest. As a Founding Partner at Sabou Capital, she funds high-growth businesses across West and Central Africa through a gender lens, backing founders in markets that most investors overlook. Before that she built and sold an e-commerce and fulfilment company spanning Nigeria and the UK, so she understands from experience what it takes to start something in an unforgiving environment. Her advice to run toward the future you deserve is not a slogan she picked up along the way. It is the principle she has spent a career acting on, and it is the same one she now brings to the founders she mentors and the scholars she supports.

The Journey You Are Starting

For the Women in Business Scholars who began this week, and for anyone across the community facing a demanding stretch of their own, Surayyah's words are worth holding onto. A challenging journey takes many forms, an MBA, a research project, a leadership placement in an unfamiliar country, but they share a quality: they ask more of you than feels comfortable, and it is tempting to meet them defensively, managing the pressure rather than reaching for what they could open up. Surayyah offers a different way in. The discomfort is often not a reason to shrink your ambition but a sign that the destination is worth the difficulty, and the scholars best served by a hard year are the ones who run toward it rather than brace against it.

Values in Focus

Surayyah's message speaks to the Laidlaw value of being #Ambitious and the Oxford Character Project virtue of #Courage. Ambition is what points you toward the future you deserve, the pull to reach for something bigger than the safe or expected option. Courage is what carries you there when fear would keep you still, the willingness to take on the harder journey in the belief that it leads somewhere worth reaching.

 A Call to Reflect

As you consider Surayyah Ahmad's words, we invite you to reflect and share in the comments: what is the future you would run toward if fear were not part of the decision?