AMBA & BGA honours winning business schools and their students and graduates at the Excellence Awards 2025

Best Culture, Diversity and Inclusion Initiative 2025

Fortune Institute of International Business (FIIB) (India) for Women in Leadership - #Balancingforbetter

At FIIB, the school champions female leadership and empowerment, fostering an inclusive environment. Women make up 40% of their board, 62% of their faculty, and 50% of their senior staff, reflecting their commitment to gender equality. Creating role models, providing explicit opportunities for development, and maintaining full pay and flexi-time parity for all staff, are some ways in which FIIB are #BalancingForBetter at their workplace. The school has realised creating SOPs for female staff creates imbalance. So, where they have women taking work-from-home and flexi-time options, they also have their male employees taking advantage of benefits, promoting mutual appreciation of challenges.

Best Business School Partnership Award 2025

University of Edinburgh Business School (UK) with NatWest Group

The University of Edinburgh Business School and NatWest Group designed and delivered a flexible, scalable and impactful learning and development partnership to empower more than 63,000 of the banking group’s colleagues (99.9% of NatWest Group’s headcount) with the necessary technical knowledge, skills and awareness to deliver on its climate ambition – to be a leading bank in the UK, helping address the climate challenge.

The innovative partnership responded agilely to the organisation's and colleagues’ developing needs, blending and layering different learning strands to create a positive change culture throughout the banking group.

Best CSR and Sustainability Initiative 2025, Cesim Business Simulations

Zhongnan University of Economics and Law (China) for Compassionate Futures Nexus (CFN)

Under Zhongnan University of Economics and Law’s strategy: pursuing international trends, embracing local practice, promoting the school's advantages, and delivering responsible management, they have unified five initiatives:

1. Starlight Haven: Champions autism support and cultivates philanthropic leaders (SDG 3, 17).

2. MBA Benevolence Network: Mobilises for rural education equality (SDG 4, 10).

3. Hope and Help: Aids the disadvantaged and disaster relief, fighting poverty and promoting sustainable communities (SDG 1, 11).

4. Female Leadership Centre: Empowers women for gender equality and economic growth (SDG 5, 8).

5. Community Connect: Enhances community engagement and sustainable development through practical learning (SDG 4, 11, 17).

Best Lifelong Learning Initiative 2025

Kent Business School, University of Kent (UK) for Alumni Summer School

Engaging with alumni can be a challenge. Following the excitement of graduation most go on to pursue busy careers and their time at university becomes a happy memory. However, Kent Business School strive to make the Kent MBA experience truly transformative with a combination of two things: engaging mature learners with relevant skills and knowledge and building a supportive community who have genuine friendships and professional respect for each other. The business school thinks it is imperative that they maintain these connections and harness the joy of learning – the Alumni Summer School was launched in 2023 to do exactly this.

Best Innovation Strategy Award 2025, in association with QED

Berlin School of Business and Innovation (BSBI) (Germany) for BOTSBI - BSBI's revolutionary innovation

BSBI's revolutionary innovation, BOTSBI, epitomises the school’s commitment to cutting-edge education. Powered by advanced Python programming and UNIX-based systems, BOTSBI enhances learning with scientific presentations and educational demonstrations. Its natural movements and advanced natural language processing capabilities engage students, transforming traditional teaching.

BOTSBI's multifaceted functionality includes serving as an artificial conversational agent, enriching the learning experience through interactive dialogue. This hands-on engagement in robotics, programming, and AI aligns with BSBI's didactic model, integrating lecture presentations, interactive exercises, and group work.

The school’s innovation, alongside their virtual campus and holographic mascot, BESBI, prepares students for a connected world, ensuring interactive, transformative learning experiences.

Best Digital Transformation 2025, in association with Accredinator - Business School Accreditation Software

Warwick Business School, University of Warwick (UK)

Traditional online teaching can feel impersonal, slide heavy and unengaging.  
 
Warwick Business School’s pioneering SmartStage® technology has transformed the way that online MBA and Masters-level courses can be delivered.   
 
The school’s innovative use of an immersive, interactive environment allows for dynamic content delivery - leaving more time for deeper learning, more questions and better discussions.   
 
A dedicated team manages the technical aspects, meaning that presenters can focus on enriching the learning experience in real-time. With this focus on interaction, they believe they have significantly improved both student and faculty experiences, as well as set a new standard of what’s possible in online education.

BGA Business School Impact Award 2025

Centrum PUCP, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (Peru) for “Crecemos Juntos con Centrum”, “We grow together with Centrum”, in collaboration with Alicorp”

Centrum PUCP, in partnership with Alicorp, implemented the 'Crecemos Juntos con Centrum' initiative, a programme tailored for owners and workers of micro and small enterprises in the food service industry. This training programme combines academic knowledge with practical business tools to drive economic empowerment, inclusivity, and sustainable growth. By addressing the challenges of microentrepreneurs in Peru, the programme fostered an environment where business owners not only survive but thrive, contributing significantly to the local economy and community development.

Start-Up of the Year Award 2024 

Karl Baz, University of Bradford School of Management for Deep Blue 

Deep Blue's AI Drown Detection System represents a groundbreaking leap in water safety technology. It provides real-time monitoring and rapid response capabilities for drowning incidents in various aquatic environments. The system detects potential drownings but also pre-empts this by understanding the risk rating of situations – for example by understanding the ratio of adults to children to lifeguards – and detecting patterns of weak swimming.

It also includes other features such as victim location tracking, unauthorised person alerts, and crowd analytics. It is currently in trial on one public beach and one public school – both operated by Dubai Municipality, and one private residential lagoon.

Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2024, in association with Bluesky Education

Marco Farina, POLIMI School of Management (Italy) for Logol AG

Logol AG began its journey in 2021 with a clear vision that AI would revolutionise the legal sector. Logol developed ELLE, a groundbreaking, Artificial Intelligence cloud-based B2B SaaS solution for law firms. Creating a cloud- and AI-based solution in the conservative legal sector required not only a strong product and market vision but also resilience and commitment to overcome regulatory obstacles and scepticism. Starting from zero, Logol have established ELLE as the market leader in Switzerland, successfully expanding into Germany, Italy, and the UK.

Postgraduate Leadership Award 2025

Maryangel Garcia-Ramos Guadiana, EGADE Business School, Tecnológico de Monterrey (Mexico)

Maryangel Garcia-Ramos is a human rights and disability activist, transformative leader and influential advocate for diversity, inclusion, gender, and disability. For +16 years she has worked with congress, legislation, government, private sector and higher education. She founded the nonprofit Mexican Women with Disabilities, which has championed reform to secure equal protection for women with disabilities. Garcia-Ramos is Executive Director at Women Enabled International and President of Nuevo Leon State Council for People with Disabilities. She has won numerous awards, the AACSB International 2022 Influential Leader, the Tec Prize for Women, and the Top Voice Gender Equity 2022 at LinkedIn México.

AMBA Student of the Year Award 2025, in association with GMAC

Wael Abdin, Cardiff Business School (Wales)

Wael Abdin is Cardiff Business School’s first blind Executive MBA student and his participation has significantly benefited the programme. As module leaders state:

“Wael significantly enhanced my teaching delivery style and content, driving me to seek innovative methods of engagement to foster inclusivity”.

“A very intellectual and enthusiastic student. His perspective on Sudan enriched class discussions, particularly when talking about international business culture”.

“Wael has consistently demonstrated unwavering determination, resilience, and an exceptional commitment to academic excellence. His approach to learning is characterized by meticulous preparation, innovative problem-solving, and a remarkable ability to engage with complex material in unique and insightful ways”.

BGA Student of the Year Award 2025

Jan Jasiński, Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow (UK)

Jan Jasinski is an incredible, values-driven, multi-achieving student across a variety of disciplines with an aptitude for maximising every opportunity. He exemplifies a student who utilises his business education for social good and creates impact. 

Passionate about personal, professional growth and inclusion, he has spearheaded his own drive to mentor and coach 40 undergraduates to realise and reach their potential.

His characteristic individual motivation saw him co-author an academic paper alongside the University’s Assistant Vice-Principal and published by Cambridge University Press, and win a sustainability competition to work alongside a global engineering, management and development consultancy to improve Glasgow’s cityscape.

Andrew Main Wilson, Chief Executive of the Association of MBAs and Business Graduates Association (AMBA & BGA) said: “On behalf of the AMBA and BGA team, I would like to congratulate the finalists and winners of this year’s Excellence Awards. 

“This year, the competition was stronger than ever – with the highest number of entries ever. The entries who have made the final shortlist in each category should feel proud of their achievements.

“Additionally, the students and graduates who have been shortlisted as finalists today have all used their qualifications to achieve a spectrum of impressive results, in terms of the positive impact they have made to business, education and society as a whole.

“It was thrilling to be able to celebrate the AMBA & BGA network’s achievements at our Gala Dinner - in particular it’s been amazing to celebrate exceptional innovations and successes in the higher management education industry.

“I also want to take the opportunity to thank our partners, BlueSky Education, GMAC, Accredinator - Business School Accreditation Software, QED and Cesim Business Simulations. Their support for our awards – and the business education sector – is greatly appreciated.”

ENDS 

For more information or interviews, please contact: 

Ellen Buchan, Insight, Content & PR Manager, AMBA & BGA –  E.buchan@amba-bga.com