Global Alumni Advisory Board

Pat Bateman (Australia-at-Large & Pembroke 2013) is the Chair of Rhodes Scholars in Britain (RSiB). He is one of the co-owners and Partners of Hakluyt, the global strategic advisory firm headquartered in Mayfair, having joined that business seven years ago. He worked in management consulting before then, at Boston Consulting Group in London. In Australia, he worked as a solicitor in the Banking and Finance practice for major law firm, Allens. However, he's spent much of his career in politics and policy. He worked as one of the senior political advisers to Theresa May, the British Prime Minister, and as a researcher in both the Conservative Party's CRD and in the London office for Sir Lynton Crosby. Before that, he worked as a speechwriter for John Howard, the Australian Prime Minister, and as an advisor to Senator Marco Rubio (now US Secretary of State) when he served on the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. He loved his time studying at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and is thrilled to be able to help in some way to reconnect fellow Alumni.

Lisa serves on the Steering Committee for Business for South Africa (B4SA), a unique collaboration that has successfully rallied over 160 CEOs and their organizations to partner with the SA government, under the aegis of the President, to drive economic growth by addressing critical national challenges in energy, transport and logistics, and crime and corruption.

Lisa is a founder and current Director of the SA SME Fund, a fund of funds that has raised over $200 million for debt, equity, and venture capital investments in entrepreneurial businesses.

Previously, she was a management consultant at McKinsey & Co, and was global Head of M&A at Discovery Group, where she played a pivotal role in negotiating Discovery’s international partnerships. She serves as a Trustee of the Discovery Fund, which is dedicated to strengthening South Africa's healthcare system.

Lisa is a Fellow of the African Leadership Initiative and the Aspen Global Leadership Network.

She spent many years as the Assistant General Secretary of the Rhodes Scholarship (SA) and has served as President of the Southern African Association of Rhodes Scholars (SAARS) since 2014. A recipient of the George Parkin Service Award, she was also an inaugural co-chair of the Rhodes Trust’s Global Alumni Advisory Board.

Lisa holds a DPhil in Politics from Oxford University.  

Janice R. Ugaki is the Co-Founder and President of Firmseek, an award-winning strategic marketing and technology company based in Washington, DC. Over the past 25 years, Janice has transformed Firmseek from an idea into a national leader in digital marketing, receiving over 450 industry awards.

Janice is committed to community and public service. She serves as Co-President of the Association of American Rhodes Scholars and was an Adjunct Professor at the University of Utah Honors College for many years. Her board service spans numerous organizations, including Intermountain Health, Zions Bank, Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation, Truman Scholarship Advisory Council, Rhodes Scholarship Selection Committee Secretary, the University of Utah President’s National Advisory Council, Utah Innocence Project, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, University of Utah Honors College,  Castell Health, Culmination Bio, the University of Utah College of Science, Park City Education Foundation, Park City Museum & Historical Society, and the Park City Hospital Governing and Foundation Boards. Her present and past board service embodies her commitment to education, healthcare, and community.

Janice graduated summa cum laude from the University of Utah with Honors degrees in Finance and  Political Science and a minor in Japanese. While at the University of Utah, she served as Senior Class President, was selected as a Truman Scholar, and inducted into Phi Beta Kappa as a junior. As a Rhodes Scholar (St. Antony’s & Idaho ‘93), Janice read for a D.Phil in Japanese Politics. She received her J.D. from Harvard Law School. While at law school, she taught a Harvard College course on Japanese politics, earning the Harvard Teaching Distinction Award.

Janice is a black belt in taekwondo and enjoys volunteering as a taekwondo instructor for at-risk elementary students and mentoring youth through martial arts. She lives in Park City, Utah, with her husband and two children and enjoys skiing, hiking, and traveling with her family.

Prof. Alisha Wade is the Director of Research in Metabolism and Endocrinology (RIME) at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa and a Reader and Clinician Scientist in the Department of Internal Medicine in the School of Clinical Medicine at the same institution, as well as an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism at the University of Pennsylvania. A native of Barbados, she graduated from the University of the West Indies in 2000 as the Clinical Gold Medallist and with a MBBS (Honours) degree, prior to attending the University of Oxford as a Commonwealth Caribbean Rhodes Scholar and graduating with a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Clinical Medicine. She then completed a residency in Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Centre and a fellowship in Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism at the University of Pennsylvania. She was awarded an Emerging Global Leader career development award from the Fogarty International Centre of the National Institutes of Health (USA) and has published over 80 peer-reviewed articles. Her research focuses on health inequities in endocrine and metabolic diseases. She is an active clinician and sees patients with endocrine diseases at the Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre.

Jiaxin Zhao is a development specialist with extensive experience in economics, climate and energy, governance, and public policy. He currently serves as a consultant for the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and the World Bank’s China Mission. During his time at Oxford, he studied climate economics and public policy and worked as a Research Associate at the Institute for New Economic Thinking, affiliated with the Blavatnik School of Government and the Environmental Change Institute. He also gained private sector and non-profit experiences at Envision, MSCI, and Carbon Disclosure Project, among others, contributing to net-zero transition efforts. Jiaxin holds a Master of Public Policy and an MSc in Environmental Change and Management from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, as well as a BSc in Alternative Energy Science and Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, with additional studies at Waseda University in Japan. He is currently pursuing a PhD in political economy at Tsinghua University.