When Ishan Kolhatkar returned to the School this term and gave an inspiring talk to senior boys interested in pursuing a career as lawyers, he was setting out a path for them that he had fully expected to follow himself.
Yet today Ishan (OE 1989-1996) is instead Deputy Dean of Education Services at BPP University, the leading private university dedicated to Law, business and other professions.
“Having set out to be a barrister, expecting that to be a job for life, I am delighted with my decision to move into academia,” he says. “I taught advocacy, litigation and ethics on the Bar Course (including to a couple of OEs) for five years before moving into strategic management. I still have an interest in advocacy, criminal litigation (sentencing in particular) and legal education in general. All of which will hopefully turn into some published works and perhaps a PhD,” which, he says, he is “contemplating before the end of the decade”.
Ishan retains many fond memories of being in a very diverse year group at QE – one of the last before the reintroduction of academic selection at the School. Those memories include being part of the Young Enterprise team which became UK and European Champions in 1995, as well as being House Captain.
He pays tribute to “three of the most impressive individuals I’ve ever met. who were formative in different ways”. The trio includes Eamonn Harris, who was Headmaster when he was a pupil, as well as John Marincowitz (Headmaster, 1999–2011) and Eric Houston (Second Master; now retired and a QE Governor).
Ishan is still in regular contact with fellow OEs Anthony Mazen and Ajay Kurien. “I see Matthew Williamson and Manu Sivanandam from time to time and recently got back in touch with Inigo Melis.” Anthony, Manu and Inigo were all his Young Enterprise teammates.
On leaving QE, Ishan read Computer Science at Queen Mary, London, and then took the law conversion course and Bar Vocational Course “thanks to a very generous scholarship from the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple”.
Having worked for some years as a barrister and then as an in-house lawyer for the Nursing and Midwifery Council, he became a lecturer in 2011 at BPP University.
Ishan has “a wonderful wife and two lovely boys”.
Followers of his Twitter feed (@BPTC_Lecturer) will already know his hobby: “It’s cooking. I tweet more pictures of my food than anything else. I had intended to write a cookbook by the time I was 40 but that’s a few weeks away so I’ve decided that 41 is the new 40…”