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In just a few short years, Jay Shetty has risen rapidly to become one of the internet’s most in-demand personalities.

Named in the 2017 Forbes European 30 Under 30, Jay (OE 1999-2006) is an award-winning vlogger, filmmaker…and a former monk whose avowed aim is “share wisdom at the pace we want entertainment and make wisdom go viral”.

Jay has, to say the least, had an interesting journey since leaving QE and going on to Cass Business School in London, from which he graduated with a first-class degree in Management Science.

He retains great fondness for his School. “I have great memories of my time at QE: I think QE has some interesting memories of me! I want to personally give a huge thanks to two teachers who had a big impact on my growth.

“The first is Mr Buckeridge [Art teacher Stephen Buckeridge]. A phenomenal teacher and life mentor – without even knowing it. He was always making me think more deeply about my art work and what it meant and stood for, and he really helped me express myself and articulate creatively. His ability to challenge me and get the best out of me has really helped me mentally since that time.

“The second is Mr Ryan [David Ryan, now Assistant Head]. He tolerated all my immature tendencies, helped me grow without judging me, and supported me through some of the most formative years of my life. He was always a champion, supporter and advisor.

“I also loved playing rugby for our School A team and, of course, the public-speaking classes changed my life,” he added.

Inspired to make a difference in the world, at 22 Jay went to live as a monk in India. Then for three years, he travelled the world, during which time he helped build a sustainable village and create food programmes.

Wanting to ‘pay forward’ what he had learnt, Jay began sharing his experiences as a monk in universities and the world’s largest corporations, including EY and Nasdaq.

At the same time, he noticed that the world was rapidly going digital, so he went on to become professional services company Accenture's social media coach for executives, working in online branding and digital strategy.

His talent was spotted by Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington, who made him the host of HuffPost Lifestyle in New York.

He has been invited to give keynote speeches at leading companies, including Google, Facebook and HSBC, about finding purpose, harnessing collaboration and driving change. Jay won the ITV Asian Media Award for Best Blog 2016 and came third in the Guardian Rising Star Award in 2015.

The most recent accolade comes from influential magazine Forbes: its 30 under 30 awards celebrate those seen as the brightest, most innovative game-changers in their industry. Jay certainly fits the bill in the media category: since launching his Facebook channel in 2016, his wisdom videos have garnered over 150 million views and gained more than half a million followers globally.

On his daily show on HuffPost Live, #FollowTheReader, he has interviewed the likes of entrepreneurs Russell Simmons and Tim Ferris, and Deepak Chopra, author and prominent figure in the New Age movement. The show has a daily audience of 1 million.

Jay advises several well-known brands on spotting and nurturing new talent, with the emphasis on helping people find a purpose and use for their passions in the workplace.

Krishan Dave is forging a successful career in finance – and gave a new generation of QE pupils tips on following his lead.

Krishan (2002-2009) went to King’s College London to read Mathematics on leaving School in 2009. After working for StatPro, a provider of asset valuation services and portfolio analysis software, and Dutch multinational Rabobank, he joined Northern Trust Corporation, an international, US-based financial services company, in 2014.

Based at its Canary Wharf offices in London, he was recently promoted from his role as an analyst, becoming an investment performance team leader. Krishan plans to remain with the firm for some time to come and is ambitious to rise further there. “Northern Trust is an excellent place to learn.”

He looks back on his School days with some fondness. “QE gave me a lot and provided a great foundation for my career. The two stand-out things I was involved with were the India Appeal [a charity which raises money for a school in India] and cricket: I was part of the School cricket teams from Year 7 all the way until I left, sacrificing all those Saturdays!”

Krishan still meets up with friends from QE. His spare time is also spent in going to the gym and he is a keen Arsenal fan. Food is a particular interest, and he enjoys visiting food markets as well as eating in restaurants.

In 2016, he returned to the School to give a talk at QE’s autumn Careers Convention, which is for Year 11 pupils and their parents. His session looked at finance, with a focus on investment banking. “The room was very full, so clearly a lot of boys at QE are keen to go into a career in finance,” he said. As well as discussing the different areas of a typical investment bank – front office, middle office and back office – he talked about how the culture varies both between firms and according to the type of job.

Looking at entry routes into finance, he highlighted the importance of work experience, summer internships and ‘spring weeks’ (short programmes run for first-year university students by all the leading investment banks in London during March and April). Krishan’s own CV reflects this: he spent two months with ADM Capital as a summer intern during 2011. There were now ways to get into finance straight from school, he pointed out, and he touched on the “dark world of networking”.

“The parents had some interesting questions, especially regarding the impact of Brexit on the finance industry. I replied that it won’t be as bad as most people are saying – London is a huge financial centre – but there may be some gentle impact.

“I started the same year as Mr Enright did, do it’s great to see him as Headmaster and to see that he has maintained the extremely high standards of the School whilst also overseeing phenomenal redevelopment there,” Krishan concluded.

Kamran Tajbakhsh has a new career and a new mission in life – helping young people to make their mark.

On graduating, he initially took up a post as a management consultant with a global company, but then, little more than a year after leaving Cambridge, Kamran (2004–2011) decided in June 2016 to become a performance coach and motivational speaker. It was, he says, a question of pursuing his passion. He is known professionally as Kam Taj.

As a coach, he works primarily with ambitious students and young professionals on performance improvement and goal attainment, with a strong focus on excellence in academic and professional aspects of life. He also speaks and runs training programmes at schools, universities and companies, where he aims to help people take control of their lives, overcome any limiting beliefs and “stride confidently towards attaining their goals”.

His ambition is to take the “empowering resources” of inspiring, globally recognised speakers, such as Tony Robbins, Deepak Chopra and Eric Thomas, and apply them to younger generations in a way that resonates with them.

“The growing influence of the internet and social media has shifted the mentality of younger generations significantly,” he says. “Whilst empowering, it can also be a cause of anxiety, low confidence and dissatisfaction if not approached with emotional maturity. My mission is to equip the younger generation with the tools they need to successfully navigate this challenge in order to grow as individuals and strive to create the future that they desire, honouring their potential to make a positive impact on their society.”

After gaining 13 A*s at GCSE and three A*s and an A in his A-levels (Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Further Mathematics), he won a place at Churchill College, Cambridge. He graduated with a first in Manufacturing Engineering and a Master’s degree with Merit in the same discipline. He then briefly worked as a management consultant, specialising in strategy and due diligence, with Roland Berger, a global consulting firm.

He gave a well-received talk at the 2016 QE Careers Convention for Year 11 boys and their parents. Entitled Making Choices, the talk focused on how careers do not have to be limited by the subjects studied in School or at university. “My key message to those indecisive about their future career was to keep as many doors open for themselves as possible by excelling in the academic system, so that when they have a vision for their career in the future, they're not limited by their academic foundations.”

Kam has happy memories of his time at QE, where he was an avid basketball and tennis player, captaining the School teams in both sports as a senior pupil. He went on to captain Cambridge University’s Lawn Tennis Club’s second team, as well as his college’s tennis club and basketball team. He is grateful to many teachers, including Assistant Head of Maths Wendy Fung for “tolerating my (persistently) impudent behaviour during those challenging years of Further Maths!”

Further information about Kam’s work is available at www.kamtaj.com

This has been a good term, punctuated in the middle by the significant event of our English department moving into the refurbished and extended Heard Building.

This building is especially important in the recent history of our School since, in the late 1990s, its construction was one of the very first capital projects to be funded through the Friends of Queen Elizabeth’s. It is named in honour of Luxton Robert ‘George’ Heard (OE 1927–1936). George, who died in 2009, was School Captain in his final year as a pupil. He later became QE’s Chairman of Governors, preceding the current Chairman, Barrie Martin, who took over in 1999.

Now, in the latest stage of our Estates Strategy, the Heard Building has been not merely repurposed but thoroughly modernised, structurally strengthened and upgraded, with a new link added to the adjacent Fern Building. The block provides self-contained accommodation for English, including eight classrooms and offices. It has been decorated with enlarged photographs of recent School drama productions. The project was completed on time and on budget. And once again, the work, with costs totalling more than £1m, has been entirely funded through FQE.

I am delighted at the success of this project and I would like to commence this letter by placing on record my gratitude to all the old boys and supporters of the School who have contributed. OE donations help us to deliver our Estates Strategy and are especially important in this era of challenging financial circumstances for schools in the state sector. Without such generosity, whether in the form of one-off gifts or in regular donations, our pupils and staff simply would not be enjoying the benefits afforded by these impressive new facilities. I invite any of our alumni who feel able to make a contribution, in any form, to the School, to contact me or my new Executive Assistant, Matthew Rose, a former School Captain here (OE 2002–2009). I would also welcome connection with any Old Elizabethans through my LinkedIn account.

Last summer’s very strong examination results have continued to reverberate at the School this term. January brought the publication of the annual Government league tables, which confirmed QE’s position in the foremost rank of all schools across both the independent and state sectors. QE was named the top boys’ school nationally for GCSE results, while at A-level, ranked in the tables by average point score per entry, we were the second-ranked state school in the country.

More recently, I was pleased to receive a letter from the Minister of State for School Standards, Nick Gibb, congratulating us on our “high standards…hard work and professionalism”. The letter concentrated on the School’s performance at GCSE against the Government’s new ‘Progress 8’ measure. Progress 8 measures the progress pupils make over eight key subjects, including English and Mathematics, between Key Stage 2 and the end of Key Stage 4. Queen Elizabeth’s School, Mr Gibb wrote, is among the top five per cent of schools nationally.

Following the recent Government announcement on the funding of new, selective free schools, I re-iterate my contention that it is essential that state-maintained education caters for the most able students and, furthermore, that the system enables social mobility. These are priorities that are absolutely core to our values at Queen Elizabeth’s School.

Our new School Development Plan, introduced this academic year, attaches considerable importance to providing challenge for all our very able pupils, so that they continue to make academic progress throughout their time at the School. The plan highlights the need for teachers to direct and inspire pupils to develop habits that will be useful to them in their learning. One of the habits I am especially keen for our boys to cultivate is that of asking questions. I have urged pupils not to be embarrassed but always to adopt an interrogative approach if they do not understand something: this is a sign of strength, not weakness. By persevering in asking good questions, boys will find they can readily eliminate any academic difficulties they face in the classroom.

But while that is valuable, the benefits of asking questions extend well beyond such a utilitarian outcome. Through our burgeoning lecture programme, we have recently welcomed several inspirational speakers to the School. One of the purposes of that programme is to give boys opportunities to ask questions of those who have great expertise and experience in fields that extend far outside our normal curriculum. We thus seek to nurture a culture of intellectual curiosity.

I was interested to read recently about what Google looks for in its new employees. Among the qualities it seeks is ‘high cognitive ability’ – those who are not only bright, but intellectually curious and able to learn. Google values role-related knowledge, but not deep specialisation in a narrow area: even when employing staff in a technical role, although the company assesses expertise in computer science thoroughly, it nonetheless prefers those with an extensive general understanding of computer science rather than a narrowly specialised knowledge of one field. The company has also coined a neologism – ‘Googleyness’ – to sum up a package of related qualities that it looks for when recruiting. These include enjoying fun, intellectual humility, conscientiousness, being comfortable with ambiguity (Google acknowledges that it does not know how the business will evolve) and evidence that applicants have taken some courageous or interesting paths in their lives.

The School’s own equivalent of Googleyness – ‘QE Qualities’, perhaps – would certainly include intellectual curiosity, alongside grit and resilience. Since QE is a selective school, our pupils are naturally endowed with intelligence. It gives them a valuable head start in life, but no more than that. In fact, a strong academic record on its own is recognised by employers as a poor predictor of performance. Employees who thrive eschew complacency and instead actively seek fresh challenges, embracing any failures as opportunities for growth.

As we adapt to a fast-changing world, it has been interesting to have had contact in recent months with three Old Elizabethans – Kam Taj, Jay Shetty and Aaron Tan – who are all, in their various ways, following unconventional career paths. Jay and Aaron feature in this newsletter, while Kam appeared in the Christmas edition. They and other OEs featured here are exemplars of those demonstrating a willingness to ask questions and then act courageously on the answers they receive.

I extend my best wishes to all our old boys for the Easter holiday.

Neil Enright

Lawyer Peter Petrou has been appointed to the board of trustees of the African Internship Academy, a social enterprise which aims to connect Africa’s leading employers with the continent’s young talent.

The appointment constitutes further recognition of Peter’s international legal expertise, which has been growing fast, especially since he launched his own firm, Aspen Morris, in 2012, when, at the age of 28, he became one of the UK’s youngest managing partners.

After leaving QE, Pani Peter Petrou (OE 1994–2000) took a first in Law at King’s College London and then gained a distinction on the BPP Law School’s Legal Practice Course in 2005–2006.

Peter began his legal career by working for two of the largest law firms in the world. Firstly, he joined US-based Dewey & LeBoeuf, working in its capital markets department, where he was involved in several multi-million and billion-dollar transactions for blue-chip clients.

In 2007, he moved to London-based Trowers & Hamlins, which is consistently ranked as one of the leading law firms for its work in the Middle East. During his time there, Peter worked with clients in Africa, Russia, India and the Middle East on corporate, real estate and project finance transactions, as well as in litigation.

Since its 2012 launch,  Aspen Morris Solicitors, a full-service firm with offices in Mayfair and Enfield has gained a substantial reputation for its work: it was named UK Law Firm of the Year for International Law at the Corporate LiveWire Global Awards in both 2016 and 2015 and was included in The European magazine’s New Europe FAST50 Companies 2015.

Peter has also enjoyed considerable personal success and has won a string of awards. He won Property Investor Africa’s 2014 award for Outstanding Contribution to Real Estate in Africa. He is Vice-President of the American International Commercial Arbitration Court, which contains some of the leading arbitrators from around the world. In 2014, he was appointed Global Legal Counsel to the World Leaders’ Forum in Dubai. He was named in the influential Global Law Expert Guide 2016.

Interviewed by Forbes magazine, he was described as having “formidable high level political and business contacts throughout Europe, the US, the Middle East and Africa and [is] seen as the go-to person when doing deals in Africa”.

Peter explained to the interviewer how he first became involved in doing business there after an intriguing meeting with a UAE-based real estate firm in 2007 during which he noticed that Africa was the focus of their five-year business plan. “This conversation interested me greatly as many of my clients’ business plans tended to centre around Europe, the Middle East, the Far East or the US. I sounded out my clients about investing in Africa and was initially met with surprising feedback that, despite Africa’s abundance of natural resources and opportunities, the continent was being overlooked by them.”

His interest was deepened further after a period of investigation, including several trips to the continent. “My substantial due diligence told me that I had stumbled across a hidden gem,” he said.

He then began promoting the idea of doing business in Africa to his clients, recognising that he would first have to change their perceptions. “It is important that companies and investors realise that Africa is not a continent to be feared but a continent where they can grow their business and make high returns.”

Peter remembers his time at QE with considerable fondness and gratitude: “I had a great time at QE. At the time, I found the School strict, however, looking back, I think it was perfect and that is why so many people have done so well; it gave me the drive and desire to achieve in life and work hard. I made some great friends who I still speak to today and a lot of what I have achieved to date is due to the education I received from QE Boys.”

He has two young daughters, Isabella and Sophia.