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James Slessor is a world expert in public safety who leads teams that help police, law enforcement, justice and national security departments become more efficient and respond effectively to ever-more complex challenges.

James was at QE from 1988 to 1995 and says his time as a pupil – and especially 1994, when he was School Captain – proved to be a good foundation, giving him leadership, organisational and public-speaking skills that he still uses in his job today.

He went from QE to read Geography at Bristol, from where he graduated with a First in 1998. After spending some time travelling through Africa, he went on to join Accenture (then still known as Andersen Consulting), where he has built a career in the firm’s Government practice. He has now been with Accenture for more than 20 years.

He has worked extensively across the UK criminal justice system with organisations including the Metropolitan Police Service, West Midlands Police, the Home Office and Ministry of Justice. Today, he supports a number of Accenture’s public safety engagements across the US, Europe, South Africa and Asia Pacific.

He continues to be based in London and now as a Managing Director, James leads Accenture’s Global Public Safety practice. This covers Accenture’s work in policing, law enforcement, justice and national security, and draws together the latest international insight to build new strategies, operating models, processes and technology solutions, and helps to drive innovation for public safety agencies.

“Overall, I help these organisations enhance operational performance, increase efficiency and deliver improved outcomes to the public. I have worked across strategic consulting engagements such as efficiency and effectiveness reviews, workforce transformations and system requirements analysis, through to stakeholder and programme management on large-scale transformational programmes.

“This is a unique and fascinating role – where I get to both look at the common challenges public safety agencies face (pace of change, new types of threat risk and harm, increasing citizen expectations and increased levels of digitisation), but also have an understanding of local and cultural differences.”

He helps local teams develop solutions which take both these common challenges and differences into account. Increasingly, the threats which public safety agencies have to deal with are global in nature, and almost all crime now has a digital component, he says, so Accenture’s clients are having to evolve to meet this and to become increasingly proactive.

“For example, at the moment I am very focused on balancing the need to help public safety agencies make the most of new technologies and innovations to keep up with, and ideally stay ahead of, the threat, but at the same time making sure that public privacy is respected and public trust and confidence in public safety remains high. I find that when you operate in a global role, it generally requires considerable levels of empathy and understanding so that these commonalities and differences are understood.

“I also think this is a skill I started to develop at QE in general – and especially during my time a School Captain – where the art of understanding others and developing the power of persuasion were critical.”

James adds that his schooldays have brought him benefits in other ways, too. One example is that those years equipped him for his work leading teams made up of a diverse range of people tackling an equally diverse range of objectives.

“The opportunities which I was lucky to have at QE, for example being in the CCF, have all helped  and allowed me to develop these skills.”

“I am often asked to speak at conferences and industry meetings – and continue to feel that the many opportunities QE afforded me to develop my public-speaking and debating skills have assisted me with this – and I still use many of the tricks and techniques I learnt back at school.”

James has written extensively in leading industry publications on a range of policing topics, including the use of social media, police information management, analytics and digital disruption. “The development of thought leadership, looking to the future and what this might mean for public safety is a large part of my role,” he adds.

“I am married to Nikki, and whilst I am lucky to travel quite lot with work, I also enjoy travelling in general and have driven across India in a Tuk-Tuk and climbed a volcano in Sumatra. However, that has reduced in the last couple of years as I now have a young daughter – which I think, as every parent will know, means quite literally every day is a learning day and generally you don’t get it right first time round!”

Visesh Gosrani’s career has taken him from the City of London to the tech hubs of Shoreditch, then across the Atlantic to Silicon Valley, before bringing him back full-circle to the City.

Through all these changes of location, there is one common thread around which he has built his career: insurance. “Whilst most people regard this facet of life as nothing more than an administrative pain, insurance has provided me with a passion where I continuously find a new challenge to keep me on my toes,” he says.

Having started out in mainstream insurance, Visesh (OE 1995-1997), who lives in north London, is now focused on the more rarefied area of cyber risk.

Visesh’s family were moving to London as he started his Sixth Form years, and his previous headmaster recommended he apply to QE. Having been accepted, he set about his School career in Barnet with vigour.

In fact, with rather too much vigour, on occasion. He recalls Mr Davis, Head of Chemistry at the time, being unimpressed with the “high jinks” of him and his classmates in creating some explosive mixtures during lessons – “he seemed to think that was distinctly passé”. They had to redo that section of their coursework over the half-term holiday.

Another initiative Visesh was involved in was the creation of a Sixth Form tuck shop. He and a small band of others were entrusted with taking a disused space and hawking wares that, he says, might be frowned upon in today’s society – “not a piece of fruit to be seen and constantly reordering pickled onion Monster Munch”.

The team raised in excess of £1,000 for School funds in the first term, securing the future for this Sixth Form perk. In fact, term after term they managed to increase their fundraising successes, with Visesh enjoying playing suppliers off against each other, as he drove costs down. He even managed to bring some product promotions to the tuckshop.

After A-levels, Visesh studied Business Mathematics and Statistics at the London School of Economics and then pursued a career as an actuary, starting with PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2000.

While it was his love of Mathematics that pushed him in the general direction of actuarial science, it was the Old Elizabethan network which provided him with his first actual taste of such a career, when he spent a week shadowing an OE who had qualified as a Life Actuary and was working for Canada Life. As Visesh saw the importance of the actuary’s role in meetings – from those focused on marketing to those that examined the company’s financial strength or dealt with a complex fraudulent claim – he quickly came to appreciate the impact that an actuary could have across an entire organisation.

After ten years in consulting, he was offered the opportunity to be part of the turn-around of a mortgage insurer, Genworth Financial, at the height of the 2007–2008 financial crisis.

It was, says Visesh, a huge growth experience for him, as the deeper his team dug into the issues the organisation had, the more he found: he realised ignorance can sometimes be bliss. However, the additional intelligence his team found cleared the way for the organisation to be able to negotiate commercial deals to settle its liabilities.

The firm was continually restructuring during this period and, in what was an unsettling environment for most of the staff, Visesh found fresh opportunity as he was seen as a safe pair of hands to take on responsibilities in areas where restructuring had left no leader. Through this, he realised that he was more inclined to a wider risk-management career, and when there was no further opportunity to grow within Genworth, he took the role of Deputy Chief Risk Officer at a Lloyds of London managing agency, being promoted to Chief Risk Officer a year later.

It was then that he seized the opportunity to set up independently. A chance conversation with an old university friend prompted them to join forces and set up an ‘insurtech’ – industry slang for an entity that uses insurance and technology to solve an insurance problem. The insurtech attempted to find a solution to an issue with which insurers had been wrestling – the difficulty in finding good insurance risks for home insurance.

“In a nutshell, we developed a method to identify people’s true potential for risk. In plain English, what this meant was that the method could differentiate between two similar people, one of whom might just pull the door shut behind them when they leave the house, while the other would deadlock the door and double-check it.”

Early on, this development interested a Silicon Valley entrepreneur to whom Visesh was introduced by a friend. He mentored Visesh and his fellow co-founder and then offered them the opportunity to apply their method to the growing corporate cyber risk insurance market.

This turn in Visesh’s career also led to one of his career highlights. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development were recognising the huge potential impact of cyber risk, and Visesh was asked to be a speaker on the challenges impeding the development of the cyber insurance market at a specially convened OECD conference in 2018. The event gave him greater insight into the governmental mindset around this risk.

Another highlight has been his election as Chair of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries Cyber Risk Working Party –  “a research effort focused on understanding the impact of cyber risk on insurance and on the other industries actuaries are involved in.”

Recently, he says, “it has become clearer that the culture and competence elements that are so important to cyber risk are also important to other facets of insurance and that it is possible to utilise these. I have refocused my specialist area to be more about culture, competence and its impact on insurance.” A three-year-old cyber risk-modelling start-up firm has just appointed him to its advisory board.

When Visesh reflects on his career to date, he credits QE with laying two significant foundations: “Firstly, you are the average of those people you spend your time with. Needless to say, the calibre of the boys at QE is exceptional and that naturally spurred many to a higher level than they might otherwise have aimed for. Secondly, there is the wealth of opportunities – QE offered an incredibly varied range of ways in which to participate in School life. This participation was not limited to the few, either: almost everyone took part in some form.”

“When thinking of the advice I would give my younger self or any other QE boy setting out on his career, it is to find a subject and a vocation that you are passionate about. When you enjoy your area, it comes through in your willingness to work hard at it and speak about it to others. Given you spend more of your waking life on your career than anything else, it is important that you love what you do and, even if it feels like a U-turn or change might mean you’ve wasted some of your history, it is better than setting sail for a lifetime of drudgery!”

The OE whom he shadowed at Canada Life is not the only way in which the QE experience has had an impact on the rest of his life: he met, Nishma, the girl who would later become his wife, through QE friends.

Visesh and his wife have been listed in the Asian Power 100 List for the last three years. She juggles her demanding consulting career with her drive to ensure equitable treatment for all. This has entailed opening doors for minorities in financial services, the performing arts and other sectors, and also improving transparency through her efforts to realise gender pay gap reporting. Nishma Gosrani was awarded an OBE in the 2020 New Year’s Honours list.

“I also credit my three-year-old son with keeping me grounded with his typical black-and-white views on the actions of his daddy – and for demonstrating how some of the simplest things in life can bring such great pleasure.”

Daniel Cobban, an aficionado of the gothic genre, has had a horror novel published, based on a ghostly tale from Lancashire folklore.

The 251-page book, The Curse of Peg O’Nell: or The Demon of the Well, has already been attracting five-star reviews online.

According to the local legends, Peg O’Nell was a servant who worked at Waddow Hall, home of the prominent Starkie family, in the 1800s. A spirited girl, she often argued with her mistress. On one occasion, her mistress sent her to fetch water and added that she hoped Peg broke her neck. Some time later, on an icy night, this wish came true, with Peg falling into the nearby Ribble.

After that, not only did the Starkies suffer hard times, with many believing it was Peg’s curse on the family, but other ghostly stories also entered local folklore.

Daniel (OE 1994–2001), who currently lives in Clitheroe, Lancashire, said: “Peg O’Nell is perhaps the most talked-about and iconic piece of folklore in the county. She is a mysterious water spirit who dwells in the River Ribble and, although usually dormant, is said to return every seven years, demanding her septennial sacrifice – animal or human, she doesn’t mind – but either way, no one is guaranteed any safety on Peg’s night.”

“I’m a big fan of the Victoriana and gothic genres of literature, and I couldn’t resist fleshing out a full gothic/folk story about Peg O’Nell,” said Daniel, who wrote under the pen name, Daniel Nicholas Cobban and was published by Scottish house, Beul Athris Publishing, who specialise in folklore, among other genres. “It took a lot of research and patience!”

Looking back at his school days, Daniel especially remembers his A-level English classes with great fondness. “Mr [Eric] Houston and Miss [Victoria] Maule were both amazing at helping us get to grips with challenging texts such as Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.

“Also, as a writer, I deeply appreciated the fact that the School encouraged creative writing: I remember participating in a creative writing competition in Year 8 (or the second year, we called it back then!) and I achieved the runner-up position.”

After QE, Daniel studied English and film at Glasgow University. He qualified as a TEFL teacher and spent some time teaching English to elementary school children in Mexico a few years ago.

“I’m currently a supervisor at a restaurant in my home town Clitheroe, and the flexibility of the hours helps me to continue embracing my passion for writing.”

Having experienced the highs and lows of life as an élite rower, paralympian Tom Aggar is now revelling in his new career as a teacher.

Tom (OE 1995-2002), who until he retired was the longest-serving member of the GB Para-rowing squad, won the gold medal in the Arms-Shoulders Men’s Single Scull at the Beijing Paralympics in 2008, and was crowned World Champion in the same discipline in 2007, 2009, 2010 and 2011. He bowed out of rowing while still competing at the highest level, having taken bronze at the Paralympics in Rio in 2016.

He is now teaching full-time at Claires Court Senior Boys, an independent day school in Maidenhead, and has heard during lockdown that, following his successful final submissions under the teacher-training process, he is now fully qualified as a teacher.

“After retiring from competitive rowing, I worked for a pharmaceutical firm for a short time, before taking the plunge and training as a teacher,” he says. “I had always thought about teaching, but for one reason or another had talked myself out of it. I should have trusted my instincts as I have thoroughly enjoyed my time teaching so far.”

Tom who read Bio Sciences at Warwick University, teaches Chemistry and Biology.

“It’s a fairly small school (by QE standards) of around 450 boys, but very sporty and a really great environment to work in. It’s funny now, as a teacher, how many of the QE standards I find myself holding the boys to here!”

Tom was an accomplished sportsman at QE and has fond memories of his time as a pupil. “I played rugby for so many years with a great group of friends; I really enjoyed my studies, particularly into the Sixth Form. I also had the opportunity to represent the School at so many sports throughout my time there.”

Tom was injured in a non-sports related accident in 2005 and took up rowing as part of his rehabilitation programme. “[Former Headmaster] John Marincowitz and the whole School were so very supportive of me after my injury and it has been great to still keep in touch with QE,” he says.

When Tom stepped down from competitive rowing, he took a break from sport and all the training for a while. But now he tries to keep fit and trains before work most mornings. “I guess old habits are hard to break, and although I don’t miss the pressure that came with being on the team and competing, I still enjoy keeping active.”

Tom is married to Vicki and they have three children, two boys and a girl. He enjoys spending his spare time with them, going for walks and swimming.

“Both the boys have started playing rugby now at Maidenhead in the U7 and U6s, so most of my Sunday mornings are spent on the side of a rugby pitch now!”

Fired up by his own struggles in getting into Law, Izzet Hassan, who now works at one of the five so-called Magic Circle City firms, has set up his own online network to advise others seeking to follow in his footsteps.

While at QE, Izzet (OE 2005-2012) was captain of the tennis team and a noted rugby player. He then read Law at Warwick before going on to take a Master’s degree in Philosophy at Cambridge.

After working at various law firms as a paralegal and in their vacation schemes, Izzet won a training contract with Slaughter and May, where he started in September 2018.

Today, as well as his job as a Future Trainee Solicitor, he runs the Aspiring Commercial Lawyers Network (ACLN), which he set up on Facebook during the autumn of 2019.

“ACLN is a platform designed to help students, graduates and aspiring lawyers break into the legal profession,” he says. “As the first member of my family to go to university, I had to learn the hard way how difficult it is to secure an entry-level position in the field of commercial law.

“My aim is to use the knowledge I have accumulated over the years to help others break into this field.”

The group has expanded rapidly and in its first four months topped 1,000 members.

Izzet is also becoming very well-known on LinkedIn, dispensing nuggets of both general life advice based on his own experience as well as specific guidance for those aiming for a top career in Law.

Writing in February, Izzet said: “My exposure on LinkedIn has grown exponentially over the last two months. Following a few viral posts which have been viewed by almost half a million people, I have become very active in the legal sphere.

“I believe that LinkedIn, as a social media platform, offers an organic reach that is second only to Twitter.

“This, combined with its academic/professional exposure, allows me to advise aspiring lawyers and chime into legal discussions on a much larger scale than would be possible otherwise.”

Here is one recent example of his posts:

• “I am delighted to announce that I have passed my Stage 1 LPC exams.

The LPC happened to coincide with a very difficult time in my life; at times, it felt as though I was being attacked from every possible angle.

When you’re experiencing adversity, sometimes it is very difficult to see beyond the pain you are suffering.

During times like these, I often think about my greatest fears in life and draw strength from the fact that no matter how bad things may seem, they are still nothing compared to what I fear most.

I don’t believe that life gets any easier; I believe we just become stronger and more resilient over time.

How do you deal with adversity?”

Izzet also pays tribute to the support he received from the specialists at Rare Recruitment, billed on their own website as ‘leaders in diversity graduate recruitment’.

“Rare Recruitment were a great resource for me when I was applying,” he says. “The organisation aims to help aspiring lawyers from less privileged backgrounds break into the legal sphere. I benefited greatly from their support, application reviews and mock interviews.”

Having had a long-term interest in investing, Izzet has developed expertise in property and in CFD (Contract for Difference) trading.

“CFD trading is a relatively new form of derivatives trading which allows investors to speculate on the price of the underlying assets. For example, trading gold has historically been very expensive, however, trading CFD gold contracts allows investors to speculate on the price of the underlying gold assets, without actually having to buy the gold itself.

“I am currently developing an algorithm which will allow me to automate the trading process so that I can trade ‘passively’.

“In terms of property, I am very early in my investing career and have spent a lot of time educating myself on various models, particularly the ‘serviced accommodation’ model. By attending regular networking events, I have formed connections with a number of investors and other property investors which I believe will facilitate my progress.”

Izzet visited the School in 2018, along with his QE contemporary, Suraj Sangani, to speak to boys in Years 11-13 as part of the Senior Lecture Programme about how to pursue a career in Law.

Izzet was scheduled to be the guest speaker at the 55th Annual Elizabethan Union Dinner Debate, which had to be called off because of the pandemic.

Simon Dyton went on to become a School Captain under Eamonn Harris and then to gain a Double First and a PhD studying English and History at Cambridge – but his first encounter with QE’s then-Headmaster was far from auspicious.

“He largely ignored me and spoke to my parents,” says Simon (OE 1997–1994; School Captain 1993). “My father said, ‘Why don’t you talk to Simon?’ Mr Harris said to him sternly: ‘I can fix a naughty boy, but I cannot fix a naughty parent.’”

Later, however, Simon learned lessons both from Mr Harris and from other QE teachers that have stood him in good stead for his current role as an English teacher in the Upper School at the Marymount School of New York, a nursery-to-high school for girls on Fifth Avenue.

“The students at Marymount recently voted to have me speak to my school’s National Honor Society and share some scholarly advice. I was immediately reminded of a lesson I learned from Eamonn Harris. He once told me that the most important thing in life was ‘kissing the plan’, by which he meant that ‘doing a little bit’ every day was the best way to get a job done. That has stuck with me.

“I never thought that I’d be using my experiences of English lessons at QE to design my own classes, but the experiences of being taught by Mr [Eric] Houston and Mr [David] Jones proved very useful.

“Mr Cossey was also a fantastic example of passionate teaching. His furious roaring (and slamming of desks) over Harold II’s anger at William the Conqueror stayed with me for years. I love sharing my enthusiasm for storytelling and my enjoyment of language and literature with my students.”

“I remember Mr Houston making a boy stand against a wall in the Science block for ‘not behaving like a good chap’. This is when I started to sense that the school was being hoisted up by its socks into a new kind of institution. I loved the school trips to Moscow and St. Petersburg with Mr [Tom] Guthrie. I met my first Russian gangsters, held my first handgun, and — in a more trusting age of air travel — sat in the cockpit and lowered the landing-gear when we landed back in England.

“I loved being School Captain: organising Founder’s Day was a fantastic challenge.”

After A-levels, Simon took up a place at Gonville and Caius College. “When I went up to Cambridge, my main model for life at university was The Young Ones television show. I had been looking forward to learning alongside girls for the first time, but Caius didn’t admit any female students to read English that year, so I was stuck with more boys. I played rugby and rowed.”

Following his graduation, he stayed on at Caius for an MPhil and a PhD. “My doctorate involved exploring representations of early modern religious radicalism and grew out of a love of John Milton, whose Paradise Lost I first read in A-level English with Mr Houston.”

In those post-graduate years, he recalls enjoying lunch and drinks with Eamonn Harris in The Eagle, the 17th-century Cambridge pub where, in 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick famously first spoke of their discovery of the structure of DNA. “He was excellent company and was really enjoying retirement.”

Simon served as the MCR [Middle Combination Room] President and introduced graduate seminars that continued, in one shape or another, for years. “I loved my time at Gonville and Caius College. I made some excellent friends, and friendships have been the source of memories that I value the most.

“As a graduate student, I really enjoyed teaching undergraduates, but I loved working with teenagers on summer schools—first on a Cambridge University outreach scheme and then for a New York-based company that operated academic summer schools all over Europe. After several years, I visited New York to work for that company on a short-term work visa, which ultimately turned into a Green Card, by which time I was running summer schools and hiring teachers from all over the world to teach everything from Anthropology to Zoology—mostly in Oxford and Cambridge.

“Eventually, I decided that I wanted to teach full-time, so I looked into teaching and joined the Marymount School here in New York. I’ve had no real masterplan or strategy behind my career path. I’ve always enjoyed studying, writing, coaching, and teaching. I am a long-time believer in reading widely, thinking broadly, and finding the happiness in life. I’ve pursued a career that I enjoy and that I find satisfying.”

Among the many highlights of this career, he recalls one recent, somewhat “terrifying”, example: “The students voted for me to take half-court shots during the high school’s Spirit Week pep rally. (Spirit Week, by the way, is a week of morale-boosting activities designed to help the students through the post-Christmas gloom.) I think it was Mr [David] Maughan and Mr Clarke who coached basketball, but nothing prepared me for hundreds of students chanting, ‘Dr. D, Dr. D!'”

Another highlight of his life stateside recurs daily as he savours his walk home each day across Central Park.

“When I arrived in New York, I was told that it was a great place to spend some of my 20s (I was 28) and all of my money, but—now that I’m in my 40s—I’ve found a happy place on the Upper West Side with my wife, Meredith, and dog. I feel very fortunate that I can live and teach in a city that’s incredibly diverse. I recall that I did a project on Kyrgyzstan for Mr Guthrie in A-level Russian, but it’s only in New York that I finally met a Kyrgyz horseman, who was stunt-riding for the circus. You never know who you’ll meet, and everyone has an interesting story.”

He is now a US citizen. “My wife and I spend our vacations in the deserts of southern Utah, on the beaches of the Virginia coast, and in the forests of upstate New York. I appreciate hard work, good fortune, personal wellness, and physical fitness.”