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Paresh Thakrar has embraced both risk and variety in the course of his fascinating and successful career.

Paresh left the School in 1993 with an eclectic collection of A-levels – Physics, Maths, Economics and Russian – but it gave him plenty of options for university. He chose to do Natural Sciences at Cambridge, enjoying the freedom to mix ‘hard’ subjects like physics with options such as zoology or history, and philosophy of science and psychology. “Churchill College was a great choice – out of town, tranquil and with the Cavendish Laboratories on the doorstep. QE had developed good links with the college over time, too.”

On graduating, he headed for the City, working at Deutsche Bank. “The mix of ‘quant’ skills and problem-solving rigour imparted through a Natural Sciences degree is a hugely valuable asset on a trading floor.” He spent five years as an emerging markets trader, trading everything from equity derivatives to foreign exchange, and thriving in the “pacey, meritocratic culture”. During an exciting time in the financial industry, he enjoyed opportunities to spend time in South Africa and Eastern Europe.

Deciding it was time for a new challenge, he then served in various roles at the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office from 2001–2008. “Following a gruelling training programme, I came in after the 9/11 turmoil.” His financial background proved valuable in trying to unravel and understand the new world that emerged after the terrorist attacks in the US. “It gave me a fascinating insight into a fast-paced area of government and a huge amount of autonomy in a career where you could find yourself chasing down leads in the Far East one week and the Middle East the next. I never dreamt I would be posted in Nairobi, doing “j-turns” in a Ford Focus on an abandoned airfield, or jumping out of a helicopter into the English Channel. Whatever your best-laid career plans, sometimes it's just best to follow what you find fun.”

Finding the travel demands of diplomatic life at odds with being a good parent after the birth of his first child, Paresh went back to studying and in 2008–10 he took an MBA at London Business School, looking to move back into the private sector.

After an enjoyable two years, he took a role at management consultants McKinsey, “working with some of the smartest and most inspiring of colleagues”. The highlights included “pulling my first all-nighter at the ripe age of 35” and working for financial institutions after the international financial crisis alongside some of the most senior leaders at the big banks. “The lessons I learnt were to never be afraid to network and reach out to mentors and colleagues, who can often be the source of the most unexpected opportunities – and always to look for ways to reinvent yourself.”

In 2013, he was appointed Chief Operating Officer at FTSE250 insurance company Hiscox. “I was attracted to the small, rewarding and entrepreneurial culture with a distinctive market positioning and a hugely ambitious management team I wanted to work with.” Paresh’s areas of responsibility include strategy, IT and operations for the reinsurance business.

A keen advocate of ‘portfolio careers’ – “more interesting and more fun” – OE Paresh believes one of the key lessons is that it is important to continue to learn and renew yourself throughout your career. “There is no substitute for ‘experiential learning’, taking risks in your career choices and following your interests, so long as you can demonstrate some consistent thought around your decisions.”

“As careers have become so specialised in every field of work from law to medicine to finance, there is more need than ever for people who can bring together the various threads into a coherent strategy,” he adds.

Paresh still lives in Hertfordshire; he is married and has three boys.

With the launch of his own company, Antony Pink has realised a long-standing ambition to become an entrepreneur.

Antony (OE 2000-2007) was a keen rugby-player during his time at School, when he was known as Kishan. He later began to use his middle name Antony and went on to study Business Management at Nottingham University, where he developed a fascination with business, which has been a constant theme in his life.

“While at Nottingham I was involved in business start-up societies and it was always in my mind that one day I would like to launch a business of my own.”

After university, Antony joined multinational management consultancy Accenture as a consultant, aligned to Accenture’s IT Strategy practice and working predominantly within the financial services sector and in communications and media sectors.

Nearly four years later, in 2014, he took the decision to leave a secure job and instead launch a mobile start-up company, Laundrapp, with two business partners. They have raised £1.5million of seed funding from well-known investors Rupert Hambro (former Chairman of Hambros Bank) and Dominic Perks.

Laundrapp offers customers a door-to-door laundry and dry-cleaning collection and delivery service, initially operating in London and five other UK cities.

One of Laundrapp’s strategies was to advertise heavily and to invest in PR. A six-figure marketing investment resulted in TV and radio commercials, online and outdoor advertising, and posters on the Underground (in stations and in trains). Features in the Daily Telegraph, Guardian and Daily Mail, as well as articles in the specialist business and technology press, have also formed part of the marketing mix.

Laundrapp is available on iOS (iPhone/iPad) and Android.

Business consultant Andrew Kramer is dedicated to using his abilities to help young people develop their own skills.

Andrew (OE 2001-2008) is always looking for opportunities to work with clients focusing on education and young people.

After reading History at Jesus College, Oxford, Andrew worked as an English teacher and lecturer for ten months at Hengshui University in China. He also completed a short placement as a Communications Manager at Thirst, a water-sustainability NGO in Beijing.

In 2013 he moved to Berlin where he worked at a technology start-up and developed a free e-learning app for Android phones called Unlock Your Brain. “We put puzzles on the lockscreen so every time the user unlocked the phone they trained their brain.”

That same year he joined global business consultancy McKinsey & Company in London, where he works today. “I have served a real mix of private, public and social sector clients. I have tended to focus on clients in the City, in Whitehall, or those with a focus on education and young people, reflecting my interest in building young people's skills.”

Other work for McKinsey has included an assignment in Trinidad & Tobago, where he worked with a client in oil and gas, and enjoyed “exploring the beauty of the Caribbean”.

He renewed his contact with the School in 2015 after being impressed at the calibre of a QE Year 13 pupil (Bilal Hussain) whom he met at the McKinsey Leadership Academy. The Academy offers a two-day residential workshop for Sixth-Formers in the first year, followed by another the next year, with an opportunity to enter a competition for a leadership award.

“I was thrilled not only to hear about how QE continues to thrive, but also because of a wonderful conversation I had with Bilal about what leadership means; we took the opportunity to compare notes on our respective ambitions for the future.”

This term, we have again enjoyed the privilege of welcoming a varied list of guests to the School, all bringing their particular expertise to enrich our boys’ education.

To name but a few, Dr Elizabeth Glennon, from King’s College London, provided our Year 13 biologists with hands-on experience of genetically modifying bacteria, while senior boys also benefited from a visit by two 2012 leavers, Jonathan Fiber and Oli Palmer, who spoke on how to get the most out of life at university. Jonathan and Oli have just graduated from Warwick with first-class degrees. Five Old Elizabethans spoke to Year 11 students and their parents at our information evening for those interested in making an application to Oxford or Cambridge in due course. And at the lower end of the School, Year 8 boys were given an insight into the implications of a lack of clean water in the developing world in a visit from international charity WaterAid.

In addition to a busy term here at the School site, our pupils’ education has been enriched by a wealth of trips to locations elsewhere. These included the visit by a large Year 9 party to Kew Gardens on a cross-curricular trip organised jointly by the Mathematics and Biology departments. There have been successful visits to Sicily and Germany, while our sportsmen have put in good performances at cricket and athletics fixtures.

As well as welcoming Old Elizabethans back to the School, I have been delighted to see so many parents in attendance this term at events such as parents’ evenings, the Artist’s Palette Concert, Junior Awards and summer sports fixtures. Not only is parental support important in enhancing such occasions and thus in strengthening the life of the School, but research indicates that it is also a factor in the success of a child’s education. Instances of a successful partnership between home and School include financial giving from parents. Having launched our Amazon wishlists scheme to provide books for The Queen’s Library among the alumni a few months ago, I have been pleased to see that its extension to include parents has proved successful. The FQE Fête on Founder’s Day is of course the example par excellence of parental engagement at QE. By getting involved, both parents and Old Elizabethans are tapping into the history of the School, which is exemplified on the day by the morning church service, the procession, and the Reading of the School Roll and Chronicle. We are proud to celebrate such traditions. Our guest speaker at the service, Andrew Kramer (OE 2001-2008), alluded to their importance, reminding boys that in processing from church to School they were following a 442-year-old pattern.

While the past is important, we must look to the future, too. Next year will be the final year of our 2012-2016 School Development Plan, so we will be consulting with parents, pupils and staff to formulate our 2016-2020 plan. In evaluating the fulfilment of the current plan, there is much to celebrate. We have seen further enhancements to the classroom experience, our pastoral system has also been substantially revised and there have been curriculum changes, most notably in Languages. German is now introduced from Year 7, there are at least three years of Latin for all boys in the School and there has been a strong uptake for our new Latin GCSE course beginning in September 2015. Aspiring classicists will also be able to benefit from the introduction of Ancient Greek from September as a club for younger boys and as more formal lessons for older pupils, hopefully building towards an AS-level qualification in the years to come.

Our School is rightly known for success in public examinations, but it should never be thought that that is our sole focus: those revised pastoral arrangements are planned very specifically to nurture the development of good character. ‘Character education’ is a topic that is currently enjoying a vogue in educational circles, but at QE it is neither a superficial fad nor a recent innovation; it has long been embedded into all that we do, including academic studies and in the provision of worthwhile extra-curricular activities.

I wish all our alumni an enjoyable summer.

Neil Enright

Barrister Peter Morcos (OE 1999-2006) was the Guest of Honour at this month’s Queen Elizabeth’s School Junior Awards Ceremony.

Called to the Bar by Inner Temple in 2012, Peter began his legal career fresh from winning a string of awards during his higher education, which took him to the University of Pennsylvania, Lincoln College, Oxford, and London’s BPP College of Law.

He left QE to take up his place at Oxford, in 2006, having gained straight A grades in A-levels in Chemistry, English Literature, French and Mathematics.

In his speech at Junior Awards, Peter, who now lives in Holloway, related one particularly vivid memory of his own time in Year 9 to prize-winners, who were from Years 7–9.

“It was a cold February afternoon. The Year 9 QE Rugby C Team, for which I played centre, was lining up for an away game against Merchant Taylor’s.

“All 15 of us were bright young men, I like to think. Which is why it took us approximately five seconds to realise we were shorter, smaller and scrawnier than the other side. Still, we battled gamely for the opening 20 minutes, keeping the score at 0-0. Finally, however, our staunch defence was breached and the other side scored a try.

“Our captain, Simon, …gave a rousing speech; real blood and thunder stuff. Each and every one of us thought the same thing, I think: ‘We may be the underdogs here, but we can turn this around’. We lined up underneath the posts, scraped and muddy, but ready to bellow our defiance. The conversion came in, and our eyes lit up. It was going just low, and our comeback was set to start.

“Alas, Simon had already leapt to intercept the conversion. He stretched out, pushing the ball with his fingertips. And in so doing he managed to alter the ball’s trajectory; a ball that would have missed by centimetres instead tipped inches over. The conversion was good, and our resistance was broken. We were walloped 37-0.”

And the moral he drew from this “embarrassing defeat” for the benefit of the prize-winners? “True failure only comes once you admit defeat. Until that time, you are still in the game and with enough hard work success is still possible.”

His second piece of advice for the boys was: “When you decide to do something, do it with energy. Do not do it half-heartedly or begrudgingly. Do it happily; do it with ambition.”

During the ceremony, Peter presented more than 100 prizes to the boys, covering not only academic subjects, but also house awards, prizes for commitment and a number of endowed prizes and special awards.

Peter is no stranger to receiving awards himself: over the past six years alone, he has won six, beginning with a Lincoln College award in 2009 for his performance in Finals in his Jurisprudence degree. As an undergraduate there, he was Junior Common Room President and also an Academic Disciplinary Committee Representative.

He was back at the college from 2010–2011 and gained a similar award for his performance on his BCL graduate law course. He then won the Oxford Pro Bono Publico Scholarship to fund his work as a caseworker at the AIRE Centre (Advice on Individual Rights in Europe), a charity where he worked for a few months at the end of 2009 and then again in the summer of 2011.

In the same year, he was awarded an Exhibition by Inner Temple to study the Bar Professional Training Course, which he completed at the BPP College of Law, being graded outstanding. While he studied for an LLM Master of Laws degree in Pennsylvania, in which he graduated with distinction, Peter was awarded both the Withers LLP Scholarship and the Dean’s Scholarship by the university’s Law School.

He now works as a barrister at New Square Chambers in London, with a practice specialising in commercial and public law. Recent cases have included appearing as junior counsel for a Jordanian company in relation to an $80m dispute concerning the construction of a power station in Iraq and as part of a counsel team in a multi-million pound public procurement arbitration relating to a UK defence project. He was also sole counsel successfully representing a Member of Parliament in a civil claim arising out of the discharge of her official duties.

Other high-flying legal alumni who have left the School since the start of the new millennium include Peter’s contemporary, Daniel Isenberg (1999-2006) who went up to Pembroke College, Cambridge, in 2007 and took a double first in History, following in the footsteps of barrister Tom Cleaver, who was at Cambridge from 2004 to 2007 and took a starred first, also in History.

Old Elizabethan Lewis Crabtree has begun a new career, got married and called in at his alma mater as part of a team of visiting experts – all in the space of a year.

Lewis (1996–2003) retrained in 2013-2014 as an acoustic engineer, having previously worked in accountancy. He then took up a job in the field in October 2014.

He came to QE in June as a designated STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) Ambassador. Also last month, he married Winnie in a small family ceremony in Wandsworth, London.

After leaving the School in 2003, Lewis went to Edinburgh University to study Physics with Music (which, as it happens, is a perfect fit with his new career).

Following graduation, he worked for five years at KPMG’s London office, where he was a Business Intelligence Consultant. He next worked for Ernst & Young, another of the ‘Big Four’ accountancy firms, for two years.

Having decided on his career switch, he studied for a one-year diploma in his spare time with the Institute of Acoustics and then he began his current job with building services engineers, Max Fordham. The firm’s work encompasses everything that impacts on the internal environment of a building and its performance, thus including acoustics, as well as fields such as sustainability and the physics of buildings.

Lewis’s role revolves around the enhancement of sound quality inside buildings, noise and vibration control and environmental noise modelling. He is brought on board projects at an early stage and becomes part of the design team, working with the architect and other engineers and designers. They take a whole-building approach and have an emphasis on sustainability. He has worked in private and public spaces, such as galleries, museums, theatres, cinemas and schools.

Max Fordham encourages its employees to engage in outreach work, hence Lewis’ involvement with STEM. He came to the School under the auspices of the STEM Network, which was established to encourage pupils to consider a future in technical fields.

During his visit, he took Year 8 boys through the complexities of designing and building schools and concert halls. This linked to part of the curriculum they had recently been studying; Lewis pronounced himself impressed with their background knowledge of sound.