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2016 leaver Sahil Handa has been reflecting on a packed first year at Harvard that has seen him embrace activities ranging from drama and dance to journalism and entrepreneurship.

The former School Vice-Captain, pictured above right with friends at the Harvard vs. Yale football match, decided to pursue a Liberal Arts degree at Harvard after being offered places at three Ivy League colleges. Sahil (OE 2009-2016) took up his place last September following a gap year.

“It has been an incredible year at Harvard and I am the happiest that I can ever remember being,” he says. “The university offered me more opportunities than I could ever have imagined; the people I met, the classes I took, and the adventures I enjoyed have made me extremely thankful for the chance to study in Boston.”

At School, Sahil was elected a drama director and also ran the QE dance club for four years. He has built significantly on this QE experience at Harvard: “I was the lead male actor in a play called JOGGING, which was performed eight times at the American Repertory Theatre and directed by professional director Melissa Nussbaum. The play is set in Beirut, deals with themes of religious violence, feminism, and motherhood, and involved me playing six different men at different stages of life. It was definitely the most intense (and rewarding) theatrical experience I’ve had so far; luckily, my mum was able to visit and watch!”

Sahil was a dancer and model for the Eleganza Fashion Show – a large charity event held in Harvard’s ice rink, which “involved lots of dancing, strutting and attitude!” – and was the Bollywood choreographer for Ghungroo, a South Asian cultural show, for which he created and taught a routine to 30 students who had never danced before.

His writing skills have rapidly attracted attention. He has won a place on the editorial board of Harvard’s renowned student newspaper, Harvard Crimson, and now writes articles for its opinion section. “I have recently been made a Harvard Writing Center Tutor,” he adds. “This is a paid part-time job reserved for undergraduates who have shown excellent writing capabilities during their time at the university, and it involves me helping undergraduate and graduate students who are struggling with an essay.” In addition, he took a workshop with Man Booker prize-shortlisted author Neel Mukherjee. “I have been writing a lot of fiction, particularly short stories,” he adds.

Sahil has also:

• Devised, co-written and directed a student play;
• Secured a position as a Freshman Arts Proctor (as the creative writing proctor) which means he will be helping those in the 2018 student intake who enrol in the week-long immersive Freshman Arts Program;
• Recently founded the Harvard Centrist Society along with a few friends; “My role will be the Director of Speakers and Networking;”
• Helped start a scheme called the Harvard Giving Pledge, which is attempting to convince all Harvard Students to commit to giving 1% of their income to charity;
• Begun working for a fellow Harvard freshman’s start-up – a productivity app aimed at high school students;
• Joined the Harvard Political Union, the main political debating organisation on campus.

Notwithstanding all these extra-curricular activities, his classes have been a highlight of the year, reports Sahil. “My favourite courses were High and Low in Post-war America – a tour of Post America’s cultural theory, art, poetry, literature, music, race relations, journalism and philosophy – and Early Modern Philosophy: Self and World –an introductory philosophy course that focused on metaphysics and epistemology. I’m looking likely to major in a combination of Philosophy, Psychology and English Literature, but I’m certainly enjoying the freedom that comes with being able to pick across all of the disciplines.”

During his first year at Harvard, he has taken a few trips with fellow students, which has served both to deepen friendships and to further his love of travel. These included a road trip & trekking expedition in Texas and a last-minute trip to Iceland a week before examinations, with Sahil and his fellow students taking advantage of $100 tickets and studying on the aeroplane to make sure their results did not suffer.

And after the final term ended last month, Sahil headed up to the famous tourist hotspot of Cape Cod to stay at the house of his best friend. “I actually met him on my gap year; we decided, along with a few other Harvard gap-year students, to backpack around Southeast Asia for two months as a group.”

Old Elizabethan George the Poet’s latest composition was hailed as a fitting introduction to the global television coverage of the royal wedding.

George Mpanga’s performance of The Beauty of Union was chosen by the BBC to introduce the day’s coverage and was therefore seen by a global TV audience that experts were predicting could reach 1.9bn.

The pre-recorded film of George reading the 154-word poem at St George’s Chapel, Windsor – the wedding venue – was intercut with scenes of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. His contribution was reported by journalists worldwide – the Toronto Sun’s Jane Stevenson said it immediately drew her in to the coverage, for example – while also being hailed by many on social media.

George (OE 2002–2009) is linked with Prince Harry through his role as an ambassador for Sentebale, one of the prince’s charitable foundations, which supports the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people affected by HIV in Lesotho and Botswana. Having seen at close-hand the prince’s warmth and compassion in meeting the children helped by Sentebale, when the royal engagement was announced last year, George was one of the commentators interviewed by the BBC for an insider’s perspective.

George’s growing national profile as a poet rests in large part on his work commenting on major issues of the day. In 2017, he released a video showing himself reading a poem on hate crime. The video was produced in collaboration with the Equality and Human Rights Commission to coincide with the anniversary of the murder of MP Jo Cox. He also performed in front of the Queen and Prime Minister Theresa May at the Service of Celebration for Commonwealth Day in Westminster Abbey.

After leaving QE in 2009, George read Politics, Psychology and Sociology, at King’s College, Cambridge. He maintains close links with the School: last year, he was a well-received guest speaker at QE’s formal luncheon for Year 12 pupils and also led a poetry workshop for the whole of Year 9.

The poem is set out below: a video of George performing it may be viewed on the BBC twitter feed.

The Beauty of Union

There’s an indescribable beauty in union
In two beings forming one new being
Entering each other’s world
Surrendering each other’s selves
Accepting the invitation to be everything to someone else
There’s an unparallelled bravery in union
In telling the one you love:
“The only way that we can truly win
Is if I think of you in everything I do
And honour every decision you faithfully include me in.”
Love gives union true meaning
It illuminates the path
It wants us to compromise, communicate and laugh
It wants us to elevate, appreciate without pride
Love is oblivious to the outside
Even with an audience of millions
Even when that love bears immortal significance
All of this is met with cordial indifference
By the two people at the heart of it
Two individuals when they started it
Becoming two halves of one partnership
Such is the beauty of union
Such is the beauty of union

Jake Green’s deep knowledge of financial services law has made him a go-to man for journalists wrestling with the implications of Brexit.

An award-winning partner with leading London law firm Ashurst, Jake (OE 1992–1997) has been quoted several times in recent months on the front page of the Financial Times, with the newspaper turning to him for his expert knowledge of areas including regulation and compliance matters.

His day-to-day work involves giving advice on Brexit to banks and fund managers. In fact, he offers a valuable combination of expertise, since his knowledge of the law is complemented by practical experience from ‘the other side of the fence’: over the past few years, Jake has spent time on secondment at a hedge fund and a brokerage house.

Jake won the 2013 Thomson Reuters Annual Compliance Awards Best Regulatory Lawyer of the Year title. He was recognised in the Financial News’ 40 Under 40 Rising Stars in Legal Services in 2014 – although he had no idea he had even been put forward for such an accolade.

He qualified while at Nabarro, where he worked for more than five years. “I then followed my boss to Ashurst,” he says. Jake arrived at the firm in 2010 and was made a partner in 2015.

“I really enjoy it and, of course, there are the rewards. It’s a long job; it’s a taxing job, but work-life balance is changing in the City. The days of the ‘all-nighter’-type culture are slightly fading. I am emotionally invested in my clients, and most understand that a work-life balance is healthy!”

Other factors, such as serendipity and the willingness to make the best of any situation, can contribute as much, if not more, to an individual’s success as any carefully worked-out career plan, he believes.

Before reading Law at Leeds University from 2000–2003, Jake ‘took a year out’. He recalls: “I got very lucky and got a job at Sky, working on the Premier League. I was dumped straight into working with Andy Gray and Richard Keys. It was great fun. In life, things sometimes are a bit random – it can just be about being in the right place at the right time. I have found that being prepared to muck in gets you quite far and sharing gets you an awfully long way. I was offered the opportunity to stay at Sky but decided I wanted to do Law. Sport was a hobby that I found I was enjoying slightly less when I was working in it.”

Jake’s sporting prowess was very much in evidence during his time at QE: he played both Fives and cricket for the School. It is perhaps because of that that he fitted in so well, he says.

Like others, his memories include endless breaktime games of football using airflow balls. Other aspects include the ‘duckets’ – blue cards used to give boys credits, which added up to commendations, with these, in turn, counting towards House points.

Of the staff, it is History teacher Mr Marek Kolczynski who especially sticks in his mind, both for some enjoyable, thought-provoking lessons and for memorable encounters outside the classroom.

“He used to say: ‘Always ask yourself how do you know that you know?’ and ‘What evidence is good evidence? How do we weigh evidence?’ He would urge us to keep on probing.” Such a grounding proved valuable later in his legal career, Jake says.

He also recalls being ‘skewered’ by Mr Kolczynski over some minor misdemeanour: “’You are not sorry; you are sorry that you got caught,’ he told me.”

Jake left QE after GCSEs to attend a sixth form college nearer to his family home in Finchley. “My father died and I wanted to be close to home,” he says.

He still lives in the same area today. He is married to Miranda and has two children, Ethan, aged six, and Chloe, four. He maintains close friendships with a number of his QE contemporaries. In his spare time, Jake enjoys playing football.

With the recent media furore over Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, the topic of this year’s Elizabethan Union Dinner Debate held particular resonance.

The Old Elizabethans secured a decisive, although not totally one-sided, victory, as they and a pair of sixth-formers debated the motion: This House believes that in the digital age we should not expect our online activities to remain private.

Pupils Akshat Sharma and Tej Mehta put forward the motion for the 53rd annual debate, which was held on the day of the 445th anniversary of the founding of the School. It was opposed by Jonathan Hollingsworth, who opened, with support from Pravin Swamy (both OEs 2006-2013).

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “The debate itself was a typically lively and good-humoured affair. The whole event serves to help prepare boys for handling similar such formal, but social, occasions as they progress through university, their careers and life more broadly.”

Captain of the School Aashish Khimasia proposed the customary toasts to Her Majesty, the Queen, and The Pious Memory of Queen Elizabeth I, whilst Ross Lima (OE 1995-2002) proposed the toast to The Elizabethan Union.

Ross read Law at Sheffield and now works for Shell as Lead Legal Counsel for the sale of catalysts across large areas of the globe. In his speech, he reminisced about his first day at QE and meeting friends Laurence Burrows and Panicos Petrou, both of whom attended the dinner debate as his guests, along with Ross’s wife, Sarah. He remembered how the then-Headmaster, Eamonn Harris, told them to look around at the prefects: “He told us we were wearing the same blazers, but we hadn’t earned ours yet.” Looking at his Dinner Debate audience, Ross said: “You are now in the same position as those very boys that I looked up to on that day, and through your achievements at this School you have earned the right to wear that blazer.”

He spoke of the challenges the boys have already faced in their School careers and encouraged them to continue to seek out new challenges and opportunities, and to learn to overcome their fears.

The indicative vote at the outset indicated that the floor was leaning against the motion.

The debate began with Akshat putting forward the proposal. He and seconder Tej set out their case that it was, in fact, a reality that our online activities are not private – using state surveillance, as an example. They also argued the importance of being aware of how others use the data they hold, via social media or online gaming. They put forward the view that if people agree to the terms of surveys and ‘apps’ they use, then companies like Cambridge Analytica had, in law, not necessarily done anything wrong.

They also expounded the case for the positives of monitoring online activities, for the purposes of detecting and preventing crime and acts of terror.

The opposition countered these arguments, claiming the price of giving up our online privacy would be to give up part of our humanity, including our freedom of speech. Facebook came in for criticism, and the alumni said that even Mark Zuckerberg has now opined that such companies need regulating. They argued that people would not expect more traditional forms of communication – the Royal Mail or faxes, for example – to be open to others to view, so why should the internet be any different?

They also questioned whether the good citizens represented on the floor should be subjected to privacy breaches by the state in the name of security, advocating a higher threshold. They proposed a series of policy interventions to ensure better data protection online.

The floor debate saw enthusiastic contributions from Year 12 speakers and guests. These ranged from the question of how to monitor and deal with the terrorist threat, through to the different expectations there should be users in terms of the sharing of social media posts and messages between, on the one hand celebrities (and those who court social media attention) and, on the other, ordinary users. They also raised the already-strict financial and criminal penalties that exist for those who breach data laws.

The three-course meal started with leek and potato soup. There was a choice of main course between vegetarian tart and salmon, which was served with crushed new potatoes, green beans and tomato and basil sauce. Dessert was lemon and lime tart.

Boys enjoyed an opportunity to hear about careers in less traditional sectors when two Old Elizabethans visited the School.

Max Hassell and Aaron Levitt (both 2002–2009) are a football agent and music entrepreneur respectively. Both spoke of the challenges and rewards of choosing the road less travelled.

Max was a keen sportsman at QE, representing the School in the First XV at rugby, as well as playing for the county at U16 and U18 levels. After reading History at Bristol, he turned his back on an opportunity at Big Four accountancy firm Deloitte – where he had completed a successful gap year – in order to pursue his dream.

“My parents were in favour of my pursuing a career in The City,” said Max. “But you have to do what you love. Football and sport are my passion; I get up every day and feel excited about what the day will bring.”

Max completed a three-month unpaid internship as a football consultant, before being offered a full-time role as an FA Registered Intermediary with Sidekick Management Ltd. “It was very hard to break into,” said Max. “I had no contacts and little industry experience. In the beginning, I was constantly being asked which footballers I already had on the books, which was tough when I didn’t know any personally.” But he successfully signed two players to the agency within his first three months and, in doing so, forged sustainable relationships with a number of academy directors, coaches and a chief executive.

At Sidekick he finds the company “perfectly positioned” to provide excellent advice on career management. “We have been involved in many multi-million-pound transfer deals and contract negotiations with the biggest clubs in world football and international players of high repute.”

He stressed that it isn’t all glamour. “You get the days when you travel to Accrington Stanley to try to talk to a player who doesn’t want to talk to you!” He also pointed out that the very high amounts of money flooding into the top tier of football becomes a trickle down in the lower divisions.

Aaron Levitt has pursued a career in the creative industries, setting up Stamp the Wax (an online music platform) as well as having worked in radio. Increasingly, he is bringing together brands to work with the music scene.

“I am an experienced music curator and influencer across all levels of the industry, including radio, festivals, labels and online publishing. As co-founder of www.stampthewax.com, I have grown the online music platform to become one of the key UK influencers in underground music. As an original member of [disc jockey and record label owner] Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide FM, I played a key role in the development of an award-winning online radio station.”

Aaron also spoke of the importance of bringing value to organisations, in his case through effective marketing and communications strategies. “My productive relationships with brands, PR companies, booking agents, labels, DJs and musicians have been significant in this.”

Both Aaron and Max agreed that hard work is key, whether at School or at work. “Trust QE’s processes,” Aaron told the boys. “The School will really set you up well for university and life beyond.”

Max said: “Don’t be afraid to go your own way. Pursue what you love, what you are interested in. Friends in more ‘traditional’ roles in the City might earn considerably more at this point in their careers, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they are happy in what they are doing.”

“‘You don’t have to have everything planned out,” advised Aaron. “I don’t necessarily know what the next six months hold. What is important is that I am able to adapt to changes in the industry. In music, a growth area is the way in which music is coming together with brands to deliver very creative and curated campaigns, and this is something I am getting more and more into from a freelance perspective.”

The talk was open to boys from all age groups and was organised by Mike Feven, Head of Year 12. “This was a good opportunity for boys to hear about some less conventional career paths, in areas in which many young people hold strong interest,” he said. “We appreciate Max and Aaron giving up their time to talk to the boys. They posed the interesting conundrum as to whether you should try to make your passion your work or pursue a different career and keep your passion as a hobby. That can be difficult to weigh up, but clearly Max and Aaron are both making it work for them.”

They added to the considerable number of Old Elizabethans who have been back to the school to give talks this year. They said they enjoyed catching up with the Headmaster, Neil Enright, and long-standing teachers, including Assistant Head David Ryan and Head of Art Stephen Buckeridge.

Jin-Min Juan is now working as a doctor at Northwick Park Hospital after graduating from Cambridge this summer.

Jin, who left QE with four straight A* grades at A-level in 2011, excelled in his university research work into the mind, winning one of the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ valuable Pathfinder Fellowship and presenting his work at several international conferences.

He says: “Nothing quite prepares you for the jump between secondary school and university, but, notwithstanding some very intense periods of pressure, it was all well worth it in the end.

“I had a great six years at Cambridge, and particularly enjoyed the company of the tight-knit community at Robinson College. I met a fantastic range of people, and made some very good friends in both the college and later at the clinical school. I am particularly thankful to my pre-clinical Director of Studies, Dr Andrew Sharkey, for his belief in me and also his unwavering support.”

Jin joined Northwick Park in August as the most junior (‘Foundation Year 1’) doctor in his team. “Working as a doctor has itself been another steep jump from university. I have had some very good moments with patients and members of the team, tempered by moments of acute stress and uncertainty. But overall it has been a great and humbling experience, packed (perhaps surprisingly) with lots of laughter and hilarity. After six years in Cambridge, it is nice to be back in London!”

Reflecting on his life and career to date, Jin acknowledges the huge influence of his past experience, not least his “fond memories of my time at QE”. In the summer of 2011, The Times featured a large photograph of Jin and his twin brother, Jin-Xi, together with another set of QE twins, Anup and Amit Desai, to illustrate an article about the School’s excellent A-level results.

He remains “extremely grateful” to his QE teachers and recently contacted his old form tutor, Mathematics teacher Victor Vigneswaran, to update him on his career.

“I am still in touch with friends from QE, and had a fabulous reunion recently at Zuhayr Sheikh’s wedding,” he adds.

After becoming interested in the mind, Jin did his Part II (intercalated degree) in Experimental Psychology. “In my final year, I worked with Professor John O’Brien and Dr Annabel Price on a novel research project using anonymised electronic case records to identify differences between the survival of patients with two different types of dementia: dementia with Lewy bodies and Alzheimer’s dementia. I was selected for an oral presentation of this research at the International Congress of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and the research paper has just been accepted for publication in the BMJ Open journal.

Last year’s award of one of just ten national Pathfinder Fellowships, worth up to £5,000 over three years, was in recognition of his research and academic work. “This has helped immensely in furthering my academic pursuits,” he says.

“Whilst exploring my clinical interests I have found psychiatry and geriatric medicine alluring, and my research in dementia has combined the two. In the future, I hope to pursue a career in a medical specialty that closely involves both mental and physical health.”

Jin is pictured here, at his graduation in Cambridge, presenting research at a conference and on his first day as a doctor.