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Richard Peters took a degree in Music and then months later embarked on another in Medicine – after receiving some essential help from QE in the interim.

He then successfully trained as a doctor – albeit punctuated by a two-year spell in America pursuing his passion for making film and TV programmes – and later began a career specialising in occupational medicine.

Today, Dr Richard Peters is Regional Medical Director at Goldman Sachs Inc, where he provides strategic medical, health and wellbeing guidance and oversight for staff based across Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

Richard’s time at QE in the late 1990s was relatively brief: he did not arrive until he was 14 and he completed some of his A-level studies elsewhere, since the School at that time was unable to offer the combination of courses he wanted to follow.

Yet he has nothing but praise for the support Headmaster Dr John Marincowitz offered him when he approached him after he completed his Music degree at Birmingham in the summer of 2002. Richard wanted to go to King’s College London the same year to read Medicine, and Dr Marincowitz readily agreed to meet him to discuss the matter.

“I talked to him, and within a week he had helped me complete my UCAS application. That is the important thing about a school like QE Boys: if you change your career path, they are more than happy to help you to support your ambitions in any way, whether that’s supporting your UCAS application or writing references.”

It had been a similar story when he had joined the School, he recalls: his family had been living in the US and he went straight into the GCSE years. His coming to the School at such a time could easily have been regarded as a problem, yet there was no sense of that at all, and he quickly found common cause with those who shared his love for music.

“When I joined, everyone was so welcoming. Having that support, both from the teachers and fellow pupils, allowed me to settle in quickly, as well as find a home in the QE music family. It has been great to see the focus QE has given to music over the years, with the opening of another music block”.

Richard, whose instruments are flute and piano, threw himself into School life, playing with both the School Orchestra and Concert Band, and eventually becoming House Captain for Pearce. He was among the first users of the then-new Music block (now superseded by The Friends’ Recital Hall and Music Rooms) and he also has happy memories of developing film in the School darkroom for his GCSE Photography.

He already had a nascent interest in matters medical, wanting at that stage to become a dentist, yet decided to study Music to degree level, taking his Music Performance AS in Year 12 before leaving QE to complete his A-levels and then in 1999 going to Birmingham’s acclaimed Music department, where Edward Elgar had first held the Chair.

After completing his medical degree at King’s in 2007, he had a variety of roles in the NHS as part of his training. In 2011, he was appointed an Occupational Health Physician at London’s Royal Free Hospital. He then worked in occupational health for Health Management and AXA PPP Healthcare, before becoming Chief Medical Officer in Capita’s Personal Independence Payment team. This role allowed him to gain strategic commercial health experience, which facilitated his move to become Chief Medical and Wellbeing Officer for Network Rail in February 2017. In March 2022, he joined Goldman Sachs, to gain more international experience.

“I love my job, as I support organisations to find ways to improve the health and wellbeing of their employees, as well as facilitating improvements in the way health services are delivered. I enjoy the diversity of the role, being able to speak with colleagues across the globe, whether it be India and Asia in the morning, followed by the Americas in the afternoon. Occupational Medicine is such a varied speciality as it allows a mix of clinical and strategic medicine. You could be consulting with patients in the morning, to designing a global mental health strategy and advising a business on COVID related outcomes by the afternoon.”

Outside of his day job, he is an Honorary Clinical Associate Professor at UCL Medical School, where he teaches Occupational Medicine to the medical students. He is also Chair of the Faculty of Occupational Medicine Medical School Steering Group, which has the fundamental aim of raising awarness of the speciality amongst medical students and junior doctors.

He retains the enthusiasm that drove him a decade ago to spend two years in Los Angeles making films and working on TV shows. “While I don’t have much spare time, I did manage to combine medicine and media – two of my passions! – when I produced and co-wrote a first-aid training film for Network Rail: it was a fictional drama to raise awareness of the importance of first-aiders for saving lives.”

Richard stays in contact with a number of other OEs, mostly by social media, although meeting up does prove difficult with all their busy schedules.

I am 79. I am the oldest of three children. I was at QE from 1954–1961, the end of the E H Jenkins era. [Jenkins was Headmaster from 1930–1961].

My parents married in April, 1939, and my father spent most of the first seven years of marriage in the army. He was highly intelligent, but I think his lengthy spell in the forces (as Lance Corporal, since his then left-wing views meant he would not apply for a commission) drained him of ambition and drive. He taught at Tottenham Technical College until retirement. My mother had plenty of drive, but her formal education had been limited by lack of funds and a shameful but widespread prejudice against higher education for women.

We lived successively in a flat in Muswell Hill, a semi in Southgate and a detached house in Cockfosters. Money was always tight, to the extent that my mother went back to work in January 1954, to my intense dismay. Working mothers were widely regarded – and certainly in Cockfosters – as women whose greed outweighed their maternal instincts. She did a valuable job as a medical secretary for many years but, through almost all my schooldays, I naively felt that it was a serious stigma – for example, when we could not do an exchange with a young German.

My parents valued education above most other potential blessings. We read a great deal at home, and parental targets for us were pretty clear.

Having ‘passed’ the 11+, I was guided by my parents to QE rather than East Barnet Grammar (just down the road). This was largely because it was an all-boys school, which was thought more conducive to diligence and serious study. Entry to QE demanded an interview by Jenkins with a parent present. He was a short man with bristling moustache and matching personality. He left you in no doubt that, even if selected, you were probably quite unworthy of such an honour. I felt sure I had failed when unable to give him the meaning of ‘ancillary’. “What,” he feigned to storm, “Ancilla, Ancilla,” a maid servant? Where’s your Latin, my son?” Not I fear in the scope of my studies at De Bohun Primary School. Jenkins was perhaps the most colourful of the memorable dramatis personae of the Masters common room. I use the theatrical term because there was a range of acting talent across the classrooms.

I want to consider the quality of the School in the latter 1950s, how it fitted with me and the personal factors which underlie my assessment of QE and its influence upon me. The last first.

I enjoyed a relatively successful education over seven years. It culminated in a major open scholarship to Cambridge, which had been my target. I love(d) sport, however mediocre many of my performances, and QE was set up for a wide range of sports by the standards of the 1950s, in most of which I took part. It encouraged debating, which I thoroughly enjoyed and which, in large measure, I carried with me into my subsequent life. I hope I do not sound grossly conceited. I provide that summary because I look back from the standpoint of one who was generally well suited to QE, enjoyed the life it offered and derived obvious benefits from its education. Some others of my contemporaries did not share my overall enjoyment. They chafed perhaps at the strict discipline and felt we were living in he past, which, to some extent, we were.

There was no ethnic diversity. The boys came from a limited catchment area, largely within what is now the Borough of Barnet. There was nothing comparable to the near-universal urge to learn that characterises the School today. The values inculcated by QE overlapped with, but were by no means identical to, those that inform a QE education today. E H Jenkins had served in the Navy during the Great War, and his views on life, hence on the standards that should prevail in his school, had not changed significantly since. On the whole, they suited me, a keen reader then of G A Henty and John Buchan, but they would need a drastic revision if Jenkins were to lead the School today.

There were around 450 boys, a third of today’s quota, and I suspect we were more aware of those outside our own age-group. We enjoyed mimicking the posturing of prefects and the jingoism of the School Captain.

Looking back, I think QE was living, to a significant degree, on past, mainly pre-war, glories, when it was moved by the thrusting 30-year-old EHJ, in a blaze of energy, from its cramped, if historic, quarters to the present site, became the best athletics school in the country and, locally at least, a highly regarded academic institution which, more importantly, produced young gentlemen.

By 1954, Jenkins was, I now think, treading water and, with him, a large part of the senior staff, most of whom had seen war service. They could be very entertaining, treasuring witty repartee rather more than a scholarly forty minutes with Virgil. The wonderfully irreverent Rex Wingfield (‘Winky’ to all) was effortlessly diverted to first-hand accounts of the fighting in Normandy which produced a best-selling book.

J H Winter, related the story of the Seven Years War from the same script as in 1934 and reminisced about Jack Hobbs. There was dear Jack Covington who would welcome the most crass Sixth Form contribution to a discussion of Wordsworth with “Well, that’s a most interesting, indeed original approach”, albeit one which would condemn you to disaster in an A-level exam. History lessons frequently involved dictated notes, which enraged my father.

Whilst QE contained some very good scientists, the arts/humanities dominated its output of university candidates, quite the reverse of the position today. In a staff of 30-plus, there were, I recall, six full-time classics masters in my final year. My experience of post O-level teaching was of Modern Languages, English and Latin, but I believe the same lack of new thinking at a senior level applied to other subjects, though Sid Clarke’s progressive impact on Chemistry teaching was clearly an exception. Bright and innovative younger teachers seemed to move on quite rapidly, though that may have been simply the opportunity for promotion.

To summarise, Jenkins’ standards and values still dominated QE in his final years. The School ran smoothly and quite successfully, as regards academic results, but it badly needed the kind of shake-up that it eventually received at the hands of Eamonn Harris in the mid-eighties.

Why then, despite such a critical assessment of QE at that stage in its long history, do I still feel real gratitude for my formative years there?

As I said at the outset, I gratefully recognise that, whatever my perception of its shortcomings, it worked for me. I appreciated the latitude we were given as to what and how to study within the constraints of an exam curriculum. I respected the vast stores of knowledge of German literature and culture which I could tap from K L Woodland (universally ‘Klew’), when I took the initiative to do so. I liked the clear setting of targets by Gilbert Smith as to exams and university, and the challenges he posed as regards workload. I enjoyed the competitive environment which surrounded you from day one, not least because it taught me the sobering lesson that some others were far more talented than me, a lesson reinforced later by the experience of university.

Just as important, QE fostered freedom of speech and the principle that every opinion had a right to be heard, if not respected. Debating directly promoted such ideas, but they were encouraged in the classroom, too. Nobody and nothing was ‘cancelled’.

Perhaps, above all else, despite its austere exterior, QE was fun. For me that is encapsulated in memories of Eric Shearly, roaring in mock rage and always with a smile on his face. Masters could, in almost every case, ‘take a joke’, however stern their demeanour.

After five or so years at QE, I rather fancied myself as a mimic of Jenkins, both as to voice and vocabulary. On one occasion, whilst waiting for the master to arrive, I put on a brief performance : “Tyler, my son, You did the decent thing. That was a thoroughly decent show.” As I concluded, I sensed a marked drop in room temperature. A similar voice behind me added: “Not bad, Farrer, but needs a bit of polishing up.” The fearsome Jenkins turned away and walked off. He had a sense of humour.

At the end of my final term, for the Underne House Social, I wrote a parody of that year’s school play The Strong are lonely, which concerns a Jesuit community in a Spanish colony in South America threatened with takeover by the Spanish state: a perfect model for satirising QE. Each of the Fathers was an obvious skit on a master at QE. I played the Abbot, as Jenkins, with EHJ a few feet away in the front row. He didn’t bat an eyelid and applauded vigorously at the end. It was an image of QE that I took away with me and still recall with undiminished clarity.

Yes. It never approached the standards of QE today. But it was fun.

An alumni trio of Economics graduates gave current QE sixth-formers key insights to guide them along their university and career paths in a series of talks.

Zainul Jafferji (2000-2007) visited on three occasions, while Zain Gulamali (2005–2012) and Yemi Falana (2008–2015) gave virtual talks.

It was, Zain told the Headmaster afterwards, “lovely to get a chance to ‘give back’… always keen to help where I can. I still remember how I felt when I was in their shoes and how important QE has been in my life since I left.”

Zainul Jafferji

Zainul Jafferji,  who took a Master’s in Economics (MPhil) at Cambridge, visited on three consecutive weeks.

He told Year 12 members of the Economics Group about applying for and studying Economics at Cambridge, set out career paths and explained how to think like an economist.

In the first session, he told members of the Economics Group about Cambridge’s Economics admissions process. Not only had taking a diverse range of A-level subjects (Mathematics, Economics, Physics, German) given him an edge and enabled him to stand out from the crowd, but his German is useful even today when he is advising German companies in his role as a Management Consultant, he said.

He urged the boys to start researching universities and courses early, suggesting they use QE Connect to speak to OEs before applying. This was doubly important for Cambridge where the choice of college is important: he advised looking up a college’s financial situation, location and, perhaps most importantly (!), menus, before applying.

Zainul stressed the importance of regularly reading The Economist and other Economics materials to prepare for interviews and advised the boys to hone their speaking skills by getting involved in  debating and taking LAMDA examinations.

He concluded the session by telling the boys to expect an intense, independently led course at Cambridge, where they would be in tutorials either alone or in small groups and so have nowhere to hide if they had not prepared correctly

In week two, he outlined the four main career paths for Economics undergraduates: investment banking, management consulting, public policy and further study.

University of Cambridge career fairs begin three weeks after term starts and applications for ‘Spring Weeks’ (an Easter internship) start soon after. It was, he said, important to apply early for “ferociously competitive” areas such as banking and consulting.

Zainul was able to secure a Spring Week at Royal Bank of Scotland in his first year. (He maintained that the bank’s financial collapse soon after, in 2008, was despite, rather than because of, his work there!)

In his final session, Zainul spoke on critical-thinking skills. He outlined the key skills required to think like an economist and to construct powerful, compelling arguments.

Students then split into three groups, looking at topics covering macroeconomics, microeconomics and econometrics. One group tackled the most current of issues: the impact of sanctions on Russia on the UK economy. He helped the pupils to move beyond CPI as a measure and to better understand the worry of a wage-price spiral taking hold.

Afterwards, Economics teacher Sheerwan O’Shea-Nejad  said: “Zainul has been an excellent guide for the students through the process of choosing a university, thriving there, getting a job and excelling once employed.”

Zain Gulamali

In his virtual talk, Zain, who read Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at Warwick, said boys should start at university as they meant to finish, rejecting any thoughts of “the first year doesn’t count so I will work harder in the second and third years”.

He advised them to start applying for work experience immediately: there was no such thing as bad work experience, since even a boring placement could show them what to avoid.

Zain previously worked at an accountancy firm to qualify as an ACA accountant, but now works in the finance department of multi-national mining company Anglo-American.

He warned of the dangers of ending up in an unfulfilling repetitive career just to earn a large salary and impress others.

Yemi Falana

In his talk, which was also delivered online, Bristol graduate Yemi related how he had switched from Medicine to Economics at university. He said frankly that his parents were keener on Medicine than he was.

Yemi stressed the importance of applying for internships early – even during A-levels. His included two with Goldman Sachs, where he then went on to take up a full-time post as an analyst in 2018.

Now an Associate with the investment bank, he advised researching the work-life balance and job security of different roles carefully, remarking on how he works shorter hours than the deal-making teams, and appreciates the opportunity to have more of a personal life.

Taking part in the BBC’s MasterChef had long been a dream, yet Old Elizabethan Rishi Nanavati assumed the programme would not be interested in his vegetarian and vegan food.

But when the young dentist went along to try out for the show last year, he found that far from ruling him out, the MasterChef team were “actually quite intrigued: they loved what I did”.

Rishi (OE 2006–2013) went on impress in the first episode of the current series with his dish, a coconut, lemongrass and chilli aloo tikki served with a coriander yoghurt, a tapioca cracker and topped with lime leaf sherbert and a raw mango chutney.

MasterChef judge John Torode calling the dish “bang on the money”, and Rishi was the first of the nine contestants to progress to the next round.

His dessert, a dark chocolate pavé topped with a pistachio dust and crystallised pistachios with a cardamon shortbread biscuit, saffron caramel and a cardamom crumb, was described by the celebrity chef as “professional level”.

He reached the quarter-final stage before being eliminated and is very positive about the whole experience. “I loved it. It was definitely very intense. There’s a lot of pressure, you have to stick to the timings, and you are cooking in front of two of the biggest food critics.” [John Torode and Greg Wallace]

Rishi, who is 27, relished the “amazing feedback” and the opportunity to cook alongside “very talented people”.

He had told an interviewer ahead of the series’ broadcast: “I’ve been a vegetarian all my life and really want to showcase the potential that vegetarian and vegan food really has, especially with a fusion of pan-Asian flavours.”

Now back home, he posted to his Instagram followers last week: “Still can’t believe this happened. For modern vegetarian food to be on a national platform and having the opportunity to be the one to portray it. That’s a dream come true.”

Rishi told QE Connect: “I started helping around the kitchen around the age of seven or eight, doing really simple jobs. When I was 12 or 13, I started doing recipe development.”

Looking back, he can see that his time at QE helped lay the platform for his current success, both in his career and in his ability to cope with the intense demands of the show. “I think the pressure of School did set me up for future pressure – in a good way! It was a lot of hard work and I got used to working hard and working independently.

“And I had a very good time and made friends for life.”

Rishi who lives back at his parents’ home in Pinner, remains in close contact with a group of eight alumni, including two, Nihir Shah and Vishal Davda, who read Dentistry with him at Bristol.

In the past few years, he has started to share his passion for cooking with others, through food blogging and social media.

Asked about how he plans to balance his cooking and his dentistry, he said: “I would love to juggle both. Dentistry does give you flexibility.” After the excitement of the show, he is now taking a few months to decide how to move forward.

• Rishi is on Instagram, @dish­­­_by_rish, and also blogs at https://www.dishbyrish.co.uk

Today, Barry Lui is a manager in one of the world’s leading professional services organisations, pressing ahead in a successful career in enterprise technology – a field he loves.

But it wasn’t always that way, and in fact Barry (OE 2004–2011) had to overcome serious early disappointments in order to put himself on the right track.

“If I think back to myself in 2011, leaving school and starting university after going through a tough UCAS clearing process, I definitely wouldn’t have been able to foresee or plan where I am today. There’s a message I’d really like to get across to young people, as I have often come across those who are not necessarily getting the best grades and often feeling very dispirited and pessimistic about the future as they’re still in an environment where their present and short-term future success is equated to, or determined by, their grades.

“They should keep their heads high and know that their future can still be very bright so long as they are proactive about finding their passions and strengths.”

Barry had relished his time as a pupil at the School, where he enjoyed success in national mathematics and chess competitions. “I look back very fondly at my time at QE: I made life-long friends and I’d say it has defined much of my character. The School encourages pupils to be organised, disciplined and focused. Organised in the sense that we were expected to be very aware of the homework expected of us and the quality required; disciplined in the way we were taught to address teachers and be very regimented about our schedules; focused by reinforcing the importance of our studies and encouraging a lot of competition.”

With Geography his favourite subject, he duly made his UCAS application, only to find that his grades did not live up to expectations. After ploughing through clearing, Barry gained a place at Queen Mary, University of London, where he studied Geography with Economics from 2011 to 2014.

He then faced disappointment again on realising that the course contents did not match the kind of material that he really enjoyed learning about. “Geography at QE allowed us to explore a good breadth of the subject, exploring themes from both Physical and Human Geography. I always enjoyed learning about Physical Geography a little more. The subject matter at university became much more narrow and focused on Human Geography.

“I came to a junction: I could either change my subject, or stay the course, but try to find another way to find, and then explore, my passion.” Eventually, he decided on the latter path, determining to take steps to give himself a career head start while still studying.

A way forward came in the shape of a part-time job with Apple, where he started as a humble shop floor assistant (a ‘Specialist’) at an Apple Store, before progressing to become an ‘iOS Champion’ –- “basically anything to do with iPads, iPhones etc.” –- and then being offered the opportunity to deliver workshops, in addition to his iOS Champion role. (He is pictured, circled centre, on his first day.)

“I delivered workshops to sometimes large numbers of people, which really helped build my confidence in presenting face to face. On the other hand, sometimes there were no registered attendees for the workshop, so we’d turn the speaker to max and deliver the class for the whole store to hear and try to draw a crowd that way!”

It was a job he did throughout almost his whole time at university, and the effects were profound. “At the beginning, I was quite a quiet and reserved person, and this job really helped me come out of my shell and explore new ways to engage with people. It completely changed my life in many ways, both in terms of personality and of giving me an industry focus.

“During this time, IBM and Apple formed an Enterprise Mobile Application partnership, which was really big news at the time, as mobile apps were becoming much more mainstream. I saw this as an area of very fast growth and decided to explore it more.

“In my final semester at university, I was simultaneously writing my dissertation, working part-time at Apple and I also picked up a summer internship at a recruitment software development firm exploring the industry of SaaS (Software as a Service) and Cloud software. At this point, I decided I wanted to work on landing a career in enterprise technology and put all of my focus into securing that as a graduate job.”

Juggling everything was not easy and, as Barry admits, in the run-up to his finals, his studies suffered: “I’d either be working, or applying to every single technology consulting firm graduate opportunity that I could find. I found that job applications were extremely time-consuming, especially if you want to tailor each application to each company.”

While he may not have ended up with the best marks in his degree, he had certainly gained a great deal of determination in his university years. And so, armed with this and with his professional experience, he found a technology consulting graduate role with Capgemini, where his main role was implementing Oracle Applications to clients who ranged from public sector organisations to retail companies. Significantly, in terms of his career development, he also teamed up with other graduates to build up an enterprise mobile applications initiative, building custom mobile applications based on client business need.

“I was then offered an opportunity at Deloitte to continue working in that space – albeit for projects on a different scale – with a strong and fast-growing team, so I decided to take it on.”

Four-and-a-half years later, Barry remains with Deloitte, “slowly taking on more and more responsibility, growing a great network and learning so much along the way”. He has risen through the ranks to his current position as a manager delivering functional financial and procurement solution consulting for enterprise technology programmes.

Over the years, he has increasingly sought to give back to those he can help: he has participated in mentoring schemes at his former university for the last three years, spoken at career panels and helped out at a QE careers day.

Barry married his wife, Mina, in 2019: “We’re continuing to grow together.” The couple met at university – “so, if my grades hadn’t taken me to Queen Mary, I wouldn’t have met my wife!”

As he reflects on this and on his career to date, this former Apple employee, concurs (in common with other QE alumni) with the words spoken by the company’s inspirational founder, Steve Jobs, in his commencement address to Stanford University students in 2005: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”

After an early career switch from advertising to IT, Warren Lipman has never looked back, building and adapting a company that now employs more than 20 people and supports thousands of customers across the globe.

After leaving the University of Greenwich with a degree in Real Estate, Warren (OE 1986–1988) worked in the 1990s as a Planner Buyer for industry giant MediaCom.

“But,” he says, “I was always very technical, and after an enjoyable career in advertising and in 1999 ahead of the millennium, I decided a career in IT was a good idea. I took a City & Guilds course in Micro Systems and OS, and then went to work as a contractor installing ‘millennium bug’ fixes for the banks.” After that, he worked as internal desktop support for a software company.

Then, in 2003, he started his own company, Storm IT, specialising in providing IT support to SMEs in the local area. The Barnet-based company has grown year-on-year and today employs more than 20 people, including technicians at all levels of competency, digital marketing experts and a full in-house accounts department.

“Our offering has developed and changed each year, embracing ‘comms’, business broadband, cloud computing and full security services.

“Professional highlights include buying a commercial property in Barnet, which became Storm HQ supporting many other businesses, and working with various blue-chip corporates, supporting thousands of users across the world.”

During the 2020 lockdown, in response to extensive feedback and requests from clients, he developed ‘Storm-In-A-Box’. Warren says: “It caters for the blended and hybrid WFH/work-from-the-office model – the premise being that we provide one laptop (and device) with unlimited ‘comms’ calling and headset, MS Office and cloud storage, and with all licences and IT support, for one cost per month. “This has been greatly welcomed and is a unique offering in the marketplace.”

Fresh from that triumph, Warren is now looking to pursue some other ambitions as well. “I have an interest in, and love of, coffee and have always wanted to open a coffee shop as a side passion project: this will be fulfilled in Q1 of 2022, as I am just about to sign a lease for a small shop in Radlett, Hertfordshire. I am an art and music enthusiast, too, and will be incorporating both passions in the coffee shop, which will sell ‘affordable art’ and possibly music. I probably have a few other businesses in me too!”

Thirty-three years after he left the School, Warren has “fond memories of QE (when I wasn’t in trouble!). It taught me the values and principles that have carried – and continue to carry – me through life. I am still in contact with one or or two fellow alumni (Ben Mendoza springs to mind) who are lifelong friends, and our children are friends, too.”

Anantha Anilkumar had a reassuring message for Year 9 boys when he visited the School to give a careers talk this term: “Nothing will happen exactly as you expect it to – and that is ok.” He detailed the twists and turns of his life before he settled into his career as a Civil Service analyst.

Since graduating from Oxford with a degree in English Language and Literature in 2016, Anantha  (OE 2005-2012) has worked in a diverse range of jobs, from being a Music teacher at a secondary school in the Borough of Camden and a content editor for an organisation offering Mathematics tuition, to working for a company providing IT Cost Management software.

Since September this year, however, he was been with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, fulfilling a role as a continuous service improvement analyst.

In his talk to Year 9 in the Main School Hall, Anantha detailed his somewhat unexpected journey since leaving the School in 2012, including some of the challenges he faced at university and his experience in a number of jobs before arriving in his current post with the Civil Service.

Head of Year 9 Akhil Gohil said: “We’re very grateful to Anantha for his inspirational talk. He emphasised the importance of having a plan and also the ability to adapt, since, as he pointed out, life, inevitably, will not always follow that plan. This particularly resonated with students in Year 9, who are soon to select their GCSE options and who have had to adapt to the global pandemic in the past two years.”

Academic Makoto Takahashi, who has earned an international reputation for his research into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant meltdown in Japan, has curated an exhibition on the disaster, which is being shown at the Royal Geographical Society.

The exhibition, which runs until 23rd December, marks the tenth anniversary of the meltdown, and of the earthquake and tsunami that triggered it. Visitors have included a party of A-level Geography and Art students from QE: Makoto treated them to a lecture on the exhibition and also gave them a guided tour.

Makoto (OE 2003–2010) is the youngest-ever lecturer at the Munich Centre for Technology in Society (MCTS), part of the Technical University of Munich, a position he gained in 2019. A previous holder of a Science and Technology Studies Fellowship at Harvard, he will be returning to the Harvard Kennedy School of Governance as a Fulbright-Lloyd’s Fellow in early 2022.

For the past eight years, his work has focused on examining how expert authority is claimed in conditions of low public trust. Considered somewhat niche when Makoto first proposed it as his field of study in 2013, its relevance became apparent in 2016 with the election of President Donald Trump.

“In fact, I was at an OECD Nuclear Energy Agency event in Fukushima prefecture on the day that Trump was elected,” he says. “The shock was palpable. And the parallels between the crisis of confidence that Japanese experts faced following ‘3.11’ [the earthquake and tsunami took place on 11th March 2011] and the ‘post-truth’ political moment were clear.”

The exhibition, entitled Picturing the Invisible, sees his research interests coming together with his longstanding involvement with the London art scene: while in the Sixth Form at QE, he took part in in the Royal Academy’s attRAct programme and in the Louis Vuitton Young Arts Program; he has also been an Event Manager at the OPEN Ealing community art gallery.

It features the work of six photographers complemented by a series of short essays from policymakers, experts, and activists. The contributors include some “wonderful artists and essayists”, says Makoto, such as: Lieko Shiga, a photographer based in Kitakama, a village hit hard by the tsunami; Yoi Kawakubo, who buries silver halide film in the contaminated soils of Fukushima’s exclusion zone to produce a powerful series of abstract images, and Sir David Warren, British Ambassador to Japan, 2008–12.

A collaboration between the RGS and the Munich Centre for Technology in Society, the exhibition has secured coverage in publications including The New Statesman and The British Journal of Photography.

In preparing for it, Makoto says he has been committed to pedagogic innovation to benefit students disadvantaged by the impact of Covid-19 on higher education. “The pandemic has robbed students of so much of the normal university experience, so it’s even more important than ever to innovate new modes of engagement. In this spirit, I integrated preparations for Picturing the Invisible into my teaching at MCTS. Seven students from the Responsibility in Science, Engineering and Technology course have been involved in every step of the planning and [have shared] their perspectives on the works in the exhibition programme, alongside seasoned policymakers, activists, and experts.”

After leaving QE, Makoto took a First in Geography at Cambridge, winning the M T Dodds and Rowley Mainhood Awards for academic excellence during the course of his degree. He went on to gain his MPhil and PhD from Cambridge, where his doctoral studies were funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

While there, in addition to lecturing, co-ordinating undergraduate groups and working with the university’s Communications Office to produce podcasts for a non-specialist audience, Makoto also served as the secretary of the Mixed Martial Arts Society (CUMMA).

In 2017, he spent three months as a Visiting Research Fellow at Tokyo’s Waseda University, where the proximity to Fukushima proved valuable. “I had the opportunity to interview notable public figures in the Fukushima debate, making regular trips to Fukushima prefecture itself.”

His thesis, The Improvised Expert: Performing Authority after Fukushima (2011–2018), drew upon his own extensive ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Japan; it won the American Association of Geographers’ Jacques May Thesis Prize.

He has presented his work at the Maison Francais d’Oxford (at the invitation of the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs), at the British Embassy in Paris, CEPN (Le Centre d’étude sur l’Evaluation de la Protection dans le domaine Nucléaire – a non-profit radiological protection organisation) and gave a paper at a conference organised by the International Commission on Radiological Protection to examine the lessons of the Fukushima Daiichi disaster.

During his schooldays, Makoto threw himself into all that QE had to offer. He was involved in debating, was the leader of the second violins in the Chamber Orchestra and was in the waterpolo team.

Today, he is still in contact with School friends Eigo Takeda, who read Mathematics at Cambridge before taking up consultancy work in Japan, and Evgeny Slavin, who works in venture capital in Cambridgeshire.

Having previously worked towards a commission with the British Army Reserve, he has had to pause his involvement with the reserves while working outside the UK.

Arjun Paliwal has moved back to London to a new role within Facebook and is now working with clients who are among the world’s biggest brands in the fashion and luxury industry.

The new job – as Client Solutions Manager – marks a further step up for Arjun (OE 2006-2013), who returns to the UK after nearly four years in Ireland, with the last 15 months spent in Dublin as a Senior Account Manager.

He relished the opportunity to live there, and considers the chapter important for not only his professional but also personal growth. “Dublin’s where I began to explore and accept my sexuality,” he says. “In coming to terms with my bisexuality I’ve had to (and will continue to) confront challenging feelings, such as shame – but I’ve also built a confidence I never had before. I bring more of myself to my work and my relationships, which is important because I’m more passionate and focused without spending my energy trying to be someone else.”

Amid all the change, however, one thing remains constant – his commitment to sustainability. “I’ve spent the best part of the last 18 months working to support and grow sustainable businesses. Sustainability is a horizontal across every vertical, so every business needs to be thinking about it, and I’m so excited to see our global teams working to amplify Facebook’s contribution to a sustainable world in the work we do with clients and agencies. This is additional to all the work the company has done and continues to do to be more sustainable, which is exciting to see happen and couldn’t be more urgent.

“I’m excited to take on the responsibility of working with some of our largest global fashion and luxury brands that define industry trends to help them be a force for good through their campaigns and communication on Facebook (FB) and Instagram (IG).”

After QE, Arjun read Fine Art at New College, Oxford, exhibiting in several galleries across the city and having a short film selected for a Ruskin Shorts exhibition.

Graduating in 2017, he joined Facebook in September of that year, initially as an e-commerce Account Manager.

“What I love about working at Facebook is our culture, where you can connect with anyone across the company to share ideas, learn and grow.”

His own career to date is an example of what this culture can produce: “Building a programme for sustainable businesses started as a passionate side project. Today, many coffees and brainstorming sessions later, we’ve got a global team working to support these companies in reaching more customers with their innovations, and senior leads are backing the work.

“My Facebook Dublin chapter has come to an end for now but I’m grateful for the journey I had there, particularly the opportunity to spend more time doing what I love while progressing my career. Being in a smaller city so close to the coast and surrounded by national parks motivated me to spend more time outdoors which I cherished. Whether it was a short walk by the sea during the day or a cycle to the cliffs after work, getting outside kept me sane, centred and humbled, so Dublin has taught me to always make time for that and do what I can to protect those experiences.”

“My journey has also made me much more aware of the importance of diversity and how critical it is to solving challenges such as sustainability. We need more authentic perspectives and experiences at the table,” says Arjun, who added that his own experience coming out – bolstered by his growing “understanding of the intersectionality of diversity and sustainability” – had shown him how important it was for more people to be represented and heard in critical conversations in order to see change.

* Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

When his father told him he wanted to retire and invited him to take over the family coffee business, Colin Smith had already established a successful career in teaching.

There was no obligation for him to make the move – his father had always valued the fact that a QE education gave Colin (OE 1957–1964) opportunities that he had not enjoyed himself. And it was not a decision Colin wanted to take lightly – “I thought about it for around a year”.

But in the end, he was drawn by the challenge and duly made the move, working as the third partner alongside his father and uncle for about two years, before then taking the helm at the business his grandfather had established in 1936.

Since switching careers in 1980, he has not only greatly expanded Smiths Coffee Company, but has also established himself as an international award-winning expert in specialist coffee, while putting his expertise to use in charitable and philanthropic work, too.

“With the knowledge I have accumulated through many years of experience in the coffee industry, I am attempting to create a much better coffee world,” he says.

Colin has many happy memories of the education that his father so prized. He was a regular QE actor – appearing, for example, as the Dauphin in George Bernard Shaw’s St Joan and as Mrs Hardcastle in Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer.

A Sub Prefect and a keen athlete, he was also editor of the Elizabethan magazine, sang in the School Choir and did Scottish dancing in a club run by Languages teacher (and Old Elizabethan) Derek Fry, where the boys enjoyed the chance to dance with their counterparts from Queen Elizabeth’s Girls’ School.

“John Todd and I were the first pupils to take A-level RE, under the personal supervision of John Pearce (Deputy Headmaster – Second Master), who gave up his free time to tutor us,” says Colin, who won the Broughton Divinity Prize.

Colin was heavily involved in scouting activities, representing Hertfordshire at the Marathon Scout Jamboree 1964 and becoming a Queen’s Scout – the highest award given in the movement.

He also secured his Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award. “I remember asking Mr Edwards [Headmaster Timothy Edwards] for a day off to go to the presentation at Buckingham Palace, showing him the card from the equerry to Prince Philip. His comment was: ‘I don’t think I have much say in the matter; my authority doesn’t go that far.’”

After leaving QE, he went to St Luke’s, a teacher-training college that is now part of the University of Exeter, where he studied PE & Biology, took up fencing and sang in the college’s Chapel Choir.

Qualifying as a PE teacher, from 1967 to 1971 he taught at Beaumont School, St Albans, becoming head of department there.

He took a year out to study Laban Movement at the Art of Movement Studio in Addlestone and then moved to become Head of PE and head of year at Oldborough Manor School, Maidstone, Kent.

Even when he took over his father and uncle’s business, his links with education remained strong. He served as a Governor of Dollis School in Hendon for 15 years until his company moved from its factory in Mill Hill to new premises – a factory in Hemel Hempstead – in 1997.

“The company has developed from roasting coffee in a shop window at my grandfather’s grocer’s shop in Mill Hill in 1936. Smith’s Coffee Company now roast around approximately 10 tonnes of coffee per week for the retail and catering markets. I am also a partner in a small shop roasting business in Leighton Buzzard.”

Smiths Coffee Company specialises in quality coffees and teas and has an organic and Fairtrade branch, The Natural Coffee Company. “We also have a company, Arabica Espresso Services, which supplies & maintains espresso machines & coffee making equipment.”

Five years ago, Smiths developed a process for flavouring coffee to meet an ever-increasing market: “Now we are probably the biggest coffee flavourist in the UK”.

Having won major contracts over the years, such as roasting coffee for Whittard’s 125 shops, the company has grown and today it continues to expand: it recently secured a major account with Warner Leisure Hotels. As a result of this expansion, it is looking for new premises once again.

“I was a founder member of the Speciality Coffee Association of Europe (SCAE) in 1997 and was President from 2005-2007,” says Colin. He served on the board of directors until 2011 and in recent years has organised around 18 trips so that members can visit places where coffee is grown – around three a year. The countries visited include India, Kenya, Costa Rica, Colombia, Guatemala, Brazil, Honduras, Sumatra, Tanzania, Panama, Papua New Guinea and the US (Hawaii).

“Visiting the farms and tasting the coffees at origin has expanded my experience and knowledge of the product, with its progress through the roasting, cupping and blending processes.”

He has also organised SCAE educational activities and assisted in the arrangements for the SCAE World of Coffee event each year. “I have represented the SCAE in Japan, Costa Rica, USA, Sumatra and many other countries and in 2006, I represented Europe on the panel of judges who cupped the coffees for the Costa Rica Cosecha d’Oro, at their invitation. I appeared on TV to discuss the importance of quality coffee to the European market. I am also asked occasionally by local radio to comment on various aspects of the trade. The last one was on Kopi Luwak, a very rare and expensive coffee!”

He is a member of a four-strong Which magazine panel which samples and assesses retail coffee products. In December 2011, he was awarded the Allegra European Coffee Award for outstanding contribution to the European Coffee Industry and in June 2013 the SCAE Award for Excellence: Lifetime Achievement Award.

“My extensive knowledge of the subject enables me to give many talks and lectures on all aspects of coffee, as well as training sessions on the use of coffee-making machinery. I am often asked to give advice on the setting up of roasting plants and coffee shops.

“The knowledge gained through all this experience has helped the company to focus on a range of coffees, from real speciality to good grade coffees for the selective market.”

In 2017, the SCAE combined with the Specialty Coffee Association of America to form the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA), for which Colin is an Ambassador.

“My ethos is to educate members of the coffee industry and the consumer to understand the value of speciality coffee.  This will further the speciality coffee market and enable more people to assess the quality of better coffee.”

He also puts his expertise and knowledge to good use in serving wider society. He maintains close contact with the local Hospice of St Francis’s Corporate Partnership Committee on a voluntary basis, supporting many of their events with supplies of coffees. “I also give many talks on coffee and the money raised is used to support the St Francis hospices and the Peace Hospice in Watford.”

A qualified SCA trainer, he has worked with local prisons to train prisoners in a rehabilitation programme before release. “Until December 2019, at The Mount Prison and Bedford Prison, we had a café in the visitors’ room which enabled the prisoners to gain experience in communication with the public and to practise the skills learned in taking the Speciality Coffee Association (SCA) barista Foundation Course. Profits gained from the cafes were given to HACRO, the Hertfordshire Association for the Rehabilitation of Offenders.”

Colin lives in Berkhamsted and is married to Marina, his second wife. Between them, they have 13 grandchildren. He has two daughters with his first wife, Sue, and one with Marina.  “Also on a personal level, after 40 years I no longer play hockey for St Albans, but I am I am trying to play golf.”