We hear from Old Sydneians making their mark at home and abroad.
After completing my Bachelor of Economics/ Law at the University of Sydney, I soon landed in Hong Kong, beginning my professional career at a large accounting firm. I had spent a lot of my childhood in Hong Kong, so it was a place that I had always wanted to return to and work as an adult.
Latin was one of my favourite subjects at Sydney Grammar School; it required a lot of self-discipline to learn the detailed mechanics and rules of a language that no one had spoken in over a millennium. This served as good training for my career as a tax professional, which required studying lots of legislation and arcane tax cases that most people would not actually understand.
After a decade in the professional accounting field, an opportunity arose for me to take a position at the Walt Disney Company in Hong Kong as their Head of the Corporate Tax Function. This role opened my eyes to the diverse cultures that exist in the Asia Pacific Region. As I was dealing with many colleagues in different countries it was important for me to be able to adapt very quickly in how I communicated. The company has also given me a deeper understanding of how the different entertainment businesses work. It has been amazing to see its evolution over the past twenty years as technology has made entertainment more accessible to the public. At the end of the day, seeing the joy on the faces of our guests at our theme parks has been one of the greatest pleasures of my current role.
One of the great joys of my time at College Street was the opportunity to study history with inspiring masters. As we analysed the origins of the Russian Revolution or the First World War, Mr McCaskill would quote AJP Taylor, “Nothing is inevitable until it happens”. Catastrophes and opportunities can all pivot on small events.
While studying psychology at the University of New South Wales, my friends and I dabbled in comedy writing for ABC radio and television. Thankfully, I did not try to make a living as a writer and instead found myself working as a human performance investigator at the Australian Transport Safety Bureau. My role was to unravel the human actions that led to aircraft accidents and train wrecks. Time and time again, I encountered complex systems that turned out to be fragile in the face of seemingly insignificant human errors.
After returning to the University of New South Wales to undertake a PhD, I received an unexpected invitation from a university in California to work with NASA as a visiting scholar. Happily, I have since moved beyond studying human fallibility and much of my work now involves examining resilience, whether that be on missions to Mars, piloting an airliner, or preparing for a rocket launch.
My “visit” to NASA has now lasted nearly twenty-four years, and California has become my home. At a Halloween party in San Francisco, I happened to be in the kitchen when I encountered a rather charming pirate, who subsequently became my wife. We like to think it was inevitable.
Sydney Grammar School encourages learning for learning’s sake. With this mindset, I followed my passion for languages from College Street to university. I studied French, Italian, Latin, and picked up Greek.
In going from language classes to more advanced seminars, I developed an interest in the way language functions in literature and how that literature tells stories about society. I found Classics to be the most suitable field for this research, writing an honours thesis on Italian fascism and its exploitation of Virgil.
After graduating, I spent a year working as a motorcycle postie, before returning to university as a tutor. Still unsure of where to take myself with what I had learned, a fellow Old Sydneian and Classicist convinced me to apply for master’s courses overseas. I headed to Oxford, where the rich student community compelled me to immediately apply for PhDs.
I have just completed my first year at Harvard but given the political instability for international students in the US, I am returning to Oxford. I now find myself at another uncertain junction in my life, but the variety of my life experiences and learning, enabled by the well-balanced education and co-curricular life at Grammar, gives me confidence for the chapter ahead.
My time at school differed somewhat from my peers, as I spent parts of Second and Third Form at the City of London School, before returning to Sydney. Although I was completely oblivious to it at the time, this experience was life changing and planted the seed for what was to come. A degree in Sports Management (specialising in Sports Law) in Canberra followed before I left for Manchester. What transpired was a series of spur-of-the-moment decisions, leading to annual return trips to Sydney, simply to apply for the next work visa. I then settled in many European countries for short periods, embracing the notion of being a digital nomad, a decade or two before it became a ‘thing’.
Much of my career has been spent on the open road, across Europe, North and South America. I have met with colleagues at some of the world’s most diverse educational settings from Oxford, Harvard and Università di Bologna to Slippery Rock University (!!) in rural Pennsylvania. I have visited hotel management schools in Switzerland, culinary schools in Paris and fashion schools in Milan.
Today I am back near where it all began at a quaint Cheshire village; close enough to remain well-connected, and more importantly within striking distance of Manchester’s finest football club, the Bolton Wanderers. I am a Director at Study Group, one of the world’s largest recruiters of international students. We have sent hundreds of thousands of ambitious students from over 120 countries to leading universities in the UK and US, helping students better their education, further their careers, and start an adventure that, like mine, hopefully never ends.
When I reflect on what Grammar gave me, the answer is simple: the belief to back myself and make it work, knowing that if it all went awry, I had the cushioning of the best possible education to break my fall, from which I could start again.
After leaving Grammar, I began an Arts degree at the University of Sydney, barely getting in and unsure of what I wanted from life. I was confident that studying philosophy would bring me clarity, but I graduated four years later with more questions than answers. Like many others uncertain about what to do next, I enrolled in law school, in part to delay making real decisions, although I was genuinely drawn to the ideals of justice and fairness. A semester in Copenhagen proved personally transformative and by the time I returned to Australia, I knew I wanted to live abroad.
For various reasons I set my sights on the US. Encouraged by a close friend, I took a leap of faith and moved to New York City, starting out in an entry-level, minimum-wage job as an assistant at the world’s largest talent agency. I spent two years working and studying hard to barely make ends meet, but my efforts paid off: I passed the New York Bar and earned a promotion. After seven unforgettable years in New York, I relocated to Los Angeles, where I now work with some of the world’s most renowned actors, directors, producers, and screenwriters – as well as authors, journalists, and major media organisations like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic.
I am deeply grateful for my time at Grammar; the friendships I made (and still cherish), and the lessons I learned (often the hard way). I have come to believe that persistence, having good people around you, and a little luck can take you further than you ever imagined.
In 1976, I graduated from the University of New South Wales as a doctor, following this up with two years as a junior doctor at Hornsby Hospital. I wanted to become a GP in a rural community, so I spent time in Moree, learning about Aboriginal experiences, the stoicism of famers and how widely racism extended. I was proud to play cricket for the Boggabilla XI!
After Moree, I travelled to the UK to do Obstetrics and Gynaecology, meeting my future wife (the midwife) whilst delivering a baby! I returned to Moree to join a GP practice in Scone. It was rewarding work but left little time at home. In 1983 we moved to Perth so that I could train as a psychiatrist. I became a FRANZCP in 1988 and worked in public mental health for the next decade. There are so many stories to tell of this time, occasionally very funny but more often sad. In 1998 we moved to the UK starting in Bristol then working in public mental health in West Yorkshire and finally in Aberdeen.
Through my work, I came to understand that the medical model of symptom presentation leading to treatment does not sit well in mental health. Mental illness can have a profound effect on the individuals, their families and caregivers. Patients wanted me to fix them, but they weren’t happy to hear that the responsibility lay within them. Instead, I found my job was to be a bringer of hope, to stand alongside the unwell.
Overall, I’ve had an incredibly fortunate life. I am so grateful for the grounding that Grammar gave. I loved rural GP work, but it interfered with family time. Psychiatry taught me to think systemically and how to manage patients whose unrealistic expectation was that psychiatry could cure them.