OV of the Week

We are delighted to feature our very own Head of Sixth Form, Josh Hand (Cl 91-01) as our OV of the Week. As a pupil, Josh was involved with the Himalayan Club and was vice-captain of the 1st XV. Josh was also Head of School which he says, “was a real honour, although I can still remember the nerves of my Monitors’ Address in College Hall. Planning your first ever speech was tough in the pre-internet days!”

After school, Josh took a gap year, playing rugby and teaching at Hastings Boys’ High School, New Zealand. He went to the University of Nottingham to study Economics before working in Verbier, Switzerland, as a chalet host and ski guide.

Josh then did a PGCE in Secondary Mathematics at the University of Bristol before landing his first job as a Maths teacher at the King’s School, Gloucester. Whilst there, Josh also studied a Masters Level qualification in Teaching Advanced Mathematics at the University of Warwick.

Josh joined King’s Worcester in 2010 as a teacher of Mathematics, U12 rugby coach and year group tutor in Wulstan House. In 2012, Josh became Chappel House Tutor and had five very happy years in this role. During this time, Josh led Himalayan Club trips to Turkey and the Forbidden Kingdom of Mustang, Nepal, and coached rugby on the tour to Sri Lanka and Singapore. In 2017 Josh was appointed to the role of Head of Sixth Form.

Josh is married to Lucinda, a Year 6 teacher at King’s St Alban’s, and they have two children, Elodie and Theo. Josh is passionate about running – whether it be with one of the children in the buggy, or crossing the finishing line at the 2019 London Marathon in 2:50:16.

It’s a new year and our first OV of the week for 2021 is Chartered Engineer Lewis Bryer (Cl 78-87). At King’s, Lewis was a monitor, took part in CCF and played for the 1st XV. Lewis took A Levels in Maths, Physics and Chemistry before studying civil engineering at the University of Portsmouth (then known as Portsmouth Polytechnic).

Lewis became a chartered civil engineer in 1996 having completed extensive design and on site civil and structural highway experience with two nationally recognised consulting practices. Lewis assisted in the design and construction of various projects including the M4 tunnels at Newport and the M4 new motorway bridge at Swansea. Lewis also was involved with the design of the Sheffield tramway and the design of the Tingewick bypass in Buckinghamshire.

Soon after becoming chartered, Lewis entered the insurance world and commenced work with Ellis & Buckle chartered loss adjusters. He gained extensive building defect and subsidence experience on complex structural and civil engineering projects. Lewis was involved with many subsidence and landslip events and he managed Insurer’s response to the South Birmingham tornado event in 2005.

In 2005, Lewis decided to set up Bryer Consulting Ltd, a civil and structural engineering consulting practice, based in Malvern. He manages many major insurer loss claims involving flood, fire, subsidence and landslip issues. Lewis also actively resolves structural issues to properties for local housing associations and private clients.

For our final OV of the Week for 2020 we are delighted to feature OV Paul Stevens (H 52-59). Paul’s areas of expertise are in vocational guidance and career coaching of youth and adults and career options analysis, worklife satisfaction and employability assessments. At King’s, Paul was involved in the CCF and was a rowing cox for 4s and 8s and for the Worcester College for the Blind (now New College).

He was involved in Human Resource Management in UK, Canada and in Australia for 21 years. In 1979, Paul founded Australia’s first fee charging career services consultancy for adults, Worklife – The Centre for Worklife Counselling, which he managed until 2005. In 1999, Paul became the founder, tuition designer and student tutor for ten years at The College for Career Practitioners with distance education students in 15 countries. In addition, he trained over 6,000 people in career counselling in Sweden, Norway, Singapore, Malaysia, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia.

Paul has written more than 35 books, guides, texts and workbooks including The Australian Resume Guide, Win That Job!, Stop Postponing the Rest of Your Life, My Third Age: Work & Life Choices, My Life My Work Myself, Career Coaching Guide for Managers, A Passion for Work: Our Lifetime Affair.

Paul has received Special Achievement Awards from several National and International Career Development Associations. Now enjoying retirement in the country where he has lived since 1965 residing at Balmoral Beach, .N.S.W.

This week our OV for the week is communications, PR and marketing professional Sarah Fardon (Os 01-08). As a pupil at King’s, Sarah was involved with Young Enterprise, Duke of Edinburgh, climbing and rowing. After leaving school, Sarah moved to Cardiff and spent six months on placement working in KPMG’s audit team, before spending a further five months travelling around South America, NZ and Fiji. Sarah studied Management Studies at Nottingham University including a semester on exchange in Sydney.

After graduating, Sarah was accepted onto the graduate programme with IBM in London as a Marketing Specialist. After 2 years, Sarah moved into the IBM External Relations team to kickstart her PR career and spent the following 4 years working with IBMers and journalists. This included landing stories on BBC News, Reuters and the Gadget Show, as well as working onsite at The Wimbledon Championships each year.

Sarah moved to JLL in 2018 to expand her PR skills working in a real-estate press office, before spending a year at Capco managing social media and communications for their executive office. Currently Sarah leads Communications for a technology start-up called Cutover where her focus is on expanding their brand presence in the external media. This involves pitching stories and interesting comments to journalists, and writing and publishing branded articles and content across blogs and social media.

Sarah says, “It’s a hugely exciting role and I’m loving it! I started the role during the pandemic and so my entire onboarding process was virtual. My laptop was shipped out to me and I met all of my colleagues virtually! I’ve only been to the office once this year, and now work from my desk overlooking London from Holloway.”

This week our OV of the week is Bruce Haines (Cr 84-89) who is currently writing up a Ph.D. in Art & Business, funded by TECHNE, at Kingston University. Bruce enjoyed art at King’s and also played for the 1st Hockey team. For his A-Levels, Bruce studied Art + Art History, English and Geography.

Bruce studied Fine Art in Liverpool. After a couple of years in Glasgow, Bruce did a one-year postgraduate course in museum studies at the University of St Andrews. This led to a job organising exhibitions at Oriel Mostyn, Llandudno, a beautiful gallery built at the end of the 19th century to show women artists.

Bruce continued curating exhibitions in positions at institute of International Visual Arts and Camden Arts Centre. Bruce worked with some amazing artists, including Jeremy Deller who went on to win the Turner Prize. Along the way, Bruce has written for art magazines, such as Frieze, and organised freelance exhibition projects, including ‘Folk Archive’ (which had prison art, videos of car rallies and bonfire parades, things made by people who would not have then been shown in ‘art institutions’). In 2009, Bruce was curator of the Welsh pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

Recently, Bruce and his wife had negotiated to take over an established art supplies business, but Covid-19 has stopped those plans for now. Meanwhile, Bruce is a trustee of the Li Yuan-chia Foundation, an artist whose work shows at Tate St Ives in an exhibition curated by the Korean artist Haegue Yang. For his Ph.D., Bruce is drawing on his experience of running his own commercial art gallery called ‘Ancient & Modern’ from 2006 to 2016.

We are delighted to feature Harriet Lacey (Br 93-04) as this week’s OV of the Week. Harriet is now one of our amazing teachers here at King’s. As a pupil, Harriet was a monitor and enjoyed taking part in the Himalayan Club and Young Enterprise. Harriet studied Physics AS Level and Biology, Chemistry and Maths A Levels and achieved As in all.

Harriet went on to study Veterinary Science at the University of Bristol, graduating with distinction and took on her first job as a small animal vet in Lincolnshire. She next moved to Newmarket and continued to work as a small animal vet and then, after a few years in practice, Harriet started work as a Veterinary Business Advisor for the veterinary pharmaceutical company Vetoquinol. As part of this role Harriet provided advice and education to vets, nurses, farmers and the general public.

Afterwards, Harriet left the veterinary profession and worked in business for a few years before retraining as a Science Teacher at the University of Worcester in 2019/20. Harriet enjoyed her time at King’s so much she has returned as a Biology teacher to inspire the next generation of budding scientists.

At King’s, Sam played for both the 1st Rugby and 1st Football teams and also took part in Young Enterprise. Sam studied Art, Business Studies, Physical Education and Maths Mechanics at A-level.

After King’s, Sam took a year out to travel in Australia, New Zealand, South East Asia and Europe, before applying through clearing to study Animation at University of West of England. Sam quickly realised that the course would be restrictive for him so moved to London to explore the world of freelance. For the following year, without the luxury of being able to be picky, Sam took on any work he could get, resulting in covering a broad spectrum of ‘design’ including web design, graphic design, illustration and 3D design.

In the search for a stable income, Sam applied for a permanent Interior Designer role. For the next 3 years, Sam managed residential projects in Clapham as well as producing 3D renderings and designing bespoke storage systems. During this time, Sam was also invited by Nike to design a new shoe inspired by his time in London.

In September 2019, Sam started a new role as the Graphic Designer for the GDST (Girls’ Day School Trust). This has involved producing various publications and assets for national advertising campaigns, and supporting the individual schools with a broad range of outputs, from designing scholar journals to producing virtual open days.

In June this year, Sam and fellow OV Emilie Lynch Williams (K 06-13) launched Florence + Blank, a creative platform promoting independent artists and makers. The platform offers a curated range of handmade homewares and artwork, faithfully relating the story behind the craft, both in the journey of the creator and the artistic process underpinning the product.

Nerys joined King’s in the Sixth Form and as a pupil Nerys was involved with D of E and track. Nerys studied English, Economics and Maths at A Level. After King’s, Nerys did a Law degree at Kingston University, took off for a year of travelling, worked for a marketing company in London, travelled a bit more, got married, finished Law school and completed her articles in one of the South West’s leading firms of solicitors in Exeter.

In 1996, Nerys and her husband emigrated to the US and during their early years there, they built up a commercial property business and Nerys’ time was spent managing the many issues that arose – the legal background and the capacity to multitask was always useful.

Yoga always held a fascination for Nerys and when the opportunity to do a teacher training arose, she grasped it thinking that it would be a great way to do more yoga. After friends started asking Nerys to teach them, she started with a couple of classes, and it grew from there. Nerys specializes in a style of Resistance Stretch which works well for increasing range of mobility and relieving aches and pains. Nerys partnered with another yoga teaching friend to open a studio 13 years ago.

Due to the pandemic the majority of their classes are now held on Zoom. Nerys says, “It’s kept our community together, and we’ve had the added bonus of being joined by people from across the country and the world!”

Edward joined King’s School, having previously been a pupil at King’s St Alban’s. He was a King’s Scholar (latterly Senior Scholar), prefect, monitor and Head of Bright House. He was involved in many extra-curricular activities while at King’s including CCF (rising to the rank of Company Sergeant), Young Enterprise, Drama, The King’s Herald, Chess, shooting, football, cross-country and debating, for which he won a number of prizes.

After taking A Levels in Geography, French, Maths and Further Maths, Edward won a place at Dowling College, Cambridge to study Law, where he was also elected President of the Cambridge Union Society. He was awarded a Thouron Fellowship to study at the University of Pennsylvania on a special certificate programme at the Wharton Business School, gaining a Master of Laws from the Law School. On his return to the UK Edward took up the Middle Temple’s Queen Mother Scholarship at Bar School in London before continuing his pupillage at XXIV Old Buildings, where he is still employed.

Edward was appointed a Barrister in 2006 and has acted in a number of high-profile cases. In 2016 he was named Chancery Junior of the year at the Chambers UK Bar Awards. In 2018 he was appointed Queens Counsel, the youngest QC in the country at the time. He has been shortlisted again for a Chambers Bar Award in 2020 as a QC.