Senior Speech Night 2014

In the 18th December 2014, former student Bill Pike, returned to BRGS as guest speaker for our Senior Speech Night.  Bill reflected on his life growing up in Staghills before attending Cloughfold County Primary School followed by BRGS.

Post BRGS he went on to study economics at Newcastle University and then became a chartered accountant for Ernst & Young in London being made a partner in 1986 at the age of 32.  He subsequently moved on to become Chief Operating Officer of a new computer games company called Gameplay and in the year 2000 Gameplay was the first company to get a computer, a mobile phone and a TV to all play a computer game online against each other – now taken for granted!  Post Gameplay he became the COO at Marks & Clerk, Europe’s largest firm of Patent & Trademark Attorneys and since 2010 he has been running a charity called the Evelyn Trust in Cambridgeshire which funds medical research with grants going to research on throat cancer, better ways of examining the brains of new born babies and a new surgical training centre so surgeons can practice techniques.

Bill’s key messages to our former sixth form students was to “learn to give back and try to do this from an early age” and to “be brave, take your chances and enjoy your time as you make your mark on the future.”