St Bridget’s: Carole Presern née Halligan OW 1973

I arrived at KESW in Sept 1966, aged 11, and stayed there until summer of 1973.  I was in St. Bridget’s House – the place to be if you liked sports. Not that I knew that at the time.  

My best memory of being at school is not a singular memory, but multiple memories mainly around the people you meet, and who become your friends for life.  You will inevitably take different paths, maybe live in different countries, but there is a ‘glue that binds’ from the KESW years, and you can pick up where you left off 20 years ago, in a heartbeat.  That is something really special. If I had to choose one memory, maybe it’s being made ‘victrix ludorum’. I’ve always been horribly competitive (it’s not something I’m proud of but I’ve learned to own it).  

My favourite lessons were generally those taught by inspiring teachers, so I loved Latin (shout out for Herbie Winter, now sadly no longer with us); he once memorably took us around a supermarket to prove that Latin was not a dead language and did his weekly shop in Latin.  History – the teachers had some particular views on life and politics which I didn’t necessarily pick up at the time, but the personalities of the past fired my imagination. I loved Biology, with ‘Haggis’ (aka Miss McKinnon – we were a rude lot, but nearly all staff had monikers), and was gutted when the exam board wouldn’t give me an exemption to not dissect a dogfish for A level (I’d offered to dissect anything, absolutely anything, but not a fish – I have a full blown fish phobia), and on such arbitrary decisions is one’s whole career path changed… 

I spent a lot of time in various fields/courts in wind, rain and snow (and the occasional sunny patch).  I quickly learned that being good at knocking a ball around or running fast was a great way to escape at weekends for away matches. We had a league table of where the best teas could be had. I played pretty much everything and became eventually Captain of Tennis (with Diana McGinty) and Captain of Hockey. I didn’t have much time for Clubs, because if you were in the Choir you spent a LOT of spare time – such as it was – practising (choir was another wheeze to have something to actually do – we spent a lot of time in Chapel).  But Choir and Choral Society left me with a lifetime passion for singing, and I am still in a local chorale here in Switzerland. 

My career was set by KESW, long story, but I determined at age 11 that I would work outside the UK.  So, I meandered through nursing, midwifery, and a degree in anthropology from UCL to set myself up for leaving. Several months in a camp for Cambodian refugees just after the genocide cemented my will. I got a job recruiting health volunteers to go overseas with VSO, then went to run their field office in Nepal. Three children (one of whom went to KESW, Julia), and a PhD later, I worked for the British government for the next 15 years in Pakistan, Nepal (again) and Zimbabwe advising how to spend taxpayers’ money in the health and HIV and AIDS space. I got posted to Geneva in the UK Mission basically being a negotiator in various multilaterals, and never left. I went on to GAVI, WHO and the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. I’m still working as a Professor of the Practice in Global Health Policy at LSHTM, and at the Graduate Institute in Geneva.  My kids (and Colin, also KESW, and a ‘bestie’) keep up the ‘retirement is not meant to be a concept’ theme, but they know me well, and I’ll have to be carried out of the buildings… 

My main success is having three wonderful children (Emma, Julia and Andrej) who are all compassionate, politically astute, socially aware and just good people. If you mean something career wise I nearly called my inaugural lecture ‘Spectacular Failures and the Occasional Success’ but plumped for ‘Notes from a Global Health Nomad’ – but if I had to pick out one, I imagine pulling off the very first replenishment for the Global Fund, with Kofi Annan as the host. The Global Fund has invested US$65 billion since then in support to health systems, and HIV, TB and Malaria in over 100 countries.