Edward: James Hewitson OW 1992

I was at KESW between 1990 and 1992, and was Head of House of Edward in my final year.  

Some of my best memories of KESW revolve around sports; I won the Victor Ludorum Cup, and I’m still the current Long Jump Record Holder, with a jump of 6.26m. I also played for the 1st XI football team, 1st XI cricket and int he Edward House football team.  

Regarding lessons, I really enjoyed Maths with Mr Jarman (Statistics), which is still proving useful in business today, especially in analysing data effectively.  

After I finished at KESW, I took some retakes to try and improve my A Level grades which didn’t prove to be any more successful, so I decided to work in Hospitality and worked at a Restaurant called the ‘Mississippi Exchange’ in Guildford. I joined a management training scheme after 12 months and worked in Branded Restaurants in Reading, Liverpool and Birmingham, before heading oversees to open TGI Fridays in the Middle East, Egypt, Kuwait and Dubai. I quickly moved into running restaurants within hotels, and have been working in hotels for more than 20 years now. 

This has enabled me to travel across many different countries and have some wonderful experiences working in Thailand, Bahrain, Oman, Malta, Kuwait, Maldives, Mozambique and the UAE. I currently work for Anantara Resorts as the General Manager for ‘Anantara The Palm Dubai’ and enjoy the challenges of being a hotelier, especially within a market like Dubai which is experiencing strong growth in this sector. Our hotel is able to generate over 100 million USD in sales and we employ over 800 staff which keeps life entertaining. The very social and friendly environment at KESW certainly helped me in my career to engage with people of all nationalities and beliefs.