Alumni

Alumni

Tom

I will forever remember the wonderful teachers at the BST, and for being given the role of a computer in the Christmas play one year. I never realised there was a computer present at the birth of Jesus, but at least the teachers realised I was only up to the job of playing an inanimate object. I loved my time at BST, from Japanese class to the annual sports day, and I remember being sad leaving at the age of eight.

From there my family and I moved to Hong Kong, and from age 11 to 18 I went to boarding school in England, followed by Brown University in Providence Rhode Island, US where I studied Religious Studies and was a pre-medical student. I then spent a year learning Spanish, volunteering in a burn victim unit and an orphanage for HIV+ children in Medellin, Colombia before starting at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. After graduating as a doctor last year, I started working for The Dr. Oz Show, a daytime medical television show in NYC where I am a currently medical producer.

In June of this year, I will be starting my medical residency in Family Medicine in NYC. I’d like to thank the BST for being an integral part of this amazing journey, and I hope to see the BST again when I next visit my sister who lives in Tokyo!

Tom Flaherty, MD

Alumni

Katherine

Nice to meet you! I’m Katherine, and I live in Tokyo, working as a translator and interpreter for one of the world’s leading intellectual property firms.

I enjoy salsa dancing, photography, and cooking. I don’t like potatoes.

It all started at the BST. I loved my three years there so much that at age 10, when my family moved back to Hong Kong, I promised myself that I would return to life in Tokyo.

(Obviously I didn’t mature much in the 8 years that followed.) I decided to keep the promise and major in Japanese at university. I studied at Oxford (Hertford College), and my degree also included exchange programmes at Waseda and Kansei Gakuin Daigaku.

On graduation I immediately moved to Tokyo, originally to work in finance. But since language is my passion, I began to attend Simul Academy, with the intention of becoming an interpreter. Which led me to my present position.

I will always be grateful to the BST and its team of great teachers. I will always remember the school plays and the sports days, the assemblies, the headmistress greeting us at the school gate each morning…I will always remember sharing our playground with Shibuya Girls’ High School. I will always remember being terrible at my times tables. And I will never forget my BST friends.