Jadon graduated from Ambleside School of Hout Bay in 2013.

After Ambleside

After graduating from Ambleside, I earned my Bachelor of Commerce in Actuarial Science at University of Cape Town. After working in insurance in South Africa for a time, I moved to Ireland where I qualified as an actuary at the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries in the UK. I worked for seven years doing actuarial work in a large agency before taking my current position.

Current Role

Head of Underwriting at a startup insurance agency

The Long-term Impact of an Ambleside Education

My grandfather is an actuary, and when I was young, he would explain his work to me until eventually I became very interested in doing it myself. I’ve also always loved math, and it just so happened that one of my math teachers at Ambleside was an actuary. She took me under her wing and nurtured that love of mathematics to the point that I went and studied it on my own.

Because of the way teaching was done at Ambleside, I cultivated the ability to learn by myself. So after I completed my three years of actuarial studies, I was able to study and take the exams independently of the university while working, which is a two-year process that most people undertake as a full-time student.

Ambleside gave me a deep-rooted love of learning. I left school with this natural drive to keep discovering; whether that’s refining a loaf of sourdough, understanding how my body changes through endurance training, digging into complex statistics at work, or noticing little details in nature with my son. Only later did I realize this mindset was intentionally cultivated.

A Habit That Endured

The habit of attention is something that I have taken on as a lifestyle. When I was studying at university, I realized I would study for a short, intense period and then take a walk or listen to classical music. That was very different from what my fellow students would do, spending six hours at a time studying at the library.

At work, I do 45 minutes of focused attention where I shut off everything around me and focus on one thing. Or when I’m playing with my boys, I’m solely focused on them. All other distractions are put away so I can focus on the task, relationship, or idea at hand.

This rhythm is something I try to cultivate in my children. When I was in school, we’d go out into nature and pay attention to one specific thing. I loved this and now I do it with my son. We go for a walk every weekend, and we’ll pick one thing to focus on, like the bark of a tree. The silver birch has bark that we can pull off, and he brings it home as paper. So now he can identify the silver birch, and he notices the different types of trees. He says, “Look, it’s an acorn, Dad. This must be an oak tree.”

Many people can’t sit down and read a book these days because it’s not that stimulating and you have to pay attention for an hour at a time. I want my kids to see me reading and want to do it themselves. Reading a book is one of the most effective things you can do to become a better person. That is a gift I want to give them.