'Boarding offered me important lessons in life'

Sahil Patel says his experience as a boarding student at RGS taught him some very important lessons in life. He went on to study chemistry at the University of Nottingham - after taking A-levels in chemistry, physics and economics - followed by a University of Oxford master’s degree in business, and now works as strategy and innovation manager at the payments platform, Paysafe


Q: How did your career path develop after university?

A: After leaving Nottingham, I worked as a management consultant for six years, working with a range of companies helping them best implement the latest technologies to drive efficiencies and growth. I realised I wanted a change, but wasn’t sure what to do next, so decided to return to university to pursue a master’s degree in business administration at the University of Oxford. It was here I became interested in financial technology (fintech) and now I work at the payment company Paysafe, in the strategy and innovation team.

My job is to help drive revenue growth by identifying new products and services to offer our customers.

Q: What was it that inspired you to follow this path?

A: My time at Oxford was eye-opening in terms of possible career paths. The students on my course came from highly varied professional backgrounds, from banking through to the charity sector, and I learnt a lot from them about those industries. The fintech industry stood out for me for several reasons. Firstly, the UK has been a hotbed for high-growth and pioneering companies which would give me good career advancement opportunities. Secondly, technology drives the industry, which means I would be working with the latest tools across data, machine-learning and artificial intelligence and this was highly attractive to me as I find the advancements in technology to be fascinating. And lastly, I was inspired by fintech’s ability to boost financial inclusion. Currently, a bank would struggle to offer refugees, immigrants or even international students a bank account because they don’t have a UK issued ID or permanent UK address. Fintechs are able to provide services to these people which helps contribute to economic growth by stimulating entrepreneurship, increased savings and expanding investment opportunities.

Q: What is a typical day like?

A: In the strategy team at Paysafe, we tend to work on short but intensive projects which typically last six to eight weeks. A typical day during one of these projects would include analysing data to understand our business performance and trends, undertaking market research to understand how our competitors operate and what products and services they offer, and creating hypothesis and tests to perform with our products so we can make decisions on what to do next.

Q: What have been the highlights of your career to date?

A: When I was working as a management consultant, many of the projects I worked on were very interesting and involved cool technologies, but the benefits tend to be limited to a specific team or addressed a specific problem. When I left management consulting, one of the things I was looking for was to be able to have a bigger impact in my next role and I was able to achieve this at Paysafe. I helped launch a new corporate strategy that would impact the entire business and help drive growth for the next three years. This was a major project that took months of analysis, research and working with the various business units and senior management. This is the highlight of my career because it was the first time I was able to make an impact that truly changed the direction of a company.

Q: What’s the best bit about your job?

A: The variety of work. The projects I work on can vary from designing new products and features, forecasting the impacts of regulation and legal changes, assessing acquisition targets, and working out which business case should be invested in.

Q: And the worst?

A: As is typical at a large company, things can move slowly especially when your work impacts many different teams, and you require multiple approvals before you can implement change. This sometime means the proposals made won’t get implemented for several months (or years!) later which sometimes means you don’t see the results of your work.

Q: What was the most important thing you learnt at RGS?

A: I boarded at RGS and I think that experience taught me a lot. The most important learning I took away and still practise today is the power of routine. Knowing that you have a set time every day for homework helped me avoid procrastination and to focus. I apply the same rules to my professional work today, where I carve out a couple of hours a day for ‘focus time’ to ensure I can get through my to-do list in a timely and effective manner.

Q: What extra-curricular activities were you involved in while at RGS, both in and out of school, and how valuable were they?

A: I took part in the Young Enterprise programme, which was highly valuable because it was my first experience in a business setting, albeit a very informal one. I took the role of financial director and helped track our budding enterprise’s revenue growth and costs and ensured we made a profit by the end of the programme. This experience was one of the first that got me interested in business and made me start to think about what I really wanted to do for work and not just want I thought looked interesting from a TV programme. I would highly recommend students taking part in this activity.

Q: What do you wish you’d known back then?

A: I wish I had known that the direction of your career and personal life is not linear. You will need to adapt along the way and acknowledge that the destination you had in your mind when you were younger will change. Be ready for change, be patient and allow yourself to be flexible through your journey.

Q: What was your dream when you were at school?

A: I wanted to be a lawyer initially, but quickly realised I was much better at maths than reading or writing English, so that plan changed quickly.

Q: What is the one piece of advice you’d give students interested in following a similar career path?

A: I would say that management consulting can be a great place to start your career. You work on projects for companies across different industries and you meet so many people from those companies that you can really gain useful insight into whether that industry or even that company would be a good place to work for you. A lot of management consultants end up specialising in an industry they like and then will move to work for a company in that industry and sometimes, if you are good and people like you, you can be recruited by the company you are consulting for.

Q: Who was your favourite teacher and why?

A: My favourite teach was Mrs Caldwell (Miss Boultby when I knew her). She had an enthusiasm for chemistry which influenced me to pursue chemistry at university. She always had such an energy and positivity in the classroom which really resonated with me. She also joined us for an expedition to Peru, so it was great to get to know her a little outside the school environment.

Q: Who or what inspired you when you were at school?

A: I think friendly competition really pushed me in school. I have two older sisters who did very well in terms of exam results and I also had a group of friends who were very smart and had very good grades. Having family and friends set a high benchmark really pushed and motivated me as I didn’t want to have the worst results. As a friendship group, we used to push each other to be better, we helped each other with homework questions when we struggled, and we learned from one another which made each of us perform better.

Q: What would you say has been your greatest success?

A: Being selected to study at Oxford for my master’s degree was a great success for me. Getting into the programme was highly competitive and the degree has given me an excellent platform to accelerate my career and enabled me to move into my choice of industry.

Q: What are your hopes for the future?

A: Personally, I recently got married and am looking forward to starting a family soon. On a professional level, I would like to join a start-up to learn how to run and manage a business before starting my own business likely in the payments space.

Q: What do you miss most about Ripon?

A: There are two things that come to mind. First was playing football every lunch time. This was a central part of my school experience, and I have great memories of playing heads and volleys. Second was playing cards in the six-form common room during breaks and free periods. Cards had to be banned from the common room as people were missing lessons, so apologies if later years couldn’t have the same experience.