Sarah Nelson Smith, Class of 1998

Sarah has been the Global Head of Corporate and Commercial Legal at Booking.com since June 2020. She is the author of “You Didn’t Mention the Piranhas: A Crisis Survival Guide”.
Her experiences both in private practice and leading legal teams at Yum! Brands and WeWork earned her repeat listings on the Legal 500 GC Power List, The Lawyer’s Hot 100, and The Lawyer’s In-House Lawyer of the Year Award.

In 2018, Sarah found herself at the heart of a corporate crisis that made headlines worldwide. A distribution failure led to hundreds of KFC restaurants being unable to open, threatening the livelihoods of franchise owners and exposing the company to substantial financial loss and public ridicule. In her book “You Didn’t Mention the Piranhas: A Crisis Survival Guide”, Sarah shares with grace and good humour the lessons learned from the KFC #chickencrisis and many other experiences, offering an insightful and eminently practical guide to preparing for, working through and emerging stronger and wiser from any crisis.

In 2019, Sarah gave an inspirational address at our Prizegiving Celebration. Her words of wisdom resonated all the more strongly because they represented so much of what is (and has always been) at the core of Croydon High: resilience, kindness, good humour and the importance of school friendships, which continue lifelong after the Sixth Form. She gave us five sage pieces of advice. If you have to do it, do so in good humour; If you don’t know, ask; Care, but not too much; Kindness enriches lives; You are enough.

Sarah serves as a trustee of the social justice charity NACRO and trustee for fellow alumna Camilla Bowry’s charity, Sal’s Shoes. She is a frequent speaker on legal and operational topics, on the role of leadership in a crisis, and on matters such as diversity and inclusion and well-being in the workplace.

We caught up with Sarah this week for a Q&A session:

What aspects of Croydon High School did you enjoy and find most rewarding?

I’m prepared to concede to occasionally suffering from Rose-Tinted Glasses Syndrome, but I really enjoyed all aspects of Croydon High School. I joined the school at age 6, so by the time I left, I really felt like a part of the furniture. That sense of belonging to something you truly wanted to be a part of was very impactful and manifested in many different ways. I remember on one occasion when I was in the sixth form, I wanted to run a “Man O Man & Girl O Girl” charity event (based on the fairly swiftly axed ’90s game show hosted by Chris Tarrant). We’d partnered with Trinity Boys’ school, and I’d persuaded the Junior School to let me use their hall for the evening. On the positive side, the event was well attended and raised a decent sum for Cancer Research. On the downside, all did not go entirely to plan. There were illicit drinks brought in, concealed in coats and bags and spilt liberally on floors that the youngest girls would be sitting on, cross-legged, the following morning. The ‘elimination round’ involved a shaving foam ‘cream pie’ to the face, which shaving foam managed to find its way onto the hall’s heavy velvet curtains and the keys of the school piano. My co-host and I watched the night unfold with mounting horror and stayed late into the evening after the audience had left to clean up what we could. Nonetheless, the following morning, a rightly furious Junior School headmistress called a very reasonable Senior School head, Pauline Davies, to convey her thoughts about the scene that had greeted her that morning. And I was called to Mrs. Davies’ office. I was mentally trying to calculate how many Saturday shifts at Sainsbury’s I’d need to do to pay for enormous curtains and a piano as I sat down, and Mrs Davies said, “I hear that last night got a little out of hand?” Before I could reply, she continued, “I know you put a lot of effort into planning it, and you raised a good sum for charity. Well done, Sarah. Leave the rest to me.” Her trust, compassion and support were incredibly impactful, even now, over 20 years on.

What did you aspire to whilst at school?

I always wanted to be a lawyer, a writer and possibly an actress. Two out of three isn’t bad!

How did Croydon High School empower you for your future?

In so very many ways! It goes without saying (and yet I’ll say it anyway) that having a great education opens doors. It empowers you to get the university place or job that you want. It gives you credibility and helps you demonstrate that you deserve whatever you’re aiming for. But more importantly, so many of my non-Croydon High School friends comment on our confidence when they meet any of my Croydon High School girlfriends. I have heard it so many times, that there is a confidence that we have that is tangible in the way that we enter a room, the way that we carry ourselves, the way that we have confidence that we won’t always be right or get it right, but that getting it wrong in no way detracts from our worth as a person. We take failure with good grace and can laugh at mistakes that we’ve made rather than feel broken by them. Having a safe school environment to grow, learn, fail, and try again has taught us at some deeper level that the ups and downs are all part of progress and that they can also be embraced as a part of the journey.

What has been your proudest moment?

I think I have lots of little bubbles of pride and joy that add up to a general feeling that I’m pretty much where I want to be right now. Hearing my name announced as the winner of the In-House Lawyer of the Year Award, hearing my publisher introducing himself as “Sarah’s publisher” at my book launch, seeing my daughters navigate life’s challenges with courage and humour, finishing my first marathon and wanting to cry, but being too dehydrated for tears. I have a clutch of little moments to draw upon to make me smile.

What are your hopes for the future?

To be healthy and happy and to have enough. Enough time with people I love, enough sleep, enough exercise, enough fun experiences and treats. I don’t aspire to have an excess of anything, but to continue to have enough of everything would be perfect.

What would you say to your 15-year-old self?

Gosh, I’d love to meet with her, but I’d struggle to find the right balance between telling her what I know now and what she simply needs to discover for herself. I’d certainly say:
(i) Don’t worry: nobody really knows what they’re doing at 15. Everyone is having similar doubts, worries and insecurities, even if they seem to be doing a better job of hiding them;
(ii) it’s not readily available yet, but look for leave-in conditioner: curly girls don’t need to frizz if they don’t want to, and
(iii) relax: you don’t need to be in a hurry to do or know everything all at once. It’s okay to just give life time to happen at its own pace.

Other than that, I’d leave her be. She had some beautiful friendships, and whilst she made mistakes, she had integrity, so I think I’d step back and let her enjoy the ride.

Mrs Karen Roe
Alumnae Relations Manager

On Saturday 23 September, a few of the Croydon High School Astrogazers came into school for a creative workshop on how to assemble and use our own DIY Satellite Ground Station. Little did we know that we would go on to discover what was going on in Cuban Spy Agencies as well as the Russian Navy Military!

At the beginning of the day, we all headed outside onto the field to set up the first ground satellite station of the day. We found out that the radio frequency spectrum is extremely crowded and we heard some very unpleasant sounds, vaguely resembling the school fire alarm!

Since the 1960s our planet has been imaged by artificial, earth observation satellites. Satellite images are one of the many materials shared over the radio spectrum. The radio spectrum is home to many different signals, information, noises made by individuals, institutions, machines, the earth, our sun, and other celestial bodies and is therefore an extremely congested space.

So after a little bit of playing around with which frequencies we wanted to capture, we finally landed on the correct ones to collect data from the satellite we were trying to track – NOAA. By the end of our observations, we had recorded enough data to produce a satellite image of a section of the Earth and were trying to guess which sections were which countries. Mrs Karteepan definitely beat us all! Do you recognise any?

We learnt about how the radio frequencies are shared out between different groups of people and how you can apply for an (amateur radio licence) to project your own broadcasts into the world.

After setting up our antennae, we tuned into various radio stations. Here are a few that we found…

“I came across a funny station called “Unlimited Sound Effects” where there was the sound of a rubber ball being bounced on repeat!” (Aarya P.)

“I came across a podcast telling stories of witches and demons and angels.” (Alisha A.)

“There’s lots of music playing and we get to explore all of the stations. I enjoyed finding interesting stations like the USA navy! I felt a bit like a spy! 🤫” (Ava P.)

It was really fun and interesting to be learning so many new skills in such an interactive way and it was an incredible experience for everyone. It was fascinating to go through the process to obtain satellite images of Europe and dive into the radio part of the Electromagnetic spectrum.

We cannot wait for tomorrow’s workshop as our antennas will be receiving radio waves transmitted by antennas on NOAA satellites. We will be receiving radio waves that originate from the antenna of the NOAA satellite, pass through earth’s atmosphere, and arrive at earth’s surface.

Thank you so much to our host, Dr Sasha Engelmann, from OpenWeather and Royal Holloway University for taking the time to present us with this exciting opportunity.  It has been a thoroughly enjoyable experience and I am sure that we will all value the fact that we now know how to hijack and hack into other radio stations and how you can literally tune into any radio you would like to at any time!

Follow us on Instagram and YouTube to get all the updates on our missions!

Anaiya S, Year 9
Crew Operations and Resources Engineer at Astrogazers

On Monday, Year 1 received an unexpected package. On further investigation, they discovered that is was a book entitled Meerkat Mail. The sender remains unknown…! In order to help them with their descriptive writing, they went to on a trip to The Arc Centre to visit the meerkats.

Year 1 also had the opportunity to hold millipedes and giant snails as well as feed the capybaras. Some of the girls were even brave enough to stroke Popcorn the corn snake.

‘The best bit of the day was feeding the capybaras.’ – Rhea

‘I enjoyed it when the meerkats jumped up onto my leg’ – Inayah

‘I noticed that the belly of the snake looked like a set of piano keys’ – Layla

‘ I loved being in with the meerkats with them climbing on me and feeding the capybaras was fun’ – Noelia

Mrs Jo Harrison
Year 1 Class Teacher

As part of their preparation for the fieldwork questions in their GCSE we took 34 geographers to Southwold in Suffolk from Friday 22 to Sunday 24 September. Our base for our preparatory talks was the excellent Geography Fieldwork Academy (GFA), led by the owner Chris. The students learnt about the fascinating background of the town and processes such as the role of regeneration and rapid rise in second home ownership. As well as developing qualitative and quantitative data collection methods and analysing our findings, the students had time for some fun, such as eating fish and chips and huge ice creams, trying out the GFA’s drone over the northern end of the beach and a trip on an exhilarating rib boat. We received wonderful feedback about how engaged and courteous the Croydon High geographers were and it was a pleasure to take them to Southwold. We can’t wait to go back next year with our current Year 10s!

Here are some thoughts from our fantastic geographers:

“The best bit of Geography I learnt was understanding which direction longshore drift is happening in and how quickly it is occurring . I enjoyed throwing oranges in the sea and watching which direction it is going in and how quickly it is travelling.” – Mia

“The best bit of geography I learnt from the trip was the usage of GIS to present fieldwork data because GIS is a very useful tool which can be used to present geographical data on maps which helps to put data results in context.” – Zariya

“I loved filling in the booklets especially when we were doing physical geography like the orange test. Chris explained everything so well that it wasn’t hard to follow the instructions.” – Penelope

“The best geographical knowledge that I obtained from this trip was probably the field work skills regarding data collection, as this was rather novel, being something that we would not have been able to learn in the classroom. I particularly liked the techniques that we used to gather information on the effect of groynes on longshore drift, as the techniques that we used would not otherwise have occurred to me. We found out the amount of sand that they had trapped by measuring from the top of the groyne to the sand underneath it on either side to see how much more had built up on the South sides of the groynes.” – Ellie

“Seeing all of the hard engineering and soft engineering put into place theory into real life. I think it helped me understand it even more as I could see what was happening right in front of me.” – Lily

“I liked learning about how Mr Boggis created his own sea defences to protect the cliff next to house so his house didn’t fall into the sea.” – Sam

“I loved the speedboat because it was so fun and exciting! The music and whole vibe was so enjoyable and funny, I definitely want to come back.” – Amalie

“Spending time walking around the town and being in the arcade was nice. I also really enjoyed flying the drone and seeing a bird’s eye view of the North beach. The speedboat trip was of course a highlight; it was a really fun way to end the trip.” – Lily-Belle

“The speed boat and crabbing was amazing.” – Amelia

“I loved the data collection; I liked the footfall survey and the environmental quality survey. My favourite memory of Southwold was definitely the free time in the pier and the highstreet. I really enjoyed the arcade where we won multiple tickets and won some keychains. I also loved the ice cream and the sausage rolls.” – Bethan

Mrs Alice Mollison
Head of Geography

The candidates had to fill out an application form and attend an interview with Miss Pendleton and Mrs Krishnamurthy before being entrusted with this responsibility. We are confident that they will work hard and do their best to fulfil the expectations of this role. 

Congratulations and good luck to this wonderful team of Digital Leaders!

Mrs Maya Krishnamurthy
Head of Junior School Enterprise Technology

Black History Month has been celebrated in the UK for almost 36 years.

As we have two weeks for half-term, our programme of activities will start 2 October – 6 November.

Black History Month originated in the USA by historian Carter G. Woodson in 1926, highlighting the contributions of black Americans to society. Since February 1976, there have been annual celebrations recognising achievements by African Americans.

Black History Month started in the UK October 1987 by Akyaaba Addai-Sebo, who was a coordinator of special projects in the Ethnic Minorities Unit at the Greater London Council (GLC). Black History Month focused on the history and achievements of African, Caribbean and Black British people.

Why do we celebrate Black History Month? Black people have been living in the UK since at least Roman times, and have contributed to society as academics, servicemen/women during both world wars, educationalists, writers, artistes, politics, sport etc. Raising awareness is important for everyone. It is not just about slavery.

The LRC has a packed programme – from book and visual displays, to a book challenge, a Science Trail, music during break times/late club, video clips on various subjects e.g. space science by Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock and The Big Black History Month Beat-The-Clock Quiz on Friday 13 October at 12:30pm. This is a team quiz (maximum 6 pupils per team) and sign-up sheets will be available in the LRC from 2-9 October.

We hope everyone enjoys Black History Month. Please encourage all pupils to come into the LRC and participate in the activities – especially the The Big Black History Month Beat-The-Clock Quiz where prizes will be awarded for the winning teams!

Ms Angela Rolle
Learning Resource & Innovation Hub Manager

View the full list of raffle prizes – got to be in it to win it!

We are so pleased and grateful to Jemca Toyota Croydon for sponsoring our Netball and Hockey Tour of South Africa later this year.