Dear Old Hymerians

Doesn’t time fly.  It feels like only yesterday that I took to the stage at the annual Old Hymerian Dinner for my first official engagement as Old Hymerian President.  That was back in September 2022.

I had a wonderful year, meeting so many brilliant people, attending loads of events, and supporting the wonderful Development Office in their work to further engage and grow the alumni community. It was a very busy 12 months but a very enjoyable one. I have to say my public speaking has also come on leaps and bounds, and I’ve even started to quite enjoy it.

Being the Old Hymerian President comes with an overwhelming sense of pride in our alumni community and a real sense of belonging. I’ve made some wonderful friends along the way and a real highlight for me was reconnecting with so many alumni at the various events.

As most of you will already know, 2023 marked the 130th anniversary of the founding of Hymers College and I’d like to thank everyone who nominated and voted for the ‘130 notable alumni’. We can all be very proud of the rich and diverse communities with so many examples of those who have achieved the extraordinary.

While our stories are all very different and we have an alumni community across the world, from every kind of background, with every skill set you can imagine, we each share unique and special friendships and memories from Hymers that will never leave us.

I would also like to thank everyone who volunteered their time and expertise to the alumni community and continues to do so. There are so many ways you can get involved these days from keeping up-to-date with the history of the school through its new digital archives (and if you’ve not yet explored this section of the website, then I urge you to do so) to attending the various alumni events to sharing your experiences and knowledge with current pupils.

I personally found ‘giving’ back to Hymers extremely rewarding and during my presidency, I was fortunate to be able to offer work experience placements to a handful of law students, attend the careers evening, and speak to the law society club about the differing routes to a carer in law and the work we do at Hudgells. I would like to say that the pupils were interested in my story, but this simply was the not true as I was joined and upstaged by our Executive Chairman and founder ‘Neil Hudgell’, who inspired the next generation of aspiring lawyers by sharing stories about Public Inquiry work and some of our bigger cases including the Post Office Horizon Scandal and Manchester Arena Terrorist Attack. Now how can I compete with that?

Finally, I would like to share how honoured I feel to have represented you all and I hope to see many of you again soon, hopefully at the 35 years of co-education celebration on Saturday, June 15 2024.

Best wishes,

Helen- Mary Saunders
Former OHA President 2022-23
OH 1990 - 2000