Dan Thompson

What’s this got to do with St Edmund Hall? A surprising amount. When I ran in Baghdad in November an alumnus helped me with my visa to Iraq. I ran with an alumna in Singapore.

And in Italy I ran with three alumni – an American who went on to work for the IMF before becoming a senior adviser to the Indian government; an Italian who was a marketer in the hair care sector before setting up his own translation service; and a Pakistani who now consults for governments and international agencies after a career at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation.

I hope this story gives a sense of the breadth of people you meet at Teddy Hall – as well as the careers they go on to.

I could tell similar stories about the UK where I’ve worked all my life (first in finance and then as an entrepreneur in the music, computer & video games and internet sectors before moving onto life as an angel investor).

In addition to my runs round the world, I’m also running an additional 44 x 10kms around the UK: the idea being to take my total metres run to 2,500,000 – a metre for every cancer sufferer in the UK. My first UK run was in Newcastle and, yes, you guessed it, there were a number of alumni there supporting me.