10 Gates Cambridge Scholars from 2007 talk about how Gates Cambridge forged enduring friendships that have provided a support network for life.
Gates Cambridge is one of the most non-judgmental groups and that’s what drew me to it. We are all quirky, imperfect people and one of its lasting characteristics is inclusion.
Greg Jordan
Mateja Peter, Gillean Denny, Liz Dzeng, Maria Pawlowska, Jakub Szamalek, Greg Jordan, Albert Chiou, Eva-Maria Hempe, Jochen Brandt and Sri Raj have known each other for nearly two decades. They’ve been on different career paths since leaving Cambridge – a third are in academia, a third are medics [or their spouses are] and a third do something very different, from writing computer games to managing a healthcare and life science team looking to unlock the potential of AI in genomics, drug discovery, medical imaging and medical technology.
But they share one thing. Gates Cambridge. The Scholarship programme brought them all together and they continue to meet up 18 years later. Their circle has enlarged over the years to encompass spouses and children [in Maria’s case she married fellow Scholar Jakub], but the 10 core members have remained stalwart friends.
For the most part they met at orientation in 2007. “Orientation was super important,” says Maria, who recalls being impressed to learn that Greg had just been on an expedition with penguins in Antarctica. “You were the first person I met who had seen penguins in the wild,” she states.
Liz says orientation may have been the start, but there were other Gates Cambridge outings soon after that cemented the bond, such as the Gates Cambridge cruise down the Thames. “It felt like these were quality close friends very early on,” she says. Mateja adds: “We got to know each other before we got to know Cambridge as a town.”
Mateja said everyone was at different colleges and they shared a desire to have the full Cambridge experience. Knowing each other they could see inside – and have dinner at – all the different colleges. “It was a way of exploring Cambridge,” said Mateja. “It meant we were not bound by our colleges, houses or departments. And we saw Cambridge through each other’s eyes.”
A deepening friendship
Over the years at Cambridge, they travelled a lot in Europe and those experiences helped to deepen their friendship. Eva-Maria recalls staying in a small apartment in Nice with mattresses everywhere. Half of the group had the swine flu at the time.
Several of the 10 were on key Gates bodies and so were very embedded in the community. Sri, Liz and Greg were members of the Gates Cambridge Scholars Council. Maria and Liz are on the alumni association board.
Greg says simply: “We go through life being in many different communities and institutions. The core identity that has stuck with me most is Gates Cambridge. I attribute it to being young, to positive feelings and I have kept up with it for years after. It hasn’t been the same with my college or high school. It’s like a close-knit family. I have just felt more eager to stay in touch with my Gates Cambridge community.”
Liz says it is not just their group that feels that way. She has friends from other cohorts who come to stay and she has worked with Gates Cambridge scholars. “There is a meaning for me in the Gates Cambridge community,” she states. “A recognition of a common shared experience.” Sri, who has also worked with Gates Cambridge Scholars, adds that she feels as if Gates Cambridge Scholars speak a similar language and are very much vision-oriented.
Maria adds that what helped ensure the group didn’t disperse after Cambridge was that everyone got married soon after leaving which meant there was more or less a reunion every year. Maria and Jakub had the first wedding. “Then people picked up and ran with it,” she laughs. The most recent wedding was Sri’s, just before Covid. Gillean smiles, saying Sri took a while to plan her wedding so she started organising a get-together. “It was the first time we planned a trip because we ran out of weddings,” she says. “That started the next episode in this group’s friendship. We now make a point of getting together.” A week after the first planned get-together, Sri announced her wedding date.
Regular meet-ups
Gillean has been a key organiser of meet-ups and they’re now bigger affairs as several of the scholars have children. “She’s a rock star at rallying the troops,” says Sri. The last meet-up was in summer 2024 at a big house in Canada. Fourteen adults came and nine children. Those kids range in age from 10 to one. They call themselves the Gates family. Eva-Maria describes that last trip as a cross between “daycare and a commune”. The older children looked after the younger ones and everyone got on.
The good news is that, being Gates Cambridge Scholars, they are all type A personalities in some way, says Sri. “That means someone will always pick up the slack, for instance, do the dishes. It can be problematic like in Nice where five people were trying to speak French, but we have all mellowed out a bit now,” she laughs.
The group, which spans North America and Europe, meets as a group every two years or so, but individuals drop in on each other when they are travelling. Many have jobs that mean they are travelling a lot. During Covid they met online and did activities such as cooking together.
Maria and Jakub say that Gillean and her husband were life savers when they moved to Canada in the middle of Covid with their young daughter. They put them up and helped them choose a car. Gillean also designed their house. Greg says Maria and Jakub in turn clothed him when he arrived in Canada with his daughter and lost their luggage. Greg was one of the first people to visit Sri after her baby was born during the pandemic.
Sharing successes big and small
Apart from personal issues, the group sometimes share professional challenges, even if they are not in the same field, for instance, managing teams or grants being terminated. It gives them a wider perspective on the problem. Mostly, though, they keep things light and focus on positivity, sharing successes big and small. “This group is really good at cheerleading and support, whatever your passions are,” says Gillean.
There has even been some crossover into each other’s jobs. Jakub is a successful video games writer, working on games including The Witcher. He put Jochen into a game. Jochen has also provided him with expert chemistry advice. “It was one of the coolest things,” says Liz, whose surname is in another game.
As the group is getting bigger they need bigger places to meet. They’ve done a castle in France and last year they were in a big house overlooking a lake in Canada. A few members of the group are meeting in Costa Rica next year and a full reunion – for their 20th anniversary – is in the offing soon.
Greg sums up what the ‘Gates family’ means to him. “It is one of the most non-judgmental groups and that’s what drew me to it,” he says. “We are all quirky, imperfect people and one of its lasting characteristics is inclusion.”
*An edited version of this interview appears in the Gates Cambridge 25th anniversary magazine, which can be accessed here.
