We are pleased to share with the OL community an update from former staff member Major Paul (Ged) Woolley (Hon.), who we know many OLs from the last 10+ years will remember fondly. Here he writes about his fascinating career journey from the military, to Loretto, to gold mines in Africa...
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Some careers move in a straight line. Mine didn't — and I've come to think that's the best thing about it. Looking back, it's really been three careers wearing three very different uniforms, and yet every single one of them was, underneath it all, about the same thing: understanding people, managing risk, and building trust in systems that have to work when it matters most.
Here's how the journey went.
Chapter One: Finding My Feet in Uniform
It all started with an expansive military career — the kind that takes you through more roles, ranks, and postings than you can neatly summarise in a sentence. Working up through the ranks to Senior Non-Commissioned Officer wasn't just a career path, it was an education in itself. You learn to lead people before you learn to manage paperwork. You learn that a good plan means nothing if the people executing it don't trust you. And you learn, fast, that discipline isn't about barking orders — it's about building habits so solid that they hold up when everything else falls apart.
That grounding — leadership, structure, calm under pressure, and a deep, practical understanding of how people behave when the pressure's on — became the toolkit I carried with me into everything that came next.
Chapter Two: My Years at Loreto — It is not a job, it is a way of life!!!
Leaving the forces for private education was a genuine leap — from full-time military life into the world of independent schooling at Loreto School. But it wasn't a clean break, and honestly, I'm glad it wasn't. I kept a toe in the military pool by taking on the Combined Cadet Force, and between that, outdoor education, coaching, and boarding house life, this chapter ended up being one of the richest of my career. If I'm honest, it's the one I still smile about the most.
Running the CCF gave me a chance to build something I was genuinely proud of — taking what I knew from the forces and translating it into something that could shape young people, not just train soldiers. Watching a cadet who arrived unsure of themselves grow into someone who could lead a section, hold their nerve, and support the people around them — that never got old.
Outdoor education was its own kind of magic, even without a hill in sight in Musselburgh itself. Expeditions meant getting pupils out of their comfort zones entirely — up into the Highlands, along the coast, wherever the route took us — and watching them navigate real discomfort, bad weather, and tired legs, then come out the other side more capable and more confident than when they left. There's nothing quite like watching a group of teenagers realise, halfway through a soggy second day, that they can actually do this.
Then there was rugby. Coaching the U15s to an undefeated, league-winning season is one of those achievements that still makes me grin thinking about it. Watching a group of boys turn into a genuine team — one that trusted each other, worked for each other, and went the whole season without losing — was as satisfying as anything I've done in my career. It's hard to describe the feeling of standing on the touchline for that last, unbeaten match.
And underpinning all of it was boarding house life — first in the senior boys' house, then the junior boys' house. Pastoral care, late-night chats, early-morning routines, the small daily business of looking after young people as they grew up away from home — it was demanding, it was relentless at times, and it was also genuinely lovely. You get to know young people in a way that the classroom or the training field never quite allows, and that made the whole experience feel less like a job and more like a privilege.
It was a career built on trust, care, and just enough discipline to keep everyone safe while they had the time of their lives — and I loved pretty much every minute of it.
Chapter Three: From the Hillside to the Gold Vault
The next leap was another big one — out of education and into security implementation, and eventually into assurance and controls work focused on gold loss prevention across operations in Africa.
On paper, this looks like the odd one out. In practice, it's where everything from the previous two chapters quietly came together. The military gave the structure and the calm head. The school years gave the people-reading and the constant, practical habit of reassessing risk on the fly. Now, instead of a hillside or a parade ground, the "terrain" is a mining operation, and instead of weather and fatigue, the risk comes from people who are deliberately trying to beat the system.
Assurance work, at its heart, is asking one simple question over and over: does the control we've put in place actually hold up, or has someone found a way around it? That's not a new question for me — it's the same one I was asking on an expedition route or a rugby touchline at Loretto, just with higher financial stakes and a much more determined "opponent."
The Thread That Ties It All Together
Three very different worlds — the forces, a school, and a mining operation on another continent — and yet the same core skill kept showing up everywhere: understand the people in front of you, build something solid, then go and test it yourself before someone else finds the gap. That habit started in the military, got refined on expeditions, on the rugby pitch, and in the boarding houses at Loretto, and now shows up every day in gold loss assurance work in Africa.
It's not the career path you'd plan on a whiteboard. But it's one I wouldn't trade — because every chapter taught me something the next one needed.
On a separate note, for those that remember Miss Reid, Hope AHM and Seton HM, we finally got round to getting married last year. For me the best thing to come out of Loretto!!!
Major Paul (Ged) Woolley (Hon.)