Despite pursing a truly international career path after being at Merewether public and high schools in the 1980s, Mike Exton’s connections from his school days remain very strong.

Mike studied in Germany, has worked in Switzerland and Taiwan, and currently works in the United States.

“Our family’s closest circle of friends has a couple of people from school days, one all the way back to MPS! But I’m very close with more than a dozen of my MHS classmates, and connected with the majority of them,” said Mike.

“We are still all very supportive of each other, celebrating achievements, helping folks through hard times, and coming together in the unfortunate circumstances of now losing some of our dear friends.”

Mike remembers his days at the Merewether schools fondly, graduating in 1981 and 1987.

“I just remember them being a happy place.In high school in particular I couldn’t ride my bike fast enough of a morning to get to school and start the pre-class game of handball!

“There were a number of staff who influenced me along the way. Two that are top of mind are, at MPS, Mr Bruce Slade, who was Principal. An imposing figure with a booming voice, who expected discipline and order. In addition however he was very connected with students, would listen to their opinion and engage with them very personally.

“And at MHS, Laurie Crowe, my biology teacher. An educator who was passionate for his craft, engaging with his students, was always smiling, and accepting of all of quirks and foibles.

“The engagement with Laurie and the entire science department at MHS led me to doing a science degree at Newcastle Uni, and subsequent PhD. I went to Germany as an Alexander von Humbolt scholar, that country’s highest academic scholarship for foreign academics. I did a second PhD there and worked on Faculty for a total of 6 years.”

Mike went on to replicate his academic success in the business world.

“I returned to Australia and commenced work with a pharmaceutical company, Eli Lilly, working in clinical research, business development, marketing and management.

“I then moved to Novartis, a Swiss pharmaceutical company, and worked across Australia, Switzerland (2 years), Taiwan (2 years) and in the USA for the last seven years.

“These have been in increasing levels of leadership, my last role with Novartis running an $8bn business with 2,000 people. Recently I have become CEO of Lexicon pharmaceuticals, a public biotechnology company in the US.”

Mike believes the seeds of his management ability were sown at school, in particular through Mr Slade.

“It was already an early life lesson in leadership,” said Mike.