Exceptional

A man of many parts
Engineer, innovator, musician, martial artist, pilot, social entrepreneur –
Nathaniel Peat has many different areas of expertise, but he manages to
switch between them seamlessly.
words Rob Clark_photography Charlie Surbey
Despite initially failing math at school,
Nathaniel Peat was determined to go
to university and to become a pilot,
which he did after taking a first degree
in Mechanical Engineering, followed by
a Masters in Advanced Manufacturing Systems at Brunel
University in Northwest London. Today he divides his time
between GeNNex, a solar and renewable energy technology
company that he cofounded, and The Safety Box, a
nonprofit organization dedicated to helping young people.
I grew up in Tottenham in North London, in an
impoverished area, and a lot of the friends I was
associating with got involved in petty crime. In fact,
some of them got involved in more serious crime. I didn’t
get the grades I wanted to at GCSE [national examinations
taken at 16 in the UK], and I had to push hard to get into
sixth-form college. I didn’t look like the type of young
person who was going to do a physics A level [examinations
taken at 18, required for university entrance], and they
rejected me more than once. But the woman who was head
of the department said: “I’m sure anyone with your level
of determination and drive will be able to do an A level in
physics, and I’m going to put you onto this course as long
as you can pass your GCSE in math while you’re at college.”
That’s when I realized that “no” is only no if you accept it
to be a no.
“‘No’ is only
no if you
accept it to
be a no.”
I had always wanted to be a pilot, and when I was
at university, I thought about ways in which I could
go about making the income to support a career in
aviation. As a youngster, I’d learned to play the violin
and the saxophone, and I was proficient enough to get
a university bursary for music, which meant I was good
enough to teach it. I also learned martial arts from five
years old, so by the time I got to university at age 18, I
was an expert. By teaching people martial arts and music,
I could earn much more money than my
fellow students who were doing nine-tofive
jobs at the weekend. Effectively, I
was trying to get paid to do what I loved
so that I could go on to do something else
I loved! And I did eventually go to the US,
where I achieved most of my licenses and
commercial pilot training.
A lot of what I had done was about helping people,
so I started a business called The Safety Box. It’s a
social enterprise designed specifically to address the
growing concerns of antisocial behavior, low self-esteem
and violence among young people. When I was at school,
I was disengaged with things like math, and I wondered
how I could make it more interesting. So I thought, let’s
connect it to business. Disengagement in the curriculum
leads to behavior issues in the school, and lack of
Exceptional February–June 2016
43