Natasha Chetiyawardana (1998)

Old Edwardian, Natasha Chetiyawardana is an analytical and creative thinker, a mother of one, and a firm believer in trusting one’s own instincts. She is also co-founder of Bow and Arrow, an award-winning digital venturing consultancy acquired by Accenture that works, consciously, with some of the biggest brands in the world.

Mini, John Lewis, Vodafone, Airbnb, Virgin Media and Google are just some of the global players who champion, and have benefitted from the “rigour, commitment and creativity” of working with the Bow and Arrow teams.

Natasha enjoyed the academic rigour at King Edward’s, Class of 1998.

“It spurred me on and I found it really motivating and I found things that I really loved and was passionate about. I felt like I bloomed because I was so interested in the things that I was studying and I was in an environment that enabled this and I’m really grateful.”

“I had a place to do English but I went ‘I’ll do a foundation year to get this Art thing out of my system’.”

The ‘Art thing’ never left her system, instead by the end of the foundation year the opportunity to continue at Central St Martins was presented as an alternative to the traditional academic route.

“This other thing was challenging and frightening and I didn’t know where it could lead, it was uncertain and I knew nothing about it or anyone in it, it was so foreign in every way and so therefore that’s why it made sense to do it!

“The best decisions in my life have been spontaneous ones from my gut, the ones that don’t make sense to other people.”

Like moving to New York. Here she was “professionally match made” with her Bow and Arrow co-founder, by the influential Cindy Gallop “who has encouraged women everywhere to ask for what they deserve not what they think they deserve”.

“Cindy inspired me to not dampen down my natural instinct, to ask or say what I think, although that gets harder with age.”

In industry, creatives were pigeonholed and used only at the last stages of projects when in actuality they had the capacity to influence them from the very beginning. So, in London 2009 Bow and Arrow was created to show the industry what a culture of both creativity and strategy could achieve.

Natasha led the creatives out of the backroom and into the Boardroom – and it’s been an eye-wateringly successful move! So far her company has generated more than $1 billion of growth to their clients’ businesses.

This cultural shift turned the ‘unconventionally brilliant’ Bow and Arrow into pioneers searching out untapped areas within companies or marketplaces known as ‘white space’ to be new arenas for their digital ventures.

Natasha is also particularly committed to promotion and progression for women, building a foundation of respect and equality. With consciousness integral to every project, Bow and Arrow creates and builds new ventures for some of the biggest brands in the world, fulfilling its unmet clients’ needs, helping to redefine the ways we live, learn and work. No wonder its clients are happy.

But it’s Natasha’s dad’s advice that always stays with her. “I remember my father saying to me, you need to work twice as hard as everyone else because you’re a girl and then you need to work twice as hard as that because you’re brown.

“Last year was the first time in my career I was able to talk about colour and race at work, that was something that just wasn’t done.”

Bow and Arrow’s recent successes include ‘Mobolise’ a site dedicated to enabling and empowering black talent in the creative and tech industry – a project with even more relevance after the global Black Lives Matter movement.

And as for advice for her 18-year-old self?

“Be yourself and not who you think you should be. I think that can be very hard when you’re a woman, it can be exacerbated by being a person of colour, personally if you put being a designer on top of that it can feel like you’re fighting a losing battle but assimilation is not the answer, in fact it is the antithesis of the answer…… Being perfect and having everything shouldn’t be the goal, balance is a really important thing to strive for, not perfection.”

Her more general advice to the rest of us is to, “Follow your gut, why wouldn’t you? Life is too short.”

By Erin Duxbury, an Upper Sixth pupil who interviewed Natasha and was particularly grateful for her advice, encouragement and time.