Luke Alcock

“Yarra had a strong sense of connection.”

In 2018, Luke Alcock moved to Japan where he is now a manager for a large company that provides English language teachers to schools across the country.

While his life now is far from the grounds of Yarra, his connections and memories of his time at the school remain strong.

“I had a lot of great teachers at Yarra – in Year 7, the year I arrived, Mr Masters helped me adjust to school life and I remember the principal at the time, Mr Lincoln, always urging students to ‘have a go’. That stuck with me,” says Luke.

Luke arrived at Yarra from a small primary school knowing only one other student. But the basketball court was the perfect place to make new friends.

“I was a mad basketballer since I was young and getting on the court during recess and lunch was a great way to meet people. Part of the reason why I went to Yarra was because of the sports opportunities. I played footy, basketball, tennis and was in the swimming team, too. I was pretty active all the way through school and liked to burn off some energy in between classes.”

Luke says the Yarra spirit was contagious and to him it embodied being connected and focused.

“A lot of students ended up being successful in their field because Yarra was a school where you learned to be focused, disciplined and to believe you could achieve what you wanted to achieve through hard work.”

After graduating, Luke’s career path took a number of twists and turns. While he knew he wanted to go to university and he studied Arts and Commerce, it took a while to work out a career path.

He joined Country Road as a planning analyst, worked as a personal trainer and boxing coach and polished concrete for a few years to save enough money to buy his own gym. After meeting his Japanese-born wife he moved to Japan, initially working as an English language teacher for the company where he is now a manager.

Two years ago, his CEO invited Luke to start a business with him and they founded ujimatchatea.com – a business that supplies this healthy form of organic green tea to customers worldwide. Stocks are held in Japan and Australia and they are currently growing to set up warehouses in both the USA and France.

Matcha is made from finely ground dried tea leaves that have been shaded from sunlight before harvest. This increases the amount of chlorophyll, amino acids and nutrients in the tea.

Luke's entrepreneurship has partly been inspired to ‘think big’ by the Yarra motto.

“Look up, wonder, hope and think about what you can achieve,” he says.