Engaging Alumni

The few years when I was heading up both corporate communications and advancement and alumni, even though it was officially two portfolios, it was actually three portfolios. Because advancement and alumni then, alumni wasn't really contributing to advancement. At most universities, they have alumni and advancement together because most of your donors are your alumni. But in our case, that's not the case at all. So in fact, alumni was a whole different portfolio to engage our alumni, to nurture that bond that our alumni has with the university. So it was really three portfolios. But there's a bit of synergy in the sense that the branding, the telling of the SMU stories to the media, we have to package it in even more sophisticated form to the donor. It was really, again, telling the SMU story and convincing them that this is the place that is worthy of their support.