The London School of Economics, Department of Management, generously hosted the first meeting of GNAM alumni representatives on June 19. Fourteen staff and alumni volunteer leaders from seven schools (ESMT, HEC, IE, Koc, LSE, UCD and Yale SOM) came together for a one-day workshop followed by a social gathering with alumni and students that evening. Representatives of the Technion and IMD also contributed to the discussion.

Professor Sarah Ashwin, Head of the Management Department at LSE welcomed participants and welcomed the opportunity for LSE to engage with the Global Network for Advanced Management and GNAM alumni. An overview of the GNAM was presented followed by presentations from each school outlining their own alumni engagements strategies. While alumni operations at each school are different, there was clear agreement from all participants that the GNAM represents unique opportunities for all schools. Participants felt the GNAM presents a great opportunity to learn from one another including through benchmarking surveys and sharing best practices.

Many ideas were discussed about potential collaborations, both short and long term. Actions agreed included the following: building out a directory of GNAM alumni volunteer leaders in key cities around the world; tracking which alumni participated in GNAM programs as students; gathering alumni volunteer leaders from GNAM schools in key cities to inform them about GNAM and to get them working together to collaborate on joint programming at the city level; opening up individual school alumni events to the GNAM alumni community; and developing joint programming at the network level.

Finally, participants felt that it would be important to convene on a regular basis. It was agreed that an annual physical meeting should occur in Europe, with HEC kindly offering to host the next European meeting in Paris, France, tentatively scheduled for June 24, 2016. All GNAM alumni staff representatives and volunteer leaders are also invited to an international meeting to be held during the Yale Global Alumni Leaders Exchange and Yale Assembly meeting  scheduled for November 18-21, 2015 in New Haven, CT, USA. The GNAM alumni group will also work on convening a regional GNAM alumni leaders meeting in Asia in the fall or spring as well as bringing GNAM alumni leaders together on a more frequent quarterly basis through virtual meetings.