Dear Fellow Alumni,
It is with pleasure that I greet you as the new Chairwoman of the Wharton Alumni Association Board of Directors. The Board is charged with overseeing the 81,000 person community worldwide which includes all Wharton alumni—undergraduate, graduate, and PhD. It is our mission to enhance our world-class alumni community, to truly engage (and re-engage) all of you. In order to achieve this mission, we are committed to continuing to strengthen our alumni and affinity clubs worldwide, and identifying new resources, and implementing new services that meet the needs of all of you…wherever you are in your alumni lifecycle. Our goal is simple—to better connect our community and to find new ways to engage all alumni. In order to do this, we need to hear from you.
Whether you are a dealmaker, corporate executive, chief family officer, entrepreneur, artist, philanthropist, retiree, or recent graduate—your opinion is critical to our mission of improving the quality and delivery of the Wharton alumni value proposition.
World-Class Alumni Board
Our Board is in the midst of significant transformation and I am excited to announce the recent election of Corridor Capital CEO, Craig Enenstein, WG’95 G’95, as Board President. I look forward to partnering with Craig as we lead our Board forward in its next stage of evolution. Craig has been a major contributor to the Board over the past five years, most recently by successfully restructuring the Wharton reunion program, now stronger than ever before. We were also excited to have eight alumni join our Board in July 2006 who are committed to lending their expertise and leadership to move our mission forward. They are:
Christian Hernandez, WG’03, Strategic Partnerships Manager, Google, Inc. (London, England)
Janet K. Kinzler, WG’92, Portfolio Manager, SIT Investments (Minneapolis, MN)
Rocky Lee, WG’95, GrW’07, Partner, Pounce Sports LLC (Philadelphia, PA)
L. David Mounts, WG’04, EVP & CFO, Domino’s Pizza, Inc. (Ann Arbor, MI)
Rob Newbold, WG’99, Managing Principal, Graham Partners (Philadelphia, PA)
Vedat Sadioglu, W’86, Managing Partner, Kapital Factoring Hizmetleri A.S. (Istanbul, Turkey)
Leslie Morgan Steiner, WG’92, General Manager, The Washington Post (Washington, DC)
Ronica Wang, WG’90, Managing Partner, InnoGrowth (Hong Kong, Toronto)
A Call to Connect and returning to the Board, Meesh Joslyn Pierce, W’93, WG’98, Gibraltar Homes LLC (Los Angeles, CA).
How You Can Make a Difference
As I traveled around the globe this past year meeting many of you at the Global Alumni Forums in Mumbai, Istanbul, and Rio de Janeiro, it became clear to me that we need to continue doing more to bring us closer together. Our Board is determined to better connect (and reconnect) each of us through shared interests, to identify new levels of services that meet the changing needs of our ever evolving life stages…and to hopefully have a positive impact on the larger world community in which we live.
For each alumnus, the Wharton alumni value proposition means something different. Our Board has been working closely with the Wharton administration to ensure that we can deliver to each of you the appropriate Wharton alumni product. We will continue to enhance the Wharton alumni experience by delivering professional, social and educational benefits to our alumni at various lifecycle stages locally, regionally and globally. We are committed to continuing professional education, world class reunions and global forums, Wharton brand protection and development, top-notch student recruitment, lifetime career support and innovations to maintain the relevance of the Wharton experience throughout one’s career and beyond into retirement. We’re here for you and we’re waiting to connect with you. Just give me a call at 310-229-5951
Tama L. Smith, WG’90
Board Chairwoman, Wharton Alumni Association
President, Tama Smith & Associates, Inc.
tsmith@tsassociates.com
