Helping colleges reconnect with their worldwide alumni

When we leave education, the relationships we have built over years with schools, colleges and universities end abruptly. Institutions struggle to keep up with their alumni; where are they in the world? What are they doing?

Irish emigrants are achieving amazing things all over the world, but how many of them are keeping their schools and colleges up to date with their achievements?

I left education quite recently and joined an Irish company which is bridging the gap between institutions and their alumni. Our ambition is to reconnect institutions with their alumni, in Ireland and abroad, and build long term, sustainable relationships.

KonnectAgain was founded a year ago when Jayne Ronayne, our chief executive, was frustrated with the lack of information available about alumni from her university who could help grow her business abroad. Trying to connect with Irish alumni in the US who are working in technology was surprisingly difficult. Jayne reached out to the alumni office at her university and they couldn’t help because they simply didn’t have the information.

KonnectAgain is a socially integrated platform that uses the APIs of various social networks such as LinkedIn and Facebook. Our system manipulates data on these social networks through data scraping, which allows universities to find deeper details that would otherwise stay buried under the large amount of information out there.

Using this information, the platform can keep your institution, club, alumni chapter or association with up-to-date, real-time and relevant statistics, contact and career information.

Having spent time in the UK and the USA, where differences exist in alumni relations, we decided to bring some of the international experts we've met to Dublin for a conference on the future of alumni relations, for a conference which is taking place today in Iveagh House, headquarters of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Dublin.

We are bringing together representatives from the higher education sector in Ireland, industry professionals and Government to discuss the power that well-connected alumni relations bring to the table.

Minister of State for the Diaspora Jimmy Deenihan will address the conference, and highlight the Government's commitment to diaspora engagement and in particular, the role that schools, colleges and universities play in engaging with their alumni.

Raphe Beck, director of Alumni Relations at Stanford Graduate Business School in the US, will share his experiences in the discipline at Stanford. Leveraging a budget of over $5 million, Raphe manages a team of 19 to engage and serve the alumni of his institution.

Mark Roberts, from Durham University will give a viewpoint from the UK, while Jean van Sinderen-Law from University College Cork and John Dillon from Trinity College Dublin will bring an Irish perspective to the discussion.

It is our hope that the Konnect Alumni Conference is only the beginning. If each person can take something away with them - be that a new contact who can help you grow their business, a new way of doing things that can improve day to day activities, I’m sure it will go a long way in building a strong reputable culture for alumni relations in Ireland. This cultural shift is not something that cannot happen overnight, but if we start now, and work together, our relationships with our alumni all over the world can improve.

See konnectagain.com