On 20 March at an Extraordinary General Meeting, ESADE Alumni presented its new 2019-2022 Strategic Plan called Be Connected. This is the fourth strategic plan to be implemented by the association since its foundation in 1989, thereby demonstrating its evolving strategic commitment. After focusing on growth and personalisation, the time has come to place alumni at the heart of the association, connecting former students with the entire ESADE community and society as a whole.

Maite Barrera (Lic&MBA 98), President of ESADE Alumni, Xavier Sanchez (Lic&MBA 97/AMP 08), Director of ESADE Alumni, and Ignasi Rafel (MBA 94), member of the Board of Directors, were responsible for chairing the meeting aiming to lay out the association’s main goals and strategies for the next four years, as well as to hear the alumni’s opinions and input on the matter.

Following eight months of extensive work, we believe the plan presented today meets the needs of our alumni and partners. We have great challenges ahead of us, such as enhancing our globalisation and internationalisation strategies, striving to be more diverse and open, and catering to groups that require our attention. This is precisely why we have created the Senior Club, Young Commission and Women Empowerment’, explained Maite Barrera during her introduction.

The plan was presented after a brief interlude to approve, by absolute majority, an amendment to Article 12 of the Articles of Association to require 30 signatures from alumni who are full members of the association for each new candidate for the Board of Directors.

Four strategic pillars

Increasing participation and engagement, grouping the association’s activities into clusters, reviewing its internal structures, and ensuring the quality of the contents are some of the criteria behind the four strategic pillars of the Be Connected Plan:

1. Get involved

With the aim of making alumni more and more participative and, therefore, more protagonists on the network — which will result in a more dynamic, active and value-creating network for the alumni — the plan proposes that clubs should develop their role in serving as ambassadors and bringing people together by opening their boards of directors up to a more diverse range of individuals. To boost engagement, the association will relaunch its international mentoring programme, while also organising focused networking events and offering alumni the chance to get involved with knowledge pills.

The new groups added to the Top Management Network are undoubtedly strengthening participation. These include: Women Empowerment, a new reflection and debate forum for women; the Young Commission, made up of 16 members of between the ages of 22 and 30 years old; and the Senior Club, which was launched in January this year and is proving to be a great success.

In addition to increasing engagement, the association is committed to organising excellent, high-quality events.

2. Be global

Catering to the more than 20,000 alumni living and working outside of Spain forms a major part of ESADE Alumni’s work, which has already doubled its international presence through 72 Chapters. This network works with ESADE as part of a team effort which also sees teaching staff engaged with the international community’, explained Xavier Sanchez.

In order to facilitate the integration of alumni who move for work reasons, the Landing service has been created. This service offers contact and help from alumni residing in a destination through its chapter to the alumni who are going to reside in that place. Other proposals for achieving this objective are that the Barcelona and Madrid campuses organize global events with topics of interest in different geographies and that by format and availability these events can be consumed around the world. Finally, there will be an omnichannel focus on career development with tools such as the new chatbot, which will offer personalised itineraries.

3. Connected to society

In terms of social impact, as well as the projects run by ESADE Alumni Social, a new Forum for Trustees has been set up to encourage alumni to be members of Board of Trustees, and encourage relationship and networking with companies via alumni managers of these companies. In addition, ESADE has reviewed the organisation of clubs with a view to redefining the composition of their boards of directors to include younger members, following the example set by the Real Estate Club.

4. ESADE engagement & contribution

The new Strategic Plan will encourage alumni and ESADE teaching staff to work together to organise events and create content, thus strengthening ESADE Alumni’s mission to add value and prestige to its actions, foster cooperation, and undertake projects with ESADE.