Who are the Alumni Leadership Board? And what is their role within the Trust? Our Senior Programmes Manager, Marie-Rose Delauzun, shares insights from the latest ALB meeting in Nottingham.

On Saturday 2 April 2022, our Alumni Leadership Board held their first ever residential meeting since the Board’s inception in 2018. The ALB is now in its third iteration, with the current members just as engaged as ever. Coming together in Nottingham from across the UK, and refusing to have their mood dampened by train delays, they spent Saturday sharing ideas and experiences and bonding as a group.  

What actually is the role of the ALB?  

The ALB are a core group of our alumni volunteers who engage with the Trust in all areas of our work. They are our sounding board, our ambassadors, and a voice to champion the needs of our wider alumni community.  

Ben Jones, Co-Chair of the ALB: “Since joining the Board in 2018, we’ve done so many different things – whether that’s public speaking at Sutton Trust events, feeding into policy research, and developing our own skillset. For me…one of the most fantastic things about being part of the Trust is that they’re investing in us as alumni, but are also really receptive to what our experiences are and how they can feed into improving the Trust’s work.” 

Ben Jones, Co-Chair of the Alumni Leadership and part of the 2012 Summer School cohort

Spring conversations – school engagement, student reach, and community fundraising 

The latest meeting saw our CEO, James Turner, share an update and take questions from the group, before we updated them on areas including our upcoming research, new programme scoping, and the recent pilot of new careers activity. The group then broke off into smaller numbers to discuss how we can better utilise our alumni community to support school engagement, and the possibility of alumni fundraising for the Trust when undertaking sports activities. In both instances, there is a clear need for us to provide more support for alumni that help us in these areas – so we discussed what would be helpful.  

Public speaking and sharing stories 

Our ALB members all bring a range of expertise and skills to the group, however we wanted to equip them with the skills to be confident ambassadors and speakers so they can share their stories in any setting. The afternoon was a workshop by the excellent Speakers Trust – which was a unanimous success. We’re keen that anyone who joins the ALB will leave having had the chance to develop their skills and take them forward both in their professional life and their journey as an alum.  

Meet our ALB  

Read their profiles to find out more about our ALB. Over the next few months, we’ll be sharing more content on our Instagram and LinkedIn, featuring members of ALB – so you can get to know them better.  

Our current Alumni Leadership Board

Interested in joining the Board yourself? Look out for updates in the summer, when some members will be retiring, and we’ll be recruiting for more.