Contribute, Advise, Advocate and Bolster -the CERN Alumni Advisory Board meets to provide input to shape your network!
Friday 25 November 2022, the CERN Alumni Advisory Board (CAAB) met for its ninth meeting, back at CERN for first time at CERN since November 2019.
The Board (CAAB) is charged with providing input, experience, and strategic guidance to the Director-General on matters pertaining to the CERN Alumni programme and its implementation. The Board consists of up to eight volunteer members: the Chair, who is the Director for International Relations at CERN, six members of the alumni community and one alumni relations professional. Board member mandates are for a duration of three years and at this meeting the CAAB Chair, Charlotte Warakaulle welcomed five new board members, appointed by the Director-General, who joined online and who shall begin serving on the Board from 1 January 2023. Before the meeting got underway, those CAAB members joining in person had a guided tour of the Science Gateway construction, followed by a visit of the Synchrocyclotron, thus providing them with an overview of CERN activities ranging from the beginning of its existence, right up to the future of CERN's flagship education and outreach centre.
Current and future CAAB members, along with the Chair and the three Office for Alumni Relations convened for the ninth CAAB meeting. Following a lively round-table of introductions from current and future Board members, the Head of Alumni Relations, Rachel Bray, presented the programme's major achievements of 2022. In its fifth year of existence, the Network grew to more than 8,400 members. 2022 also saw CERN Alumni Regional groups span three continents with the launch of a CERN Alumni United Arab
Emirates regional group in January 2022. We also welcomed the arrival of two more regional groups; Belgium and the San Francisco Bay area in spring 2022. Since the pandemic, some existing groups have faced challenges resuming their activities, however, the Office for Alumni Relations is currently working with several group managers to relaunch regional groups in 2023 - lookout for activities in your region in the coming months and if you would like to host a regional or interest CERN Alumni group, contact us.
2022 saw many firsts for the CERN Alumni Network; the office for Alumni Relations partnered with COAST DESY to organise an early-career "Meet a Role Model" event which featured two CERN Alumni, we brought soon-to-be alumni and CERN Alumni together at the first "leaving CERN" informal drinks reception and seven CERN Alumni teams from across the globe took part (virtually) in the 50th CERN Relay race. We also doubled the number of certain events we organise, namely Virtual Company Showrooms and Moving out of Academia compared with the previous year. Participant feedback regarding these events was incredibly positive this year, with between 92% and 98% of respondents stating they found the event useful and between 94% and 98% confirming they would recommend the event to friends and colleagues. 39 CERN alumni were featured in our spotlight articles this year and 36 of you took part as speakers, panellists or moderators in this year's events. We are also very proud to announce that CASE (Council for the Advancement and Support of Education) awarded us with a Gold Circle of Excellence award for the 2021 CERN Alumni Second Collisions virtual reunion event. Lively exchanges ensued between the Board members regarding the Office for Alumni Relation's activities of 2022, which was then followed by a presentation from the Head of Alumni Relations focussing on planned activities for the coming years. Valuable input given by the CAAB members during the meeting will contribute to shaping our upcoming activities and form our roadmap which will underpin our work for the coming years, so stay tuned to find out more!
The meeting drew to a close following three hours of fruitful exchanges. The Board members congratulated Rachel and her team for their work and achievements over the past year. The time then came to thank those Board members who will reach the end of their mandate 31 December 2022 after serving three years on the CERN Alumni Advisory Board (Pedro Paul Alvarez, Chiara Bianchin, Spyridon Papadopoulos, Rocio Perez-Ochoa and Jan Urbahn). Both the Director for International Relations and the Head of Alumni Relations thanked them for their dedication, input and involvement and invited them to continue actively supporting the CERN Alumni Programme.
