Having the Right Conversation About Alumni: A View from the Board Room

If alumni engagement never makes it beyond the HR or marketing agenda, it will always feel optional.

But what happens when the conversation moves into the board room? When non-executive directors, CEOs, and commercial leaders start to see alumni not as a community initiative, but as a strategic lever for growth, reputation, talent management, and long-term resilience?

In this session we’ll be joined by Mark Astaire, former senior banker at Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Barclays, and Board Member at Sky News - Europe’s most highly-rated news source for decision-makers. With a career spanning journalism, banking, and advertising, Mark has spent decades advising leaders on how to shape the right story for the right audience. In conversation with Emma Sinclair MBE, Chief Executive of EnterpriseAlumni, and Ian Storrar, Chief Customer Officer, we’ll explore what it really takes to elevate alumni from a good idea to a board-level priority.

Join us to learn more about:

✅ What conversations actually matter to non-executive directors and senior leaders
✅ How to position alumni in language that aligns with growth, risk, talent and reputation
✅ When and how to engage NEDs or C-suite leaders as sponsors or champions
✅ What doesn’t work when trying to gain senior visibility, and why
✅ How to think about identifying, measuring and demonstrating business impact in ways boards respect

If alumni engagement is to be sustained, it needs to be understood in the context of enterprise priorities. This conversation will focus on how senior leaders assess strategic initiatives, how they weigh value and risk, and how alumni can be framed in terms that resonate at that level.