As I write this, it has been a year since our world changed because of the pandemic. In March 2020, our Alumni Relations staff were busily planning the upcoming spring reunions, a cohort of alumni had just arrived on campus to attend our program The Reflective Leader, HBS Clubs around the world were hosting programs and networking events for their members, and fundraisers were traveling to meet with donors as the end of the fiscal year approached.

Then everything stopped. Just like our colleagues on the MBA and Executive Education side of campus, the External Relations team had to hit pause and pivot into a substantial unknown. In-person gatherings were canceled—and everyone wondered, what comes next?

To their credit, the staff who decamped to their homes across the greater Boston area and beyond quickly regrouped and began the untested exercise of figuring out how to serve and engage digitally, remotely, and effectively with our alumni.

Just like a classic HBS business case, the School assessed a sudden, unanticipated challenge, sought out the opportunities in the crisis, and moved forward decisively and with no small amount of creativity. Following is a sampling of what we accomplished in service of the alumni community.

Alumni programs that were scheduled in Boston and around the world rapidly transformed into virtual events using the Zoom platform. Working with our faculty and our partners in Executive Education, the team quickly assembled a series of timely faculty-led sessions on the crucial theme of Managing Through Crisis, which brought together nearly 10,000 alumni from around the world. The series was especially notable because our alumni were able to benefit, in real time, from HBS faculty insights and their own shared experiences in case discussions and collective learning.

Based on the popularity of these initial programs, and an obvious hunger for more remote learning opportunities, the External Relations team and staff in the Initiatives and the MBA Program forged ahead to create more virtual programs, at a pace of 5 to 10 per month, covering topics from leadership, civic entrepreneurship, happiness, and capitalism, to artificial intelligence, climate change, and much more. The clubs also joined in with virtual programs for their members and quickly discovered strong interest across the larger alumni community.

To date, nearly 20,000 alumni have participated in one or more virtual events hosted by External Relations and its partners, with more than 4,000 alumni attending three or more programs. These attendees cut across all segments—young alumni and retirees, alumnae, MBA and Executive Education alumni—and across all industries and time zones, further proving the need for lifelong-learning content, whether strictly virtual, in-person, or in some hybrid format still to come.

We’ve applied a similar approach to reunions programming. During a time when it has been unsafe or impractical to bring large numbers of alumni together on campus, we repositioned reunions as virtual gatherings, first in spring and fall 2020, and as recently as this May and June for the One-Year and Spring Reunion classes. While we have tweaked the format each time, the core of each virtual event has included an address by the Dean followed by a choice of faculty presentations. And because alumni-to-alumni connections are such a key part of reunions, we have experimented with ways to bring reunion classes and sections together virtually—first with additional programming at the class and section levels on the afternoon of the virtual reunion, and more recently with a flexible approach to alumni-led gatherings in the weeks before or after the virtual reunion event. In all cases, the response has been strong and positive. These virtual events have drawn as many or more alumni than were typically able to gather for previous in-person reunions.

Even with these virtual gatherings, there will also be a future, reimagined reunion event for the 2020 and 2021 MBA and Executive Education reunion classes once it is safe to come together in person. It’s a daunting undertaking to convene so many alumni for meaningful learning and socializing, and we will share details as soon as we can.

In addition to virtual programs and reunions, the pandemic gave us the impetus to accelerate our efforts to provide other forms of lifelong-learning content. In September, we launched a Lifelong Learning page on the Alumni website that offers a robust, curated mix of articles, videos, podcasts, and programming from many partners across the School and beyond, all organized around a dozen key topics that alumni have identified as critical to their professional and personal growth. Users are able to easily sort the content based on their professional or personal interests—such as entrepreneurship, work-life balance, health care, diversity and inclusion, and board governance—and can drill deeply into a wide range of highly specific subtopics. Response to the site has been strong, with the lifelong-learning section quickly becoming one of the top destinations on the Alumni website.

Next up will be an increase in our outreach to key segments of the alumni community, based on their industry, interests, or demographics, to provide those alumni with content, resources, and programs that will resonate with them and strengthen their connections to the School and to other alumni. Utilizing the weekly Alumni News e-newsletter, segment-specific emails and newsletters, and targeted social media, we will continue to make inroads in providing lifelong learning that meets your needs and interests.

It is an exciting time at HBS, with a new Dean and new priorities, and along with that I am bringing my term as Senior Associate Dean for External Relations to a close. Looking back, it has been a remarkable and rewarding five years, as I traveled the world meeting alumni leaders and worked with the team in External Relations to support and strengthen the alumni community. I have been humbled by the countless stories of how you, our alumni, have truly lived up to the mission of the School – educating leaders who make a positive difference. Thank you all for all the great work you are doing in your jobs, in your communities, and in the world at large. Your actions truly exemplify the saying that “much is expected from those to whom much is given.” I am very fortunate to be part of the HBS community.

Looking ahead, I am pleased to be turning over the reins to my esteemed colleague Fritz Foley, the Andre R. Jakurski Professor of Business Administration, who most recently served as the Senior Associate Dean for Financial Strategy. Fritz brings to this role a deep understanding and appreciation of our alumni. He, as do I, believes firmly in Dean Datar’s goals to strengthen the alumni community and demonstrate unequivocally that HBS is here for you throughout your life, whenever you need us and however you prefer to be engaged. I know you will enjoy getting to know him. Join us as we move forward.

Das Narayandas is Senior Associate Dean, External Relations and Harvard Business Publishing, and the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration.

(illustration by Scott Chambers)

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