We've got three speakers with us, volunteers of CASE. I've had the pleasure of spending quite a bit of time with Emma Silva. Emma and I were on the CASE commission together. So we've met each other around the world, which has been absolutely fantastic. Emma has joined us from Yunus, Hanoi in Vietnam. In 2011, she launched their school advancement program, which like me is an advocate of the integrated advancement model, and she's responsible for strategic communication, the reputation management, community alumni relations and fundraising. Absolutely fantastic. She came to Asia after 10 years at the American school of Paris, where she played a central role in embedding development for that school. And prior to that, Emma was head of UK fundraising, Outward Bound Trust. So she was in the nonprofit sector. So direction change after a 10 year career in British media. And as I mentioned, she was served with me on the CASE commission as well. She was very much part of the strategic planning steering committee for CASE and has been a judge for a number of the different awards programs at Circle of Excellence. So before we get into the, so you want to change the world, I think Emma's going to introduce our other two speakers today. So I will hand over to her. Thanks Heather. Yes. And good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening to everybody. We've had a lot of fun actually putting this session together. So we hope that you enjoy this panel. Joining me today is Ziqiao Chen and Joel Terwiniger. And I'm not going to say any more about either of them because the whole point of this session is we are going to share our own roadmaps in advancement, if you like, with you, many of you are really starting out in the early days of your career, or maybe you've shifted career, or maybe you've shifted section within advancement. And you're, you're looking at new roadmaps ahead of you. And that will look very different wherever you are, whether you're in an independent school setting, whether you're in a tertiary university setting and also where you are in the world, what the philanthropic or the communication climate is like of the, the cultural climate that you're working in and the expectations that your communities have, there is also the single discipline versus integrated department, whether you're a specialist in alumni or a specialist in communications, or maybe you're part of a smaller shop and actually everything is your responsibility. So advancement remains and still is a very broad and rich career area to explore, which is why you often see so many people moving around between sectors, between institutions, between roles within their own organizations. And of course, it looks very different, whether you're the beginning of your career, mid career, or maybe a little more mature, just for transparency. I represent old today, and we have Z as our, you know, more younger end of the career path and Joel is in the middle. So you'll hear some different perspectives, specialist Z is philanthropy specialist, Joel is an alumni relations specialist, I'm integrated. So that gives you a little bit of a sort of a context to listen to our stories. And so without further ado, I will let the players for today, introduce themselves, set their own context of what they're actually doing here. And now today as their jobs, I'm going to kick that off as I've already mentioned. And actually, I don't really need to say too much more because Heather has beautifully introduced me. Advancement today at Eunice Hanoi is a mixed portfolio. I'm responsible for a team of eight. We are responsible for communications, mainly external markoms. We are responsible for philanthropy, both the fundraising and the project delivery. We are responsible for alumni relations, and we're responsible for institutional events, and some of that strategic outreach. Eunice Hanoi is a United Nations International School of Hanoi. It's one of only two in the world. It's sister school is in New York at the headquarters and we're sort of an accident of history. But today we are a 1200 student strong school. We take kids from kindergarten through to grade 12. We are an IB program school from primary years through to diploma. We're about 20% local Vietnamese nationals at the school. And then 80% are other international of about 60 different nationality types. So that's the context of what I do today. And essentially what I spend most of my typical week doing is empowering and supporting my team who do all the hard work. Joel, if you'd like to give a quick overview of what your role looks like today. Yeah. So I'm the alumni relations manager here at the University of Auckland. So we're the largest university in New Zealand located in the most populated city in New Zealand. We have over 200,000 alumni and friends located in over 150 countries all over the world. I've got eight faculties, two large scale research institutes and many research centers with just under 6,000 staff and 43,000 students. And I'm situated within the alumni relations and development team, which is made up of advancement services. So handling all of our sort of research and data and information systems, the digital engagement and communications teams, events teams, we've got fundraising staff embedded in the faculties and in key locations in the world and the alumni relations team that I lead, which is about four people. It's worth noting that our alumni staff to alumni population ratio is quite low in comparison to the other group of eight universities in Australia. So it is a relatively small team. And just to give you an idea of what a typical day or sort of week might look like, anything from putting a project plan together to launch a virtual professional development series for our alumni and students in collaboration with people in our careers at Campus Life and other teams to recommending alumni speakers for a variety of open day events to putting a, an impact map together to really visualize the alumni engagement mechanisms that we're responsible for delivering and how they translate into realizing our strategy here at the university, getting promo content together for a virtual book club launch. And just this week, we've been thrown back into lockdown. So I've been working with one of our Chinese postgraduate student societies and the Chinese alumni club to move an informal mentoring program online that we were launching. So similar to Emma, lots of balancing priorities and change there. Thanks, Joel. Z, who are you and what does your typical week look like? Thank you, Emma. And hello, everyone. I am Ziqiao or you can just call me Z as well. I am the Senior Philanthropy Advisor Asia at Monash University's Advancement Team. And for those of you who don't know Monash University, we are based in Melbourne, Australia, and we are the largest and one of the most international universities in the country with over 400,000 alumni. And we have a great presence in Asia. Over one quarter of our alumni are based in Asia. And we actually have three campuses located in Asia as well, including Mainland China, Malaysia, and our newest campus in Asia, Indonesia, is actually about to start operation later this year as well. So as the name of my role suggests, I look after the university's philanthropic market in Asia with a primary focus in Singapore, Malaysia, and the Greater China region. So I am part of the development team and together with alumni engagement and external engagement, we make up the advancement team. So as for myself, currently it's just me looking after the Asia market, but I'm very fortunate to report directly to the university's Chief Philanthropy Officer. So together we set the university's strategy for Asia, as well as carrying out a lot of donor engagement activities. And finally, a very brief day for me. Before COVID, it would involve a lot of international travels to Asia every one or two months. But with the pandemic, a lot of our engagement are done online through Zoom, as well as WhatsApp, which has a lot of new communication ways to engage with our donors, as well as linking with academics and different parts of university to realize our donors' vision. So I look forward to share more about what I do with the rest of this session today, back to you, Emma. Yes, thank you. So now you have a little bit of context, you know who we are and what keeps us busy day to day and where we lie within the sector that maybe you're most interested in, but how did we get here? I think that is the interesting piece. So actually, we'll start with Zee as the youngest member of our panel and the sort of new recruit into Advancement. Zee, if you wouldn't just share a little bit your story to date, your roadmap of how you actually got to where you are now. Absolutely. Thank you again for the question, Emma. So I'm personally, I always think that Advancement is a very special profession because, you know, we are all here for a purpose that is very close to our hearts. And for myself, that purpose is very much about bridging people and bridging culture together. And the seed of that purpose was first started as a kid. My family migrated to Australia when I was 11, so that was 2007. And I think coming to a foreign country, living in a foreign land, you tend to learn how to deal with people of different culture and race, and in that time, I also learned firsthand, you know, how, because of the cultural stereotypes and lack of understanding and lack of education, that creates a lot of disparity between people. So ever since then, my passion has been about finding ways to bring people together. When I started university in 2013, I think, you know, I think university education is a wonderful way to bridge people together and to understand each other, so I think throughout that time, I took up a lot of activities trying to understand the community, understand how we as people operate. So part of my experience at uni took me as a volunteer to Brazil to undertake a two-month exchange to Brazil and understanding how people, how culture operates at different parts of the world. And graduating from university in 20, end of 2017, as a commerce graduate, naturally, you know, I looked at what all other commerce graduates would do, that's consulting or investment banking. But to me, I almost feel those roles sort of lack the purpose to really make a difference because working the big four, working a very reputable consulting company, that may sound good, but I think we just become one of the many people that helps a big organization running. And I was very lucky to actually uncover the CASE graduate training program at the end of 2017. And I, you know, everything about program very much aligns with my, myself and my value, which is about really how can we collectively bring the society together and using philanthropy alumni relations as a way to move the world forward. So I was very lucky enough to become the 2018 CASE graduate training, one of the training program at which Monash university kindly hosted me. So ever since then, I think spending time in this industry and meeting people here really taught me that, you know, education is what brings people together. But more importantly, I see fundraising philanthropy as an enabler to connect people. And you know, up until today, I think bridging culture and making the world a better place is still something very strong, very close to my heart. And it's what's been motivating me, especially at a time like this to wake up every day and still feeling very energetic in doing something different in this profession. So thank you. Great. So Joel will now share with him, but what we have there, you see Z is very much chosen. This is a career path from graduation, internship, and is now building a career. Joel has a slightly different story, which he'll now share with, with how he ended up in today's position. Yeah. So thanks, Emma. I think, yeah, that's kind of hits the nail on the head there. I am a first in family graduate and came from a, you know, socioeconomically disadvantaged family. So I really saw, you know, firsthand how education really transformed my life and my career. But I did sort of discover alumni relations, the whole sort of advancement profession only after, you know, asking what was next for me following five years of working in the philanthropy, external engagement, not-for-profit space. I had the misfortune of entering the job market right when the global financial crisis hit. So there weren't a lot of opportunities for me to sort of find work in the state in which I graduated. So I ended up working with a lot of environmental organizations in Alaska, which is where I sort of got my start. And I think one of the real turning points for me in my career was when I transitioned from a donor relations role at Alaska Conservation Foundation to the UK, where I took up an alumni relations role at Newcastle University Business School in 2014. And from there, I've studied and worked in advancement, working with the University of Technology Sydney in Australia and engaging in the social and environmental impact space through my exchange at Stockholm University in Sweden. And then I ultimately transitioned into my current role here at the University of Auckland back in 2018. So definitely went right around the world and ended up discovering rather than planning on a career in advancement. Thanks, Joel. And I suppose I will just continue that theme, which is that when I graduated from university, advancement didn't exist as a career path specifically. There were no internships. There were probably very few advancement offices in the majority of universities, maybe well-established in America, but certainly not globally. I sort of fumbled around until I found my true calling. I think what really typifies my sort of two decades now in educational advancement is that it was finally finding a cause to fight for. I had started out as a tabloid journalist in the UK. I had not meant to be a tabloid journalist. I had meant to be a journalist who was exposing the wrongs and fighting for the underdog and making a difference in society. And so after about 10 years, I sort of had that moment of like, oh, no, this isn't quite going as planned. And I moved across to the non-profit sector. And like Joel, I went into fundraising and I was working for the Outward Bound Trust, which some of you may be familiar with. It supports programs for disadvantaged youth, mainly from inner city settings, to go out into the country and build confidence and build personal resilience. I did that for a few years and then I moved across the world and sort of fell into advancement at the American School of Paris. They were fundraising at the time. They needed a little bit of support. It was kind of semi-volunteer, part-time. And then over 10 years, we built a program. And then I moved to Vietnam, as I mentioned earlier, to start the program at the United Nations International School. So, you know, that range from advancement now being very much a career with a pipeline and a pathway from the sort of falling into different aspects of advancement, whether it's from the fundraising through to alumni relations, or now to sort of manage a slightly more integrated program, which is what I now currently do. I think what you're hearing from the three of us is there's a little bit of happy accident, but most importantly, it's tied to values. It's tied to what you actually want to do with your life. We'll explore that a little bit more, but I think it's always nice to dig into the down and dirty first, right? Because this all sounds marvellous. We've all had these marvellous career paths, right? It's all gone swimmingly well. Well, you know what? Not always, not so much. So I asked the panel to share with you today a steep learning curve, something which maybe hadn't gone so well, but was a key learning moment, something that, you know, that roadblock that both of you just starting out in your roadmaps, you are going to hit roadblocks. We thought it might be helpful for us to share a couple of our roadblocks so that you don't feel so alone when your inevitable roadblock does arrive. So Joel, what was your steepest learning curve or challenge that you had to overcome to date? Yeah, so I think for me, it was navigating the political elements of building consensus and mutual understanding across multiple departments and areas. We like to think of universities as very collegial environments, but they're also very complex ecosystems. I would like to think of them sometimes as systems within systems. They almost have their own sort of orbit and conventions and things like that. So, and having come from a smaller organization with a turnover of, we raised like five million a year or something like that to an organization that's, you know, doing well over 40 million a year and turning over billions of dollars with thousands of staff. It can be quite difficult to sometimes navigate all of those different stakeholder groups and organizational systems. And also just, I think, coming to grips with some of the cultural nuances of more indirect communication styles that you might encounter in, say, the UK or New Zealand. As you might imagine, coming from the US context, the culture and communication style is a little bit different. And having lived and worked in several countries, it really sort of forced me to hone my active listening skills and also just to work on tailoring my communications and approach. Yes, I think I will follow up from Joel because my biggest challenge was certainly, has certainly been and remains that it's related to communication, but it's within the fundraising sphere. My early days of fundraising at the Outward Bound Trust, well, it was a royal charity. It has royal patronage. And so a lot of the fundraising I was doing at that time was hosting dinners or receptions with Prince Andrew, Prince Philip at Buckingham Palace. It was a very select range of people and relationship building was done very quickly. It was it was all about getting to know somebody very quickly, sharing humor based in fun. And what's interesting is that when you move across into the educational sphere, the tone of that communication becomes a lot more, I would say, sincere, a lot more earnest. And then what happened was when I moved to Vietnam, I speak, I have a French husband and I speak French and English fluently. So when I worked for the American School of Paris, I was fine working with major donors in French or in English. What I hadn't really factored when I moved to Vietnam was that I would be building relationships with major donors who are Vietnamese, who speak Vietnamese and quite often don't have terrific English. What that looks like, building a personal relationship with a major donor when you're not speaking in your own language and whether you're having to use a third person in a translator, it brings a whole new dimension to building relationships, particularly obvious when it comes to working with major donors. But it's true for all aspects, whether it's parent communications or alumni communications, you're all, I suspect, working for Anglophone or at least English delivery educational institutes. So you know that your students, you know that your alumni are all English speakers, but their parents may probably not be. And a lot of your donors may well be connected to your institutions through your students. So not necessarily always native English speakers or proficient English speakers. So, yes, so that that's been very difficult, getting used to the different pace. And it was something that I just hadn't really thought about. And when it kind of hit me, I was like, oh, so, OK, now I have this big fundraising challenge and target, but I can't actually communicate with anybody personally or individually. So over time, we found our way. And actually, that was one of my big lessons, sort of letting go of those relationships. So actually the right person to manage those relationships is not me quite often and is actually could well be a junior member of staff. It doesn't always go up. It's not always the head of school or the chancellor who should be the key person in those relationships. If it means the personal connection can be done in a native language, maybe it's someone else in the organization. So that was my steepest learning curve. Yes, I think as a relatively early career professional, my learning curve is probably more on the personal learning side compared to Emma or Jill, which was more about navigating in a large organization. So I think starting my career in advancement and as a graduate training, I think I had a tendency of trying to take on everything. I think as someone that's just new in the profession, you kind of want to prove yourself. You kind of want to tell people, yes, you can do this. You're able to achieve a lot of great things. As time goes on, especially when I started my current role as International Foundry as the advisor, I said yes to everything. And the fact that I was reporting to a very senior figure in the university, I was like, I can't let him down as well. And I think part of taking everything means that I was reluctant to share my responsibility as well because I was worried, what if someone took the credit of the work that I was doing? And I think that led to a point where I just had too many things on my plate. And I was so reluctant to share that. I know that I would mess things up, but I was also worried about not able to deliver things. So it was very contradicting in the sense that I want to achieve, but I also know that I don't have the capacity to achieve. And I think it was a very steep learning curve. I think a lot of us in this profession, we want to do things to a very high standard. But there comes a point when we have to realize this is the teamwork and we are just one person. And there is no way we are able to take on a lot of things, especially in a way working at university or school, there's tens of thousands of employees. We all have a role to play. And despite us being early career professionals, yes, we want to learn here. Yes, we want to accelerate our career here. It's also about knowing your capability and knowing that this is the teamwork. And only when we are all here trying to work on things collectively together can we achieve the best outcome. So I think my learning curve for myself is to really take things slowly, give yourself, the patience, the time to grow, because once we put our hearts to things, once we do things for the real purpose, success will come automatically and there's no need to really rush things. And I'm still learning that, I would say. Yes, thank you Zee. I think, and it takes a lot of confidence to slow pace, which you might not always have, right? So, so from political, learning to navigate political minefields through very practical struggles of translation with personal relationships through to very personal learning curves about managing your own time and expectations. There's a variety of different challenges ahead in, in any career, but certainly in advancement, you will, you will come across all of those, I'm quite sure. So slightly more positive outlook. We're going to now talk about a moment of accomplishment, a moment of enlightenment. Maybe it was that moment where we were like, okay, yes, this is why I do this job. Hopefully we have more than just one, but we're choosing one example to share with you today, to give you again, an idea of the importance as well of reflecting on the successes, not always just moving on to the next thing. So Zee, if you would like to start out with your, your moment of enlightenment or a moment of success and what that meant to you. Absolutely. I would say for all of us, one of the greatest joy working advancement is to see a project finally come to realization. And for myself, it's taking a leadership role in establishing one of Monash University's first international equity scholarship program for youth in Asia. So this scholarship program consists of a suite of scholarship aimed at helping on financially disadvantaged youth in Asia who are from low socioeconomic families, but have shown outstanding academic talent as well as leadership capabilities. And each of the scholarship actually worth $360,000 for one student, which covers the entire tuition to come to Australia to study as well as their accommodation and yearly stipend. So I think, while I'm very proud of the fundraising achievement of this program, because to date, we have up to almost 15 students coming to Australia on this scholarship. But my biggest joy is actually the community outreach of working on this project. Aside from fundraising, part of my job, part of my role is also actually going to the communities and actually speaking to students as well as not-for-profit firsthand about this project. And before COVID, I would travel to different parts of Hong Kong as well as different parts of Asia to really tell people about this scholarship. Because while it may sound great on paper, a lot of students, a lot of youth, they don't even have actually have access to scholarship like this. They never actually heard of this scholarship. So through a series of work in 2017, when this scholarship was first established, we only had 12 applicants. And it was a very challenging process trying to convince our donor that there is a demand for the scholarship in the region. But up until now, in this year, during COVID, we actually had over 150 applicants across 12 countries of youth in the region. So we are very proud that, you know, the reach of this scholarship at a time like COVID has grown exponentially. And I think that's a testament to the power of education at times like this. And, you know, I'm very proud of the fact that we meet students hand-to-hand and not just the students, but what we're also changing is the community they live in, and as well as the people, the family they're surrounded with. So I'm very proud and very grateful to work on such a meaningful project. And just two days ago, one of our donors just agreed to support an additional two fully financial scholarship for two more youth from Asia to come to Australia once lockdown's finished. So really grateful, and I'm just very positive that despite pandemic, you know, education continues to play a great role in the region and uplifting the youth and almost giving hope to a lot of people, including ourselves, that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Thanks, Emma. Thank you, Zeke. Joel, your moment of enlightenment or proud moment of joy? Well, I think for me, it was more about realising the potential of taking a project that we were working on that was going into its second year and really tailoring it to the needs of New Zealand. So our annual Volunteer Impact Week program, we were all set and ready to go with launching it in June like normal, and then lockdowns and all of these things started to emerge, and we were able to work with everyone quite quickly to connect the community groups that needed volunteers that could help with contactless and virtual volunteering opportunities. I think that community engagement piece and just being a part of connecting and supporting the right people to make a positive difference was really powerful, especially at a time when the traditional volunteer base of older New Zealanders across the country weren't able to volunteer because they were sheltering in place. Some of our alumni even started their own ad hoc organisations to help in the initial days of the emergency response and subsequently to fill gaps. So being a part of supporting those efforts in tandem with national organisations like Volunteering New Zealand and regional volunteer centres across the country was really a key moment when I saw just how transformational and adaptive alumni engagement can be. Thank you, Joel. Yes, and I think this is a difficult one now because with those incredibly inspirational alumni engagement moments and then obviously seeing the impact of a scholarship programme, I don't have an awful lot to add in terms of in sort of in range, but I think I would share, I would go back to what Zee shared about the scholarship programme. One of the things that I did that I was responsible for when I started at Eunice Hanoi was to start a scholarship programme. This was something that the organisation had wanted to do for many, many years, but they hadn't really had the expertise or capacity or time or thinking around what needed to happen. And they were determined that our school, which is a very, an excellent independent private school in what 10 years ago still certainly felt like a developing country. It was very stark, the contrast between what was available in local schools and what was available at the United Nations International School. And of course, being part of the United Nations and being part of trying to fix some of those emerging economy and developing world issues, that contrast felt a bit stark. So starting a scholarship programme where we could take students from local schools into our own school was a very passionate piece for the Board of Directors and for the vision of the school. But it's also extremely difficult to implement a scholarship programme in a country where there's very little transparency and there's a lot of complication to it. So I think that in those early days, I was very caught up with the policy and the structures and the process. And that moment of enlightenment, that moment where I recognised, OK, this is what it's all about, was our very first scholar. Our programme's now in its 10th year, but way back then, we had taken him in at the start of grade 10. And there he was in grade 12, and he sort of knocked very respectfully at my office door, and he came in clutching a piece of paper. And behind him was a very proud, could hardly contain himself, counsellor, and sort of prodding Nam to go through the door and say, go on, tell Miss Emma, tell Miss Emma. And Nam had been accepted on a full scholarship to Williams, which was the first time, I mean, this is something that happens at a lot of schools, a lot of the time, everywhere. But imagine in that context, it's the first time this has happened. And there was this student whose father was a Xeon driver, which is the sort of motorbike taxi drivers in Vietnam. His mother was selling clothes on the street. She had a little stall. She would hang out clothes on the street to sell clothes. And yet this was a brilliant student. He went on to get a perfect 45 in his IB. He then, when he was at Williams, went on to Oxford University for his master's, and he now is part of this extraordinary team at Microsoft, developing computer languages for the future. I mean, you know, just that one story, I think, for me, encapsulates why I get out of bed every day. But the moment of enlightenment was Nam in my office clutching his piece of paper saying, I got an early decision from Williams. They're giving me everything. And I was like, yes, that's what a scholarship feels like. It's giving you everything. So that would be my little inspirational share. Moving swiftly on, teamwork is central to all that we do. Even those of you that are starting out in your careers will have figured out by now that the team is all. And we all know there are lots of cliched sayings. There's no I in the word team. There's all of that. And, you know, they're cliches. And for a reason, it's all true. So I think what we wanted to share with you in this next section was, why does it matter? Why does working with the different integrated departments matter? I have an integrated team. The whole team is integrated. But when you're in philanthropy, or you're working in alumni, or maybe you're working in communications, why is it important that you're the ones that cross these borders? And why is it? Why do why is the integrated mindset so important? Joel, would you like to start? Sure, Emma, I think we all recognize that partnerships are crucial to sort of extending our reach wherever we're sitting within the university. But I think it's particularly true in terms of alumni engagement, because as a small team, we can't really own and we probably shouldn't own relationships for the long term success of the organization. And sustaining those relationships over time really requires positive, constructive and strategic partnerships to really maximize the benefits in terms of involving alumni as partners, right across our work. So things like student experience, research, advocacy, community and industry partnerships and more, it's really important that we're sort of joined up. Thanks, Joel. And I would just build on that and say, you know, if you've read the Jim Collins works, you'll know that he's a big fan of getting the right people on the bus. And that is the truly important piece of any project, any plan, anything that you want to do. And often the right people will be in different departments in different divisions in different sectors of your institution, and encouraging the right people onto your bus, and potentially allowing somebody else to drive your bus, if that's what's needed, is the important piece of teamwork. It's about making sure that you share ownership, that you provide true moments for collaboration, and that you really believe in collaboration as something that improves an idea, rather than compromise. This is not about making Advancement Services happy, or the alumni people happy, or making sure you're on board with the comms team. It's got to go deeper than that. It's got to be a genuine embracing and belief that together you are better. That will inevitably and probably mean allowing others to own ideas and drive the bus. But most importantly, make sure that you're proactive in getting the right people on the bus. Zee. Yes, I'll keep it really short on this one as well. Like I said earlier, when I share my steepest learning, you know, every one of us, we all have a role to play, whether it's in our team, in the wider institution, we all have a role to play to ensure the successful delivery of any project. And I think sometimes the best way and probably the only way that we could maximize outcome or impact is to be open and always transparent about our resources and connection. Joe said that, you know, no one owns any relationship. You know, they're not our client. They are the institution's client. We are actually, we're acting on behalf of the university. We're here to realize their vision. So I think it's very much about working together to be genuine and to truly achieve something out of our good heart. And I think the most important thing is when we are opening up ourselves, when we are being genuine about our connections, that could also lead to more opportunities. Working in silo could never achieve a win-win situation in the work we do. Great. I'm kind of looking at the clock and I know that the session is due to finish in about 10 minutes and I want to make sure we leave plenty of time for questions. Please do, if you've got any questions about anything you've heard so far, if you want to hear a little bit more about something that's been mentioned or ask a specific member of the panel a question, please do pop them into the chat. And then in a couple of minutes, we'll start going through. I see that we do have one question in there, which will be a great one to follow up with. I think you've probably heard from all of us now, the passion that we all have for what we're doing. And we've certainly chosen our careers in advancement because we want to change the world. Whatever the disparities are, whatever the differences are between institutions or roles, most advancement professionals, the unifying theme is that we're in this for the greater good. We're in this because we believe that education makes a significant difference and can truly have the power to transform the world. What one piece of advice would you have? We'll start with Joel. For those that have joined us today, as they head out on their roadmaps for advancement, what would be the one piece of advice that maybe you wish you had had that you'd like to share with the group? I think the main thing that I would like to share is don't be afraid to put your ideas out there, but alongside that, make sure that you put in the work into sharing your vision and how that supports the wider objectives of your institution. So in other words, be bold, be visionary. We have an opportunity to positively shape our communities and global society for better. And as conduits, empowerers, facilitators of knowledge, innovation and advocacy, and more, we can advance the social capital that fuels the solutions of tomorrow. So seize it. It's your superpower. I love it. We are all superheroes. Zee. Yes, I think the biggest advice or just something to always keep in mind is it's so important for each of us to always have a voice, to never be afraid to speak out, whether it's something that we feel strongly about or it's something that we are very passionate about. And I think personally, having a voice is actually what landed me this role today, because initially upon the completion of my case graduate training program, there actually wasn't an international fundraising role there for me. But it's through those conversations you have with people around you. It's the conversation you have with that you're passionate about. It's what can lead to something you could never imagine. So always have a voice because people will listen to unique ideas in this industry. And once your ideas have been heard, make sure you have the ambition and the courage to do things differently. So I'm really excited for all of us as we continue our roadmap on this journey. Back to you, Emma. Yes, and I think it was really difficult for me to work out just one piece of advice, but I figure that I can actually combine a couple of pieces under the theme of making sure that you work on trusting people that you work with. It's actually something you do have to work on. Trust is something that is only built over time and shared experience. And mostly in advancement, you don't have time. And you're often working with people very out of the blue on different projects that you haven't had time to build personal relationships and trust. So what can you do to make sure that you trust people? Because it's only when you trust those that you're working with that you can have the confidence to maybe let go of an idea so that it runs with where it should go. And it's only when you work with people within an institution with aligned values that you can build trust. So make sure you choose where you work carefully. Make sure that the institution you work for has values that align with your own. Because if you do that, you can then trust the others who have chosen to work there to be able to work with and hand off ideas. But you have to be proactive about it. It's a conscious decision to trust and to assume best intentions, knowing that you're actually working for the greater good. So that brings us to the close of our formal structured question. And there is a question from how did you get the buy-in from the wider university or school setting to recognize and support the development of alumni services into a more integrated advancement approach? Joel, would you like to take a first stab at Jane's question? Yeah, sure. I can answer that from my perspective. I think in my role at the University of Auckland, one of the things that we were trying to achieve is to create more awareness of obviously, what we do, but I think more importantly, increasing the knowledge and understanding of the role that volunteers can play across the institution, and the importance of us knowing about and recognizing and stewarding those volunteers. So I think one of the key ways in which we did that is by seeking out the right people, stakeholder mapping, finding out who those key players are across the university, and communicating to them the why of our department and also the broader impact that it can have specifically to them, whether it's helping with student recruitment, or helping with research, or helping enhance the teaching and learning initiatives, or whatever's going on. I think it's about tailoring that message and helping them to understand the why and then the rest of it can follow from that. Yeah, and I would just build on that and sort of say scale down to a school environment. It's about making it meaningful. I'm fortunate that I've always worked within a school setting, and that makes it relatively small scale. So you can actually get quite a bit of bang for your buck. It's harder when you're scaled up into a university setting. But finding those champion stories of success and making sure that they're shared with everybody, where an alumni has mentored a current student, where an alumni has made a major gift to a particular research project, where an alumni has provided access for a program to develop, whatever it might be, you probably know where those moments of collision can happen. And then you kind of have to just engineer it, okay? I mean, it is okay to be totally Machiavellian and manipulative when it's for the greater good, okay? So that's what I would say is, you know, alumni, making sure you insert them into the busy lives of the other people, so they can actually see them as an incredibly valuable resource, would be my advice. Zee, what about from your perspective? Yes, I would say one of the main misconceptions the wider university has about alumni services is that it only applies to graduates of the university, you know, they only play a role after they have left the university. But that's quite often not the case, because, you know, it's really about having them involved when they are already students of the university. And I think the integrated approach starts the day one, when the students are really part of the university network. And I think at Monash University, our alumni team has had almost a matrix structure when we look at the wider university. So we have a central alumni team, but each of the central alumni managers, they also look after a particular faculty at the university as well. So that way, the faculty are aware of what's happening on a very top level. But equally, when there's a very faculty specific events, we're also, we as the advancement team, we also have that cross communication there. So I think it's so important to ensure that communication is fluid across different parts of university to ensure that when things do happen, we can all take part in doing things together, especially at a time like COVID, when we can't say travel to a specific country, our alumni colleague actually helps with in-country student admissions team to help them with the recruitment work and vice versa. We have our in-country student recruitment associates who actually help us to connect with alumni in different regions as well. And I think it's to tell the wider part of university, there is a lot of synergy between alumni and their department and how to find ways that we could communicate and facilitate projects together. That's really important. Thank you, Zee. I very much appreciated the conversation that we had in this last session and the experiences, you know, the international context was very good. And also the difference between the school and the higher education sector. I appreciate what Emma was saying about having a bit more control, I guess, when you've got a smaller portfolio and an integrated portfolio, because I've worked in a business school at Central as well as a school and experience in the higher ed sector, it's a little bit more complex and trying to navigate the different. So no, it was very good. And just on the career journey, I think Joel said you landed into advancement by mistake. I think I did too. So I think I've had a lot of conversations over the past 18 months with many members, and I would say 80% of people land in advancement. You know, I've had school teachers, I've had a lot of media background like Emma, every type of field imaginable, who landed in advancement. So it's fantastic. But one of our goals and objectives now is to try and bring people up right from, you know, university in to advancement. And that's why Zee, you know, doing the graduate training program is absolutely fantastic, because, you know, that's one thing CASE is trying to do is just see advancement as a career, not something that you just land in by mistake. And I probably should say thank you, Heather, for reminding me that actually, although I sort of fell into this by mistake, the one constant throughout the two decades in educational advancement for me has been CASE. It's not necessarily been the institution where I work. And I know that's true for many, many colleagues. So keeping that connection with CASE as your family throughout your career path and your roadmap will be crucial, because that is where you have your like minded peers to test ideas to find support when things are not going so well. And then most importantly, to equip yourself to move forward. So that sort of training and support that you can find within CASE, I'm sure you've experienced that already for yourselves these last 24 hours. And this is only the start. Well done for having signed up for this and making the right choice. And yes, that's my official endorsement. So wanted to thank you, Emma, Zee and Joel for sharing your career journeys and hosting this conversation. We very much appreciate it. Again, we couldn't do what we do without our volunteers. Thank you. And we look forward to seeing you again in future programs.

CASE

Council for Advancement and Support of Education

advancement

integrated approach

trust and collaboration

partnerships

alumni engagement

openness and transparency