A Message to Alumni

from Dean's Desk, Alumni E-Newsletter
July 20, 2005

Dear Yale SOM graduates,

As the new Dean of Yale SOM, one of my top priorities — and great privileges — is to personally get to know as many members of the school’s remarkable alumni community as I can. I’ve greatly enjoyed meeting a number of you already, and I’m looking forward to talking with many more alumni in the upcoming months — both on campus and during my travels.

Although I’ve only been here a short time, I am particularly impressed by how passionately committed our alumni are about the school. You will see many great examples of this commitment of “giving back” in this issue of the Alumni E-Newsletter — from participating in the recent Yale SOM and Association of Yale Alumni joint conference, “Yale, Business Leadership, and the Public Interest” and five-year class reunions, to having nearly one-quarter of the entire alumni community directly involved this past year alone in various Yale SOM activities, including recruiting, admissions, mentoring, board service, guest lecturing, and sharing knowledge with the school’s Centers of Excellence, to name just several examples.

I am very grateful to you for your ongoing efforts on behalf of Yale SOM and look forward to building on this amazing momentum by actively engaging the whole alumni community in an ongoing dialogue about the future of the school. Our alumni community embodies the school’s deep-seated commitment of educating leaders for business and society. Your expertise, commitment, and collective input will be invaluable to successfully meeting the challenge of building Yale SOM into a role model and leader for other business schools in the 21st century. I look forward to a long and wonderful collaboration with you.

Sincerely,

Joel Podolny, Dean